To preface this, I'll say that I am by no means an expert on the subject. I'm not a professional writer (at least at the time of writing this, maybe if you're reading from the future I got lucky and someone picked up my books). I'm just a hobbyist, like many of you. These are just some of the things I think about when trying to create unique voices for characters.
What is character voice?
To keep it very simple, character voice is just the way that a character speaks or thinks. It includes their word choices, pacing, inflections, and many more things which makes them unique. Everyone has a unique voice. You have a unique voice. Everything about your personality, your upbringing, your surroundings, etc... will affect how you speak. You just probably don't notice it unless you look for it.
One piece of advice I've heard said many times on the subject, is that you want your characters to be memorable in their voice, so that if you read just the dialogue without any tags, you would know who was speaking. It's a nice thought, but I disagree with that to some degree. The main problem with that is that no-one is really that unique that everything they say is totally "them", and by telling aspiring writers that, they can end up getting lost in a rabbit hole of trying to make every word, every sentence, unique, and that's just not realistic. If someone recorded everything you said all day long and transcribed it, do you really think you'd be able to tell every single sentence was you? The vast majority of what most people say is pretty generic.
So, rather than go into it thinking everything your character says needs to be unique and oh so totally them, let's focus on some key areas.
Tips and tricks
Slang/Swearing
The swear words and slang a person uses is a quick and easy way to start to separate them from others.
This can be pretty generic, for example "John" might always say "Goddamn it!" when something goes wrong, whereas "Rob" might say "Bloody hell!". Pretty easy, huh? And already the characters have 1 defined unique trait in their voices.
You can obviously go more in-depth than that. As an example from my own series "The Torn World Trilogy", there are multiple gods in their pantheon. Some characters will curse by just referencing them all, e.g. "Gods! What were you thinking?", others might say "For the Gods' sake! What were you thinking?", whereas others will reference a god by name, e.g. "Sewyns's arse! What were you thinking?"
That's a fairly easy way to do it, just religion for curse words. If you want to take it to the next level, you can use the character's background as well.
For example, let's take three characters and a scenario (someone just punched them in the face):
- Aaron is a pretty generic character, no real defined background. He might say something like "What the hell?! What are you doing?"
- Bob is a grizzled old sailor who has spent most of his life at sea. He might say something like: "Argh. To the deep with you boy! Try that again and you'll be tasting salt!"
- Chris is a gravedigger who spends his days and nights surrounded by bodies and death. "By the dead, that hurt."
Really simple examples, obviously spend a little more time and care on them than I've done here, but you get the idea.
And it doesn't stop at their speech. Character voice also encompasses how they act.
- Aaron: "stumbled back and wiped the blood from his face".
- Bob: "shook the cobwebs from his head, grinning a yellow, gap-toothed grin and cracking his neck"
- Chris: "carefully dabbed at the blood with a pristine handkerchief"
Again, really simple, but it gives you a picture of a different character each time.
Accent/Pronunciation
A really simple way to make a character's voice stand out, is to give them different ways of pronouncing words.
This could be things like actual pronunciations, for example:
"Yes, this is the best. So easy to do" -> "Ya, zis is zee best. Zo easy to do."
Or it could be abbreviations, for example:
"No, I wouldn't go that way if I were you. There's another storm brewing." -> "Nah, wouldn't go that way I were yous. 'nother storm brewin'."
These are simple things you can change, but use these ones sparingly. Like, only if your character is actually from a different place to the majority of the cast, because otherwise it can get annoying.
Structure of speech
Another simple one, but does your character:
- Speak in long sentences?
- Speak in short sentences?
- Speak quickly, trying to get loads of words out.
- Speak slowly, being careful about their word choice.
- Speak "properly" with no contractions.
- Speak with lots of contractions.
All of these will make your characters stand apart.
A kind of beginner way to do this, which I'm guilty of myself, is making smart characters speak "properly" in full sentences. It works, but try to broaden your characters a bit more than just that, because it's not that realistic.
Repeated phrases
Everyone has certain words or phrases they repeat, pretty much daily. You definitely do, whether you've noticed them or not. I noticed a while ago that I start so many sentences with "I mean..." and now I can't not notice it every single time it happens.
Your characters should be the same. They should have phrases they favour, whether consciously, or subconsciously and they don't even notice they are doing it.
As a "fun" exercise, really listen to everything yourself or the people around you say for a day and see what you notice people repeating. But be aware, you'll probably never be able to not notice it again.
Personality
Personality plays a huge part in character voice. If you give 10 people the same paragraph to read, you'll get 10 slightly different versions, because everyone has their own personality which will affect how they speak.
A few simple examples:
- Is your character loud? Will they speak a lot more than others? Will they speak at inappropriate times, because they can't stop themselves?
- Is your character quiet? Will they speak more softly? Will they use fewer words?
- Is your character sarcastic? Will they frequently use sarcasm to respond to people and situations?
- Is your character optimistic? Will they see the best in things and respond in an upbeat way, with positive words?
- Is your character pessimistic? Will they assume the worst of the world? Will they react negatively and use negative words?
Extend this to whatever personality traits your character has and you can start to really tailor their speech.
Background
We touched on this briefly in Slang/Swearing, but a character's background can play a huge part in their voice, from simple word choices, to metaphors, to the ways they construct sentences.
There are so many ways this can be applied, so I'll just give another couple of simple examples, but remember you can extend this to your own characters and their backgrounds.
Situation - Insulting someone who has just said something rude to our character.
- (Generic) - "Screw you! Who do you think you are?
- (Grizzled old sailor) - "Oh, aye? Big talk for someone who couldn't tell a rudder from his arse. I've scraped seagull shit off my hull tougher than you."
- (Weary retired assassin) - "At a... rough estimate, I'd say there are about fifteen different ways I could kill you right now, son. Pick a number. Or keep walking."
I'm not saying these are good examples, but you get the idea.
In the examples I've given throughout so far, I've just used profession as the "background", but obviously this can be far more complex. People are not just their professions. They are an amalgamation of all their experiences - the people they've met, the places they've been, their hobbies, jobs, things they've read, things they've seen... everything. In a real character you're going to have a good mix of these things.
Narration
Wrapping it all up is a key area which is sometimes neglected, and that's the character's voice in the narration. Unless you are writing with a separate narrator who has their own voice, the prose/description/etc... is going to be flowered with your character's voice as well, when you are seeing from their point of view.
Take a simple example of your character walking into a busy club.
- If your character is shy and reserved, they might describe the club as crowded and noisy. They might notice the throngs of bodies squashed together. They might describe the sickly smell and the heat of the room.
- If your character is outgoing and loud, they might describe the club as rocking. They might notice the bass beat of the music vibrating through their chest. They might describe the smell of alcohol and sweat which reminds them of the time they went clubbing with their best friend.
- If your character is a professional hitman, they might describe the sea of faces blending together. They might notice the cameras above the bar. They might describe in detail the different routes out of the building they can see.
None of that is speech. But it's the character's voice in the narration of the story.
And of course, similar to speech, any time the character's thoughts are put on the page, you should make sure they are in the same voice as their speaking voice, unless their internal monologue has a different voice.
Pitfalls
The main pitfall you'll find yourself stumbling into, is trying to do too much. Although everyone is unique, not everything everyone says is unique. Dip your toes in first with a few bits here and there. A repeated phrase. A pronunciation. A metaphor. Don't try to do everything all at once.
And don't think that every single character needs to be unique, either. That random character who only has a few lines? They don't have to have their own unique voice. Read through some published works and skip the dialogue tags. Sure sometimes you can tell who is speaking, but a lot of the time you still can't. So, don't sweat it.
Summary
Those are some key areas you can look at to introduce more unique character voices, but of course, you can go deeper or shallower into any of them you wish. Remember that people are a swirling mess of experiences, upbringing, education, emotions, and a million other things which make them unique.
