Ten Rules in Ten Days - Rule 7: Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apos­trophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short storiesClose Range.

This rule is particularly important for writers like me who live in a foreign country. If the story contains foreigners, you have to sprinkle it with foreign words, and sometimes try to represent the accent.

In the group of short stories Leonard mentions, the flavor...