Drama coursework script help!?

Question

In the Development Phase when you're writing out a script, if one of the characters speaks with an accent where you don't pronounce all the letters, e.g. cockney, can you write in the script how they speak? for example:

Person: Get us another will ya, me good ol' pal!

And if so, do you gain extra marks?

Answer 1

I think it's personal choice from playwright to playwright. Personally, I haaaaaaaaate it when accents are written out phonetically. Just about the only playwright I'll excuse this behaviour is Shakespeare, and that's because by writing the Welsh accent phonetically, we get the wonderful line "there is good men p**n at Monmouth" in 'Henry V'. (Apparently Elizabethan Welshmen pronounced their Bs as Ps.) It makes it easier on everyone - and much safer for you! - if you just put in the character description that the character speaks with a pronounced [whatever] accent. Whatever do I mean by "safer", you ask? Well, imagine the following scenario:

- You've carefully written your script, and lovingly given one of your characters a beautifully written Cockney accent, with consonants missing all over the shop and a few bits of rhyming slang thrown in for good measure. It took a lot of effort, because you are not a Cockney, but you are pleased with the results and patting yourself mightily on the back.

- Your script goes off to be marked.

- The marker is a genuine Cockney, born within hearing distance of Bow Bells, who spends more time cringing at any well-meaning errors in the dialect you've made than taking the work in on any meaningful level.

- The marker has lots more to do, so ends up grading you based on their overall impression of your work (which was cringeworthy to them) rather than on any genuine merit (and you could've been the next Pinter, Stoppard, etc).

It's fine to write in the occasional colloquialism, if you're absolutely insistent that a character says "ya" instead of "you", but you really should avoid writing out an entire accent phonetically.