Patrick recently solicited advice from the rest of the AAAWG members on giving characters a unique voice in dialogue. He received much excellent advice that I will attempt to summarize here.

(Wiki version can be found here.)

Patrick’s question

Can any of you provide me with tips and-or sources/books/articles where I can study and learn how I might give my “similar” characters unique voices that the reader can distinguish without making these characters seem odd or strange?
– Patrick

Summary of Responses

Questions (about the question)

1. Do the characters in question appear for a short time, or will they reoccur? — Skipper

Advice

Moving from the general to the specific:

1. Listen to real people talk and emulate them. — Stephanie F.
2. Pick someone you know as a model for a character. This could be a real person, an actor, or a character from TV or movies. — Adrianna B., Bethany N.
3. Think about how what you know about the character informs the characters dialogue. Create a character sketch to support this analysis. — Stephanie F., Syd B.
4. Use (or assign) attitudes / personality to the characters (i.e. The Paranoid, The Grump, etc.). — Skipper, Stephanie F., Syd B., Philine T.
5. Use (or assign) an interest to the characters. Characters will respond to topics related to this interest more forcefully. They will steer the conversation in the direction of topics of interest. They will (try to) map events around them to topics of interest. Aversions to topics will have the opposite affect. — Stephanie F., Fritz
6. Define word choice rules for a character (i.e. one character always uses short words, or a character has a large vocabulary and likes to show it off, a character uses a lot of slang). — Fritz, Syd B.
7. Define grammatical variations / errors to a character (i.e. character never uses contractions, misuses who/whom, drops “the”, etc.) — Syd B.
8. Give a character a “verbal tick” (i.e. the character occasionally adds “don’t you know” to a statement of fact, a character uses Malapropisms, Spoonerisms, or is dyslexic). — Fritz
9. Give a character a “physical tick” (i.e. the character fiddles with their pocket knife). — Fritz, Jose M.
10. Give the character a set of favorite words and use them more frequently in that character’s dialogue. — Fritz
11. Give each character 10 words that only they can use. — Jane R.

Potential issues and dangers

1. Overuse or exaggeration of these techniques can lead to stock character syndrome and other forms of character stereotyping. — Fritz
2. Irritating the reader. — Fritz
3. Accents and dialects are playing with fire. — Jose M.
4. Character and viewpoint SF critiques for more issues and dangers, some pertinent, others not, to the question at hand. — Fritz

Recommended reading

• Voice & Style (Elements of Fiction series) by Johnny Payne — Fritz
• Characters and Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction series) by Orson Scott Card — Jose M.
• The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great by Donald Maass — Jose M.

Search links

• http://www.google.com/search?q=writing+dialogue+voice+advice
• http://www.google.com/search?q=writing+dialogue+voice+books+recommendation

Resource links

• http://delicious.com/fritz/writing+dialogue
• http://delicious.com/fritz/writing+voice
• Writing better dialogue at Ask MetaFilter

Related posts:

1. AAAWG notes
2. AAAWG notes
3. On showing not telling and a look at character based teasers
4. Critiquing SF – Character and Viewpoint
5. Penny drops in — or how I discovered a character

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 3:12 pm and is filed under AAAWG, Advice, Character, Characterization, Question and Answer, Voice, Wiki Article, Writers' Group, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.