Use dialect to give your character a distinctive voice. I grew up in California, completely accent-free. In my teens I met a Texan who scoffed at my “accent,” when clearly, he was the one with an accent. The reality is, we always consider our way of speaking as a baseline. Everything else represents an accent. In today’s post I will explore how culture, financial status and line of work affect your characters’ speech patterns. Culture Consider the many variations of English across the United States and the world. It sounds different in Cape Cod than it does in New Orleans, different in Ireland than South Africa or Australia. And of…