# Going to vs Gonna



## cinderblock (May 25, 2015)

I don't think I've ever seen "gonna" or "wanna" in any books. I'm sure these words are used in a lot of YA books, I can imagine.

My question is, what's your take?

Obviously, the elitist approach would be to avoid "gonna" and "wanna," but I find it phony when authors say, "going to" as opposed to "gonna," especially during dialogue. Maybe if the person is speaking slowly and haltingly, but if they're talking fluidly, I think everybody contracts it.


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## Blade (May 25, 2015)

Dialogue tends to be descriptive and does not require proper English but only what the speaker would likely use in the context. 'Gonna' or 'wanna' would be appropriate in that case but in conventional written text would just come across as improper or more to the point 'goofy'.=;


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## aj47 (May 25, 2015)

What Blade said. 

The other time you could use "gonna" would be in poetry or lyrics if it matched the language of the rest of the piece.

That's because they're dialog-like in that they tend to be spoken/sung.


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## shadowwalker (May 25, 2015)

Ditto to all the above. Dialogue is written basically the way the characters would speak (within reason, as it still has to be understandable); narration, unless in first person, should usually adhere to grammatical rules. As always, there are exceptions, but need good reason.


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## cinderblock (May 27, 2015)

Blade said:


> Dialogue tends to be descriptive and does not require proper English but only what the speaker would likely use in the context. 'Gonna' or 'wanna' would be appropriate in that case but in conventional written text would just come across as improper or more to the point 'goofy'.=;



I guess that's where I'm still mixed up about. The appeal to stick to convention, just because the person before did it. 

Obviously, you never want your writing to come off as goofy or pretentious, etc, but that happens all the time regardless of whether you're sticking to conventions or not.


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## cinderblock (May 27, 2015)

shadowwalker said:


> Ditto to all the above. Dialogue is written basically the way the characters would speak (within reason, as it still has to be understandable); narration, unless in first person, should usually adhere to grammatical rules. As always, there are exceptions, but need good reason.



The current story I'm writing is a hybrid between 1st and 3rd. Sometimes, the two tend to fuse together, almost as if the narrator has a bias for the character the chapter focuses on. That's where it gets blurry for me.


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## Riis Marshall (May 27, 2015)

Hello Cinders

Ditto everything that has been said here.

'Gonna' is perfectly acceptable in dialogue; it's _not_ acceptable in the narrator's voice, unless you've created a consistent style throughout the book for your first person narrator. But my guess is readers in general would get pretty tired of 'gonna' and 'wanna' by about page seven and throw your book across the room or out the window.

After you've published a few dozen books and you have a wide readership, then maybe, as an experiment, try it for your first person narrator. Until then, if you want to get published and if you want readers to buy your books, you'll probably do better if you stick to recognized standards.

All the best with your writing.

Warmest regards
Riis


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## dale (May 27, 2015)

i had a publisher change all my "gonnas" to "goings" before. i was like..."dude. they're from the south. i wrote them talking like that
cuz that's how they talk."


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## shadowwalker (May 27, 2015)

cinderblock said:


> I guess that's where I'm still mixed up about. The appeal to stick to convention, just because the person before did it.



If convention allows more readers to get involved in your book, I would think that's a good thing. Ask yourself what the point is in using "gonna" versus "going to". Answer it truthfully and you'll know if you're being pretentious or not.


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## Tettsuo (May 27, 2015)

cinderblock said:


> I guess that's where I'm still mixed up about. The appeal to stick to convention, just because the person before did it.
> 
> Obviously, you never want your writing to come off as goofy or pretentious, etc, but that happens all the time regardless of whether you're sticking to conventions or not.


The Color Purple
by: Alice Walker

The entire book is written through letters.  First person, past tense.  The narrator is basically an uneducated woman.  The entire novel comes off as completely genuine to me because the author followed through completely with the style.  The same with Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes.

IMO, if you're going to buck the system so to speak, follow through completely with it.  If you're going to use "gonna" instead of "going to", what else will be different?  How far are you willing to take this?  Cause, the moment you break your chosen path, or appear to be trying to write in a manner that doesn't match the character because you want to use flowery prose with a idiot character, it starts to come off as phony.  You never want to come off as phony to your readers.


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## RhythmOvPain (May 28, 2015)

I dunno, y0.

Frankly, I'll write what I'm saying no matter what the case may be.

Gonna, wanna, dunno, okay (which is apparently incorrect, but whatevs), kay, any kind of verbal tinge gives character to written word. Im'a go so far as to include the fact that you can shorten ANYTHING by putting an apostrophe somewhere. Im'a is a direct contraction of I'm gonna, and I personally say "Im'a" whenever the hell I feel like.

I mean, I tend to say "got to," but I wouldn't be offended if I read the newspaper and saw "gotta" in a sentence somewhere.

To hell with anyone who says you can't use slang.


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## Riis Marshall (May 28, 2015)

Hello Rhythm



> Gonna, wanna, dunno, okay (which is apparently incorrect, but whatevs), kay, any kind of verbal tinge gives character to written word. Im'a go so far as to include the fact that you can shorten ANYTHING by putting an apostrophe somewhere. Im'a is a direct contraction of I'm gonna, and I personally say "Im'a" whenever the hell I feel like.



Nobody is telling you you can't use slang.

What _I'm_ telling you is if I pulled your book from the shelf in my local bookshop and the first sentence I read looked anything like your quotation above, I would put it back on the shelf and instead buy something written by somebody else who wrote in a style that _didn't_ emulate - or copy - your style because that's whatever the hell I felt like doing.

I'm glad we've had this little chat.

All the best with your writing.

Warmest regards
Riis


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## shadowwalker (May 28, 2015)

RhythmOvPain said:


> I dunno, y0.
> 
> Frankly, I'll write what I'm saying no matter what the case may be.
> 
> ...



With Riis on this one. You can write however you want - but the farther you move from grammatical convention, the fewer readers you're going to have. You have to decide if you're going to do it "your way" or if you actually want to communicate.


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## cinderblock (May 28, 2015)

Riis Marshall said:


> Hello Rhythm
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Rhythm was just being satirical to drive your point.


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## Riis Marshall (May 29, 2015)

Hello Folks

God - I love this forum.

Keep those cards and letters coming in, folks.

All the best with your writing.

Warmest regards
Riis


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## musichal (May 29, 2015)

cinderblock said:


> I don't think I've ever seen "gonna" or "wanna" in any books. I'm sure these words are used in a lot of YA books, I can imagine.
> 
> My question is, what's your take?
> 
> Obviously, the elitist approach would be to avoid "gonna" and "wanna," but I find it phony when authors say, "going to" as opposed to "gonna," especially during dialogue. Maybe if the person is speaking slowly and haltingly, but if they're talking fluidly, I think everybody contracts it.



Personally, I tend to use such words in dialogue, and as I do I can get careless and let them slip into the narrative sometimes when they shouldn't be there (sometimes they should, depending on who is narrating) but I eventually fix such things as I edit, though that may take several rewrites/edits.  The problem with using gonna/going to in narrative is not per se because they are slang, but because they are superfluous, inefficient and ineffective (one exception already noted, and I can think of others).  In other words, if you find yourself writing gonna or going to in narrative then you probably have a poorly worded sentence.

I'm going to say this about it - rules are made to be broken.

Should be written:

Rules are made to be broken.

Don't tell me what you're going to write, just write it.

In dialogue, gonna vs. going to is six of one and a half dozen of the other, to me.  So I more or less agree with the OP there.


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## scrub puller (Jun 11, 2015)

Yair . . .

 This is all subjective stuff.

 As others have said in dialogue almost anything can be said, it depends on the situation and the character.


I write in "Australian" and a reader commented on the different ways my characters say yes and no . . . "yes", "yair", "yeh" and "yup". . . and then there's "no", "naah", "nuh" and "nope". 


(To me) all the variations have a specific place and application, some can be interchanged but to my eyes and ears it would look and sound completely wrong.

Cheers.


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## David Gordon Burke (Jun 12, 2015)

Almost every guide or how to book I've seen warns against this.  If you begin with gonna and the like, where does it stop?  Shudda, wanna, cudda, din, hafta, usta, otta, d'better, wudda, _must uhv, etc.  _
And sadly, it takes a real talent to pull it off with grace.  I don't do it at all.  
Next issue, what is it that you are writing about that causes you to feel the need to write this way?  I'll assume that this is the YA genre .... if not,, who really talks that way in real life?  And does your ear really hear that?  When I hear Gonna my mind automatically interprets it as Going to anyway.  
I don't see any added value in writing this way.  
It is also a cheap trick that makes a person think they are really nailing it, which they are not.
Real dialects are made up of the phrases and syntax that various different people use.  Adding a bunch of dunno's and gonnas isn't giving your character a voice.  
I strugged and continue to struggle to write Spanish Mexican characters (since I mostly write stories from here at home in Monterrey, Mexico .... there are so many great stories floating around for grist) and giving the characters a Mexican accent in English by playing with the way they construct sentences.  
It's a style I have yet to perfect and sometimes get a bad review for if the reader just doesn't catch on.  Oh well.
There is a huge chasm between those writers who do the dialect thing to perfection and the mass pulp fiction tripe that sprinkles in gonnas and dunnos.  
Most probably one learns to do it correctly by not doing it for a few million words.  Then tackle it.

David Gordon Burke


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## bazz cargo (Jun 12, 2015)

I will use gonna as much as I wanna, so there...


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## TKent (Jun 12, 2015)

One of my favorite books is Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (who wrote Gone Girl and is one of the hottest contemporary authors out there). She uses gonna and other slang like this in her dialog and it works flawlessly. It fits the particular setting and characters in her book.

In my opinion, if the slang fits the character and is used consistently, then it can work really well. I expect that if you had a first person narrator whose character would use the word frequently, that would work too if done right and consistently. 

I read books on writing all the time. Seriously, I'm addicted to them. Then I go pick up some of my favorite novels and realize that all of them break one rule or another (or multiple or on some occasions many of them). 

I remember the first time I saw Pulp Fiction at the theater. That movie probably broke every rule in the book but it was a masterpiece to me. I chuckle to think of a young Quentin Tarantino on a screenwriter forum asking if he should do some of the innovative things he did in the movie. I expect that there would be a bunch of responses telling him to stick with traditional screenwriting techniques. I'm so thankful that IF he did have that conversation on a forum, he didn't listen 

So at the end of the day, I think you should know the rules but don't be afraid to experiment, either. It's writing. You control it. If you get consistent feedback from readers that they don't like it, you can rewrite it and try something different!

And it goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that this is my humble opinion.


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## Xander416 (Jun 17, 2015)

Blade said:


> Dialogue tends to be descriptive and does not require proper English but only what the speaker would likely use in the context. 'Gonna' or 'wanna' would be appropriate in that case but in conventional written text would just come across as improper or more to the point 'goofy'.=;


My sentiments exactly.

I only use "gonna" or "wanna" (and "ain't", "irregardless", and other such words, for that matter) in dialogue and when it fits the character, in narrative I always use "want to", "going to", and so on.


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