I think every writer goes through the experience of reading back the page they’ve just written and realizing that—though there might be quotation marks and dialogue tags—the characters aren’t talking. It’s the author who is talking. Every word sounds like it came from the author’s mouth, not someone else’s.
To some extent, this can’t be helped. An author’s voice will shine through no matter what, as it should. It’s your brand! It’s what readers who love your work will come back for!
Nevertheless, no one wants a book where the young and the old can talk to each other without any miscommunication whatsoever, or where the prince in disguise perfectly mimics the peasant girl from across the sea’s speech patterns. So how can you make sure your characters sound more like themselves?
Consider Their Upbringing and Hometown
How, where, and with whom we grow up deeply affects us real people, so why wouldn’t it also affect our characters?
A (non-exhaustive) list of circumstances outside of a character’s control (at least at the beginning stages of life, at least to some degree) that might affect how a character speaks—from accent to turns of phrase to word choice—would include:
- Parents and legal guardians (or lack thereof)
- The above person’s/people’s parenting styles and education
- Race and ethnicity
- Their age and/or the year they were born
- And, if you’re writing something that takes place in the real world, consider what would’ve been hip and happenin’ in popular culture while they were growing up
- Religion they grew up in
- Social class
- Region of their world they were raised in
- A dramatic move in any of the above three categories
- Their own education (and the quality of that education)
- What they did and consumed for entertainment
- Which aspects of their personality were celebrated and which were discouraged
Of course, if you try to take all of the possibilities into consideration at once, you might drive yourself crazy. I would recommend differentiating only enough to give your character a distinct voice—or choosing only those things that would be different from the characters they interact with.
If you’re struggling with how to write a character who grew up in situations vastly different from yours, I recommend finding local news interviews with people who are like your characters on YouTube. If you can, watch several of them with subtitles on. This will not only give you a sense of how people from the area form their sentences, but also give you a frame of reference for how they sound as well. Be sure to take notes! And if you’re really feeling dedicated, copy down verbatim what the interviewees say.
Consider Their Occupation and Hobbies
We spend a third of our lives working. It only makes sense that what characters do for a living colors how they speak and interpret the world.
Speaking of color, let’s use that as an example! A marine biologist, an artist, and a geologist walk into a bar. All of them want to order the bar’s famous blue drink, but none of them know the name of it.
The marine biologist, thinking of what we as a society call the Dory fish, says, “Bartender, can you make me one of them royal blue drinks?”
The artist says, “Excuse me, sir, could I have that ultramarine drink everyone’s been talking about?”
The geologist says, “Uh, I’ll have the lapis lazuli drink, please.”
This is sort of a ridiculous example, but I bet each of those three characters now feels more fleshed out now between the unique way they ordered the drink and the name of the color they used to describe it—colors which were pulled from their occupations. Now imagine how distinct each of them would feel if I added details about how quickly they sat down, where they sat, how long it took for them to decide on a beverage, how loud their voice is, whether they rapped their knuckles on the wood of the bar or raised their hand to get the bartender’s attention …
And much like their job, a character’s habits and hobbies can also affect how they view the world and how they express ideas. The easiest example to give is reading. Reading improves your brain, and it’s easy to imagine a character who spends their time with their nose stuck in a book will be more articulate, speak with proper grammar, and struggle less to find the word they’re looking for.
A Trick from Brandon Sanderson
Back in my theme park worker days, I was left with very little time to write between the long hours and the lengthy commute. My solution to this was listening to writing-related podcasts on the way to and from my job to keep my sanity skills sharp.
One of those podcasts was Writing Excuses, and in one episode, Kickstarter darling Brandon Sanderson shared a trick I still use today. If two characters would otherwise speak very similarly, give each of them distinct vocabulary choices.
Let’s use an example. Take Alex and Becca, who are best friends who grew up together and work at the same company doing similar things. Alex, being the more gregarious and animated of the two, has a tendency to speak hyperbolically. When he comes home from a long day of work, he says, “I’m exhausted! I must’ve written ten thousand lines of code!” But Becca, the reserved one? After she comes home, she says, “Wow, I’m tired. I worked straight through lunch.”
See the difference? On a normal day, you would never catch Alex saying “tired,” and you would never catch Becca saying “exhausted.” Becca says what really happened; Alex exaggerates. Their personalities affected the choices here, but you don’t even have to begin with personality. They might simply prefer using different synonyms of the same words. If you stay true to using those handful of differing synonyms all the way through your manuscript, you will end up with characters that feel like real people on the page.
(If you need another reason to listen Writing Excuses, the tagline is, “Fifteen minutes long, because you’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart.” How charming is that?)
