On a first draft, I often feel
that all of my characters are speaking like I do. Even though they do things I
wouldn’t do, they still explain things like I would, complain like I would, or
argue like I would.
Characters who all sound
exactly alike it's one of the biggest problems plaguing fiction — and it seems
to hit genre fiction especially hard sometimes. How do you keep your characters
from all having the same voice?
Let me start by saying I’m
no expert—this is something I’m still learning and improving myself. But
getting your characters to speak to you, to your readers, in their own unique
voices is essential.
This is something I've struggled
with in my own fiction, and it's a much messier problem than you would think. I
can feel my wise Wicca healer and my
smart, brave detective are incredibly well drawn and full of character and
neuroses, and nobody would ever imagine they were the same person. And then I
look over my novel for the tenth time, and realize that they're all sounding
absolutely identical. Hasn’t it happened to you, too?
How do we solve this issue?
We need to know details
about our character first. Their fears, opinions, how they were raised,
education, age—all of those little tidbits play a part in voice.
One of the best ways to
discover the quirks and eccentricities in our character’s voice is by comparing
them to another character. What makes their voices different? How are they
similar? What can we do to make them more unique?
The best way to differentiate them - try giving
each character a few unique verbal tics, or habitual words, a few habits of speech.
Another trick - vary your
sentence lengths, and play with punctuation. In real life, some people tend to speak in
longer sentences, others in shorter ones. Also, you can try giving one
character lots of emdashes or colons in his/her speech — but do this sparingly,
and only for one character.
What do you think? What
other ways, methods do you use to make your
characters speak on different voices?