(Or: You say tomayto and I say tomahto)

Tomayto, tomahto – Fred and Ginger battle it out
My new(ish) series, Ingrid Skyberg FBI Thrillers, set in and around the American embassy in London features my first non-British main protagonist. The stories are told totally from Ingrid’s point of view – every line of every book (apart from other characters’ dialogue) conveys what is going on in Ingrid’s mind. So everything is new and strange: London, the culture, some aspects of the language, the food, even the weather! She’s a fish out of water and at times she struggles with it.
So, I have an American narrator who finds herself in a new country. It should have been obvious choice to use American terminology and spelling (and even punctuation) for the books. But I agonised over that decision for quite a while. I feared there might be a backlash from British readers about it. Sidewalk, drapes, trunk, store, color, aluminum etc just looks plain wrong to a British eye.
Unfortunately, to an extent, I was right. Although the negative reviews that pick up on the ‘American-ifying’ are thankfully not that numerous, it still stings to read them (authors are sensitive souls). Even though I am very careful to ensure that any English character does NOT use American terminology, their dialogue uses American spelling – which may look odd to British readers.
For a while I considered releasing two versions of the books – one using British English the other American. But as the stories are told from Ingrid’s point of view, she still wouldn’t use English terminology. I knew that two versions would have been a complete nightmare to maintain, as I’d previously tried it with The Loyal Servant and it backfired horribly. US readers wondered what was so different about the US version and felt a little cheated when they discovered it was only the spelling.
I had a similar problem with The Senior Moment – here we have an English woman who is a fish out of water in New York. And although I used the odd American phrase (mainly because I had two American point of view characters – I really don’t make things easy for myself!), mostly it was British terminology and all British spelling and punctuation.
So I decided that is my rule of thumb: if the main character is British, then British English is used, if they’re American, it’s American English all the way.
I apologise to all readers who find this adversely affects their enjoyment of the books – marring the reading experience for anyone is the last thing I want to do. But I had to make a choice, and I’m going to have to stick with it.
Tomayto, tomahto, potayto, potahto – one thing’s for sure, I won’t be calling the whole thing off!
RETURN TO THE BLOG ARCHIVE<<
Ingrid Skyberg is great! No problems at all with her speaking American after all she is. To my mind it actually makes the story, she is telling it after all, and there is no way she would speak English. She will have to live here for more than 25 years to pick up the language and she will then still be speaking American with the odd Englishism thrown in. So dear Eva don’t worry about it. You’m doing a proper job maid. (thats a bit of Devonshire for you).
Bless you, Geoff for being so kind! And thanks for getting Ingrid. And I’ve learnt a bit of Devonshire – now that’s what I call a fab comment!