I don't doubt it. In the right hands, I like that sort of thing. I'm interested in the different ways people talk. Too bad the right hands are not often the hands itching to pick that stuff up.

My annoying habit word is "just". I just keeping slipping it in without thinking about it.

Oh yeah. I use it all the time. And "actually." Also, everything "apparently" happens with me.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Years of editing Scottish-set romances proves this brilliantly. One more "I dinna ken" and I would have cried.

Ha-ha! I had a beta reader who complained, "but what happened to her accent? Where'd it go?"

It went to the rubbish bin, where excess patois belongs. One or two phrases to get the feel in the reader's head and they'll start doing the translating themselves. No one has to describe a redhead as being a redhead in every single paragraph, once you know, you know.

It's particularly egregious in fanfic. Yes, we know Scotty has an accent. And Chekov. And Rogue. WE KNOW.

Also, everything "apparently" happens with me.

I wouldn't be surprised if I overuse that one too.

I know I violated the exclamation points rule, but if someone yells something I have a hard time not using an exclamation point. Maybe that tells me something about the attribution tag or physical beat I'm using.

And Turtle, Dana. Yes, he's from Queens, he smokes weed, and mostly? he ought to be wearing a T-shirt that says "Comic Relief", but somehow I still hate it when fic writers make it seem that what comes out of his mouth isn't English. Maybe it's the populist in me.

It went to the rubbish bin, where excess patois belongs.

Someone really should have told Emily Bronte that. It would certainly have made teaching Wuthering Heights a little easier.

Years of editing Scottish-set romances proves this brilliantly. One more "I dinna ken" and I would have cried.

I blame Robbie Burns for this. And ah, crap. It's almost Burns Day again. [link]

(It occurs to me that I bet a lot of romance writers from the US use Scots inappropriately. Like, for characters from the Gàidhealtachd. Thay shouldna dae that. Tis juist wrong.)

My biggest pet peeve with writing is dialogue that sounds nothing like actual speech patterns. Not dialect, but overly formal, grammatically correct dialogue: "I do not like going to the market alone. Would you like to come with me?"

Most contemporary characters, in casual speech, are going to say something like, "I don't like going to the store alone. Want to come?"

I think that most writing "rules" go out the window in dialogue. People don't speak correctly, and they will say "suddenly", and I think there's a huge realm of difference between "Look out," he said and "Look out!"

Also "There's a spider on you," he said and "There's a spider on you," he whispered.

And I twitch when someone says "Never do X." Not everyone needs to try to be Hemingway.