Finished first draft of western. As I go to rewrite the antagonist is a Swedish immigrant (been here for a while and highly educated.) I have indicated a Swedish accent in the initial character description. However I would like to add that flavor to the dialogue (i.e yah not yes, lack of articles in conversation). Does any know of a site / reference that can help me with a Swedish accent?

Realize that a lot of people say - don’t write the accent, but would like to give it some flavor for the reader.

Thanks ahead of time.

I am Swedish and I can tell you that accents vary wildly between the north and south. So, it would depend on where in Sweden he's from. IMHO, I would just mention in his description that he speaks with a Swedish accent rather than try to write something you're not familiar with. I would never attempt to add a particular accent to a character without consulting with someone who speaks the language fluently. When I write Spanish in my scripts I always ask friends for help. Of course, Spanish varies wildly too between let's say someone from Guatemala and someone from Spain. I imagine the same can be said for most languages. Keep it simple would be my advice.

Good luck with it.  :)

I agree with Pia's advice to generally keep things simple, but I'm adding my 2 cents' worth anyway. :)

Another way to potentially add some flavor to the script (without actually writing out the vernacular in the accent) could be to add some wordplay or mess around with the sentence structure. As in, there's a world of difference between I just don't think it's that scary and Just sayin', that don't scare me none. Not a particularly specific or helpful example, but something in that vicinity.

Another way to do it would be to occasionally pepper the dialogue with a few words in the original language. Lots of films do that, though personally, as a native Spanish speaker, characters like that often come across as unrealistic or "trying too hard" for my taste (I don't know anyone who "Spanglishes" that much in real life, unless they straight up don't know English).

Btw, I'm pretty sure you can actually "write the accent" if you want. It wouldn't necessarily be my preference and it's risky to do it if you don't know the language you're trying to tackle, but I also wouldn't completely write off a good script because of it.

One thing to be careful of is that I'm assuming most of your characters would speak like cowboys in your western. If you get their vernacular down, then writing the Swedish character's dialogue normally might possibly work, since he'd end up standing out either way (not sure if I'm making sense, lol).

Just my two cents. There are lots of ways to tackle that.

The Coens did it in their Fargo script and it really added to the reading experience.

Of course they are established filmmakers and I read the script after being a fan of the film for many years so it's a somewhat different scenario.

I reckon if it doesn't affect the reader's comprehension of what's been said it will be an asset to the script, giving it a unique characteristic.