Writing fiction is different than writing non-fiction. The believability of your fiction’s characters depends on their dialect and inner thinking matching the character’s personality. To achieve believable characters, each character must think, speak, and behave in character. Allow a grammar checker to correct your fiction, and your character’s uniqueness will disappear. Don’t let that happen.
In this video, we explore various ways grammar checkers can ruin your fiction.
Video Transcript:
Hello. My name is TJ Culler, and if you’re an author, then listen carefully, because today we’re talking about how you can sabotage your own work./span>
One of my favorite fiction authors is Jeffery Deaver. Mr. Deaver is a skilled author who could compose a conversation between three characters — a man with a southern drawl, a man with an accent from Boston, and a British gentleman with a deep English accent — and never once have to write “he said,” “he replied,” or so-and-so “asked.” His talent for embedding a character’s dialect into the narrative tells the reader exactly who is speaking without the need to explain.
Let’s look at a dialect example from my upcoming novel, Escape From Duda’El. In this scene, the protagonist visits an auto repair shop to pick up his now-fixed car. When the protagonist asks the mechanic about the problem, the mechanic says, “Bad gas was all it was. She sucked water inn’er ‘jectors and that shut’r right down. I cleaned’er out’n dried’r up. She’s good to go.”
The way the mechanic speaks tells the reader a great deal about his character. Notice how the mechanic refers to machines with feminine pronouns. Also, he uses an excessive number of contractions. What would a reader think? You might think the mechanic sounds like a hillbilly. But wait — sounds? The mechanic never spoke, the reader just read words, but in the reader’s mind, they heard him talking. They heard his dialect. They heard his accent. Now, guess what happens to your character when you run him through a grammar checker or an AI? He’s sterilized — like you walked up to him with a machete and whacked off his…uhh…well, you get the idea.
Spelling and grammar checkers have their place, but in fiction, if you’re not careful, they can do a lot of damage. Let’s take a look at ten ways grammar tools can undermine your character’s voice.
Number One. Character voice is more important than formal correctness.
Here’s the thing grammar tools don’t understand — readers don’t connect with perfect grammar. They connect with believable people. If your character grew up in the Louisiana bayou, their internal thoughts should sound like the Louisiana bayou, not like a term paper. Authenticity beats correctness every single time.
Number Two. People think in the language they speak.
Your character’s internal monologue isn’t separate from who they are — it is who they are. Their vocabulary, their sentence rhythm, the way they string ideas together — that’s their fingerprint. The moment a grammar tool “fixes” those thoughts into clean, standard English, you’ve quietly swapped your character out for someone else. Someone bland. Someone who sounds suspiciously like every other character in every other book.
Number Three. Fiction is not business writing.
Grammar tools are trained on academic papers, professional emails, and formal documents. That’s their world. Fiction is a completely different universe. In fiction, we break rules constantly — on purpose. Fragments for punch. Run-ons for panic. Repetition for rhythm. A grammar tool sees all of that and lights up like a Christmas tree. Every flag is a suggestion to make your prose more… corporate. Don’t take the bait.
Number Four. Dialect does the heavy lifting — let it.
When your character speaks in dialect, they’re telling the reader things you’d otherwise have to stop and explain. Education level. Where they grew up. What class they come from. How old they are. All of that comes through in how they talk, not just what they say. Strip the dialect out, and now you’ve got to write three sentences of backstory to replace what one line of dialogue already handled. Grammar tools don’t see that trade-off. They just see something to fix.
Number Five. Speech and thought should match.
Remember that mechanic? “She sucked water inn’er ‘jectors and that shut’r right down.” Now imagine you follow that line with a peek inside his head — He considered the hydraulic implications of water contamination within a fuel injection system. Ridiculous, right? Nobody believes that’s the same guy. But that’s exactly what happens when a grammar tool gets hold of your character’s internal monologue and cleans it up. If your character drops their g’s when they talk — runnin’, jumpin’, hollerin’ — their thoughts should sound like the same person. Readers will feel that mismatch even if they can’t name it. It creates a subtle disconnect, like watching a movie where the audio is slightly out of sync. Nobody stops and says, “The audio’s off.” They just feel vaguely uncomfortable. Keep your character’s voice consistent inside and out.
Number Six. Authenticity requires breaking rules.
Elmore Leonard — one of the greatest dialogue writers who ever lived — said it plainly: listen to how people actually talk. Not how they’re supposed to talk. How they actually talk. People interrupt themselves. They trail off. They use the wrong word and somehow make it the right word. Great fiction captures that. Grammar tools will flag every last bit of it. Ignore them.
Number Seven. Standardization makes every character sound the same.
This is one of the most common weaknesses I see in manuscripts — every character has the same voice. The professor sounds like the street kid sounds like the grandmother. There’s nothing to grab onto. Distinctive speech patterns are how readers recognize characters before they even see a dialogue tag. The moment you let a grammar tool flatten those differences, you’ve handed your cast the same costume and told them all to act normal.
Number Eight. Grammar rules are guidelines, not laws.
The Chicago Manual of Style is a fantastic resource. It’s also a tool for a specific kind of writing. Fiction writers have always adapted the rules to serve the story. That’s not ignorance — that’s craft. When Cormac McCarthy decided to skip quotation marks entirely, no grammar tool on earth would have approved. The books sold just fine.
Number Nine. Immersion depends on consistency.
Readers are remarkably good at suspending disbelief — as long as you don’t break the spell. And nothing breaks the spell faster than inconsistency. Your character cusses like a sailor in dialogue, but their inner thoughts sound like a guidance counselor? The reader’s going to notice. They won’t know why the book suddenly feels off. But they’ll put it down. Consistency in your character’s voice — across dialogue, thought, and behavior — is what keeps readers in the story.
Number Ten. You’re the author. Act like it.
Grammar tools can catch typos. They can flag a genuine mistake. That’s useful. But they cannot tell the difference between an error and a choice. That’s your job. You know why that sentence fragment is there. You know why your character says “ain’t” when every other character says “isn’t.” Don’t let an algorithm make that call for you. Use the suggestions as a starting point — then override them without guilt. Every time.
Outro:
In fiction, the goal isn’t perfect grammar. The goal is a reader who finishes your book at two in the morning and immediately wants to tell someone about it. That doesn’t happen because your commas are in the right place. It happens because your characters felt real.
Protect their voices. Write messy when messy is right. And the next time your grammar tool flags something, ask yourself — is this a mistake, or is this the character? Nine times out of ten, you’ll already know the answer.
And as we like to say at The Author Spot, go on and write—we’ll handle the tech.
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TJ Culler is an author, reader, and an adventurist. She loves working at The Author Spot as an Author Platform Specialist. Her hobbies include hiking, camping, and driving her Jeep in the great outdoors. After publishing her first book in 2017, TJ discovered what a daunting task an author platform really was. She now dedicates her time to helping authors, like herself, who struggle with technology. |
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