brief missive from mid-con

[swan_tower]

OH HOLY GOD IT WORKED.

(The stunt I alluded to before? I read a selection from With Fate Conspire . . . complete with RP and cockney accents. One attendee with a British mother said that if she hadn't heard me speak in my natural voice, she wouldn't have known I was American. This is pretty much the best seal of approval I could hope for.)

(I still don't know that I'll try that stunt in public again, though.)

Comments

[ninja-turbo.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. Well done. :)

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

Reading with a British accent in front of Brits is... searching for an equivalent here... like trying to whirl in front of dervishes? I don't know, but -- that's awesome!

[astres.livejournal.com]

It was totally fine, darlin'. And the cockney was just awesooooooome.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I only had the courage to do it because I had one person in London ask where I was from, and when I told her, say with a degree of surprise that "you don't have much of an accent." So I knew that, as long as nerves didn't screw me up, I could get close enough to the target not to sound too weird.

The part that scared me was the cockney, and the switching back and forth between that and RP during the reading. It didn't go perfectly, but it went well enough to pass.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

The cockney could use more work, but I did about as well with it as I'd hoped to.

[wolfseer.livejournal.com]

One attendee with a British mother said that if she hadn't heard me speak in my natural voice, she wouldn't have known I was American.

It's true! :D Your accent was flawless. I've heard Yanks who pay money for lessons and they're never able to achieve such an effortless sound.

I'm so glad you came to Sirens, I loved your fighting workshop so much! I learnt loads. And I also was touched and appreciated how friendly and enthusiastic you were with your readers. So many authors seem to be aloof and unapproachable, you were the exact opposite. Thank you!

I hope to see you at Sirens 2011!

-Cal

P.S. Hope you don't mind if I friend you!

And it's my dad's family who're English, not Mum. ;)

[edgyauthor.livejournal.com]

Whoa. Very cool! I know I would never dream of attempting something like that if I had the opportunity, since I suck at executing accents of any kind. XD

[scottakennedy.livejournal.com]

That's great. Switching accents within a performance is particularly difficult and it sounds like you pulled it off wonderfully.

One online resource you might enjoy if you comtemplate doing it again is the KU online dialect lab. It's huge library of native speaker mp3 files that one can easily save to an iPod, etc. I've used them repeatedly for warm-ups when playing characters with accents.
http://web.ku.edu/~idea/index.htm

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Sorry for getting that backwards! And yes, no problems with you friending me; I'm glad you enjoyed the workshop.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It takes a lot of practice.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Oooh, shiny. Thanks so much!