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Ken: My recommendation: Don't use slang words unless they're essential to the story. Suggested guideline: If you're only using such a word once, don't. Your reader won't miss it. If it's a term that you want to use more than once because it is related to the story, okay do it, but trust your reader to figure it out by the context or provide some clues.
The classic solution to this dilemma, at least in children's books, is to have a rookie asking questions. Like, '"What's a hoop-tike?" she asked, looking bewildered.' And then the knowledgeable one laughs and reveals all.If this can't be worked into your book, how about showing the thing (through context and description) instead of telling?
Dunno if I've helped, but I think I've earned an explanation. Do tell!
Problem with doing an explanation for the reader is the terms are exchanged between two cops who would be well familiar with the terms.A gabacho is an anglo or a Latino acting like an anglo, a perjorative term.
A hooptie is a cop patrol car. The term comes from the sound of the modern siren. Given a short blast it goes "hoop- hoop". Hence, a hooptie. patrol cops also call the car their 'office'.]
Another I stumbled onto this morning: 'coplish'. This is police dialect like in a crime report. "The subject proceeded southbound.."
Ken, I worked for a police department in the Southeast for nearly ten years. We did not use the expression "hooptie" at all, but I know a guy who works for the St Louis PD and they DO use it. So, I'm guessing it must be a regionalism. We also never used the term "perp", like so many crime novels do. I imagine it's used in some areas, but in my area, we always referred to them as "subjects".
I'm sure a lot of vernacular is regional. An ex-neighbor is a county sheriff. I'm trying to work something out to pick his brains over a few brews.I'm just trying to work out how to throw in the phrasing in dialog so its natural but clear to the reader.
Well, you need to put some in there to give it the "regional flare," which I think is extremely important to setting. But I would go light on it - not too much. For example, people griped endlessly at how much my characters say "hey" but it's a very popular term in the South. So I replaced it with "hi" or "hello" in most places, but threw in an occasional "hey" to keep the regional influence. Readers (and editors) seemed happy with it. That's my suggestion. Put some in, but not too much. I hope this helps. And by the way, what is a "hooptie?" Is that like an "igit" or something different? :)
My suggestion would be to sprinkle a fair amount in to give it the right feel. Perhaps wording sentences so that the meaning can be figured out by context might help, too, though that's not always feasible. Cops don't talk completely in jargon, of course, but they do often enough so that it will be necessary if you want to want your dialogue to ring true.
Cops sometimes sprinkle ten codes in conversations when speaking about certain things in front of the public that they want to keep confidential. For instance, when we'd deal with mentally ill people, we would refer to them as "10-68s" when talking in front of the person in question, usually as a way to warn an officer new on the scene to quickly apprise him of what he was dealing with. It was a way to get the message across without needlessly offending the person in question.
Be advised that the meanings of ten codes are not at all universal; they vary widely in jurisdictions across the country. But from what I've heard, the use of ten codes has faded away to some point since cops have carried cell phones, though I'm sure this varies from department to department.
I think you might want to put in a glossary somewhere, preferably in front. I know it's awkward with e-books, but better awkward than a clueless reader.
As an aside, it's also important to do thorough research on weaponry. I've seen many gaffes of this type in books, even from authors like John Grisham. He had one novel taking place in 1970 and he had one character in a rural southern town owning a Glock pistol. When I worked for the PD, I remembered that Glock pistols were not introduced to the US until the very late 80s. They were available in Austria in 1970, but there was nothing about the character to suggest he'd made a trip there to buy a Glock and I'm not sure customs would have allowed him to bring it back to the US even if he had.
Ken wrote: "Problem with doing an explanation for the reader is the terms are exchanged between two cops who would be well familiar with the terms.A gabacho is an anglo or a Latino acting like an anglo, a ..."
Interesting! Well, what I would do is to use the coplish word in dialogue and the regular term as a narrator so that the reader puts two and two together. For instance, cop 1 tells cop 2 to call the hooptie, and then the narrator says something like -- "cop 2 called and the patrol car arrived within minutes."
Gabacho would be harder to work in, but if it's used several times, you could explain that cop 1 dislikes anglos -- I would think not in the first usage, though.
I'm working on a murder mystery too, but decided I couldn't get enough coplish or procedural stuff to sound authentic. So I engineered a situation where the cops couldn't get to the scene for a couple of days and the amateur sleuth had to do most of the detection. Classic copout -- is that how the term originated? Anyway, best of luck with your book!
Keeping in mind this will start life as an e-book, how do I treat these. Kindle has a 'look up' feature but I doubt they have going to discern what a 'hooptie' or a [i]gabacho[i] is.
I'm hesitant to put the definition in the text in parentheses as it breaks up the flow of the story.
As this is an e-book, I can't really footnote the page (or I don't know how) and putting a glossary at the end or beginning is OK but I don't want the reader having to jump in and out as this distracts from the story.
Looking at some Joseph Wambaugh and he justs puts the words in without explanation. Of course, his stuff is some forty years old and a lot of the terms are known and even antiquated.
Tom Clancy throws in tons of acronyms and military terms without explanation but I'm thinking the audience has some familiarity.
What to do, what to do? Give me some ideas and I'll tell you what a 'hooptie' and a gabacho is.