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How to Write a Convincing Doyle
What's in a Name?In order to write about Doyle, the first thing you have to do is spell his name right. If you don't, readers will pick up on it and they'll think you don't pay enough attention to detail. And, quite frankly, they'd be right. There seem to be as many different opinions on how to spell Doyle's first name as there are demons in Joss's version of Los Angeles... but here are the three that are seen most often.Allen Francis Doyle
Accent or no Accent? That is the Question!Another common issue when writing for Doyle is whether or not to write him with an Irish accent. Glenn Quinn (the actor who played him on the show) was born in Ireland and Joss had him use his natural accent on the show. But, and here everyone will probably agree with you, Glenn's accent wasn't so strong that you couldn't understand what he was saying. So that's the catch to writing with an accent. You have to be able to do it well enough that the reader isn't jarred out of the flow of the story by any badly written Doyle dialogue. My best advice: if you're uncomfortable writing him with an accent... don't. You can always have another character (perhaps Buffy?) mention that he has a great accent. And then the reader can just *imagine* what that accent would sound like. But unless you know that you can write him in accent and have it come off as both believable and easy to read... just don't do it. Save your readers the headache. Also, another thing to remember... less is more. Go through a few of your tapes of the 1st nine Angel episodes and listen to Glenn speak. What words *really* stand out as having a noticable accent? Then pick a few and use just those in your fic. That's a good way of hinting subtly at an accent without overloading the reader with lots of Irish slang and dialect.
More tips coming soon... |