Character Voice

Jamesritchie and ash.y nail it.

I put down a book at about thirty pages recently for that very issue - the dialogue for each character (two men, two women and one was ostensibly French to boot) was completely indistinct from one character to the next.

And boring anyway.

Another book I finished because the story itself was decent, but characters and dialogue were not the author's strong point, so I wasn't terribly interested in reading any more by that person. It wasn't bad, just functional and not much more.

I really think that with proper character development, and more vivid as opposed to generic dialogue, the various 'voices' distinguish themselves on their own.

And as Anna said, go out and listen carefully to people's conversations. Even casual conversation can be distinct from one person to the next. For example I know someone who's a transplanted Italian and always greets people with 'ciao', another says 'hey, how's it going' and another bellows out a very exuberant 'Hellooooo!!' Of course, you don't want to overdo it either to where it's gimmicky but you get the idea.

NRoach said:

I don't think anyone's suggesting that character voice doesn't exist and that it's impossible to make characters sound different from one another; it's the idea of making every single line attributable that's making waves.

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This ^^^

People all do speak differently in real life...but on paper you can't always capture that. I think listening to real life conversation is fine, but it doesn't necessarily lead to great dialogue writing. I think studying dialogue in text is far more valuable. I also think many writers who believe their characters all have a distinct voice only believe this because they wrote them and hear the voices internally. I would be interested to see if their readers felt the same way. You may know ten people who all say "good morning" differently, but you can't reflect them all on paper. You're not going to write "good mooorning," or "gawd mawning" or countless other examples because it's extremely annoying to read that. Pick up Huckleberry Finn and you know who is talking, but you also want to wash your eyes out after reading. And if you make a point of describing how the person talks (accent, drawl, emphasis on a certain vowel or letter, etc) you will interrupt the flow of the dialogue if done too much. I do believe you can play around a lot with dialogue and make it a large part of a character's identity, but to the point where it is unique to each character all or most of the time....I don't believe so.

And this ^^^

In writing dialogue, you really don't want to write exactly as someone would say it. Too many "uhs," "ums," "you knows," and general rambling. A lot of stories can get bogged down in tedious, redundant dialogue.

Characters will of course have plenty of reason to speak differently (eg one is a beggar and one is from the upper class), but if a story is set in an office and there are two dudes of the same age and same interests having a chat, then no, they probably wouldn't sound that different.

HOWEVER you should be able to distinguish their dialogue because one will be on one side of a conflict and the other will be on the other. One might be angry, one might be sad, or happy/annoyed, or bored/enthusiastic, whatever whatever whatever. I think that's far far far more important than ensuring different characters have minor differences in they way they talk.

jkosbart said:

I've read several interviews and such from agents recently discussing character voice and they have said that each character should have a distinctive voice in dialogue. One said she should be able to tell which character is speaking just by the way the dialogue is written.

So my question is, how do you vary the way your character speak or how you write your dialogue so that they are distinctive?

I've been having a hard time with this lately. In my head they all sound different but transferring that to the page is not as easy as it seems it should be!

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This is a sign of good character development, and IMO, is an important component to any good story. Apart from all the obvious factors, such as socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicity, and education, a character’s personality should be reflected in their dialogue. Is the character shy or outgoing; aggressive or passive; kind or cruel; brave or a coward? Who we are as individuals informs what we say and how we say it. The more you understand who your characters are, the better you’ll be at writing distinctive dialogue.

Above all else it should come naturally. Dont try too hard or your characters will sound affected. What you dont want is for your characters to talk like..well, characters in a story. Schtick is a poor substitute for personality.

Word choice, phrasing, use (or not) of contractions, accents, impediments, syntax etc.

The trick is not to make a character's speaking style seem gimmicky or obvious.

You can learn a lot about dialogue and voice by listening to real people. Eavesdrop when out in public and you'll pick up differences in the way people speak. Find ones that fit your character and apply them.

jkosbart said:

I've read several interviews and such from agents recently discussing character voice and they have said that each character should have a distinctive voice in dialogue. One said she should be able to tell which character is speaking just by the way the dialogue is written.

So my question is, how do you vary the way your character speak or how you write your dialogue so that they are distinctive?

I've been having a hard time with this lately. In my head they all sound different but transferring that to the page is not as easy as it seems it should be!

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When did you start having trouble with it? After you did all that reading of interviews?

I'm guessing that if they sound different in your head, they are going to sound different to readers. To answer your question about how I do it, the answer is that I do it like you are doing it. Because the characters are vivid in my mind their dialogue comes easy to me.

. . . except for one, but other than that . . .

NRoach said:

It's word choice, really.
There's a big difference between someone that would say "that exacerbates things", and someone that would say "well, FUCK".

As for it being clear who is speaking in every single line? I doubt that's possible short of diving into the realm of phonetic accents. In my opinion, it comes with a well developed character.

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Perfect answer!

Reziac said:

Judging by some of the more-recent stuff I've read (or given up on, as the case may be), I'm starting to wonder if this is becoming a lost art.

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Haha. Well, I've loved Joe Abercrombie since his first books, but I'm starting to think all his characters are the same person with different names and genders.

And this keeps replaying in my brain thanks to this thread, so I'll inflict it on y'all... the object is to make the same response in different voices. Anyone can play!

Mission: acknowledge an instruction from your commanding officer.

Yes, sir.
Yes sir.
Yessir.
On it.
I'll get to it, keep your shorts on.
Fuck you, sir.
Whaaa?

I tried figuring out a good way to explain how I do this and failed miserably, so I'll just use some examples of how I've distinguished my character voices:

Off the top of my head, my energetic main character speaks in lots of contractions and leaves out extraneous words because it saves time. My calmer, more deadpan main character still uses contractions, but he also takes the time to complete sentences because he's generally unhurried. He chooses his words carefully and he never uses exclamation points. The centuries-old semi-immortal has occasional trouble with sentence structure and contractions, and will randomly slip into different languages when stressed. The professor character talks very fast and very precisely and uses a lot of big, accurate words.

Another thing to think about with regards to character voice: how does this person feel about him or herself?

A person who's insecure about, or dislikes aspects of himself will have a very different way of putting things and looking at things than a person who is self confident and/or more or less happy with who he or she is. And a normally self confident person will say and think different things than a person who is arrogant.

Even if the person's attitude is something they try to hide, things will likely bleed though.

And remember character voice isn't just in the dialog. It's also going to be part of what he or she notices and reflects on, and if you're writing in a character-based pov, in the words and pattern of the narrative itself.

Something that's quite fun to do is to get your different characters to tell the same fairy story. They'll tell it in their own way, using their own words, and their own sentence structure. Some might use short words, sentences, and be brief. Others might ramble on and on, using loads of description and emotion, and get the story completely wrong. I found that one of my characters says, 'So' a lot. Which is weird, because none of the others do.

RSwordsman said:

That comes naturally from knowing your characters very completely.

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This, perfectly expressed. To which I'll second what JAR said.

One of the biggest problems with manuscripts I've critiqued is the absence of character depth. Too many of them seem interchangeable, mechanisms for plot movement, and little more. As such, they are no more interesting than an individual marble in a game of Chinese checkers.

If your characters are, to you, dear writer, breathing beings, their dialogue will have breath, too. There isn't a cookbook on how to achieve this. Your story has to matter enough to you for you to populate it with characters that matter, too.

caw