: Character Accents When writing dialogue how should one tackle accents? Changing the spelling for certain words (V for W in German) is effective but may come off a little cheesy. Then again, not doing this might cause the

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It depends on the genre you're writing. A whimsical fantasy story would depict a drunken dwarf blacksmith's manner of speech in the dialog:

"Aye stringbean, Oi'll sharpen 'nat old stabber yeh got there fer a couple 'a silver. Whaddaya shay?"

Overuse of this style can become obnoxious really quick, especially if the reader has to slow down or strain to understand it.

Whereas a more serious story would indicate the accent through dialog tags and grammatical queues:

"Tell us where is the drop zone," the Kommandant whispered into his captive’s ear, his sharp accent butchering the words as they came out. "Tell us, and no harm will come to your men. I swear it."

Full disclosure: I am not a fantasy writer and my dwarvish vernacular is a bit rusty