My Characters All Sound the Same

Problem: One of the main problems about my writing that's been appearing lately is that my characters all share vocabularies that are too similar, making them all sound bland and the same, and somewhat indistinguishable from each other.

I've been trying to think of ways to fix the problem, but have been coming up empty every time.

Does anyone have any tips on how to avoid this issue?

Verbal tics or terms that only they use are something I tend to use.

For example, Shadow King tends to talk in a fairly dramatic fashion, and also tends to call Katie and other younger girls "my dear". Why? Heck if I know, I doubt even he knows it's just how he talks.

My best advice is to listen to different people when they talk. To they get straight to the point or do they meander with weasel words? How often do they curse? How often do they use grammar awkwardly? Pay attention to the little quirks of how people talk and you'll have a better understand on making distinct voices for your characters.

Speech is a big indicator of character. I use dialogue a lot to describe my characters, with my goal being that I can reach a point where I theoretically just write dialogue, and the reader can quickly understand who's speaking.

One character is normal, though stutters when frightened and can be a bit sarcastic or meek. Another speaks with a very thick accent that's something of a mix between Irish, Scottish, and drunken rambling - tends to grunt a lot, speak with horrible grammar, etc. The female talks delicately, or over the top if talking about her crush. A boxer is terse, confident, and almost poetic. A flea speaks very mafia-like, very street wise, and easily angered. And the tactician is just very quirky in general, so the way he speaks varies on the subject and his current attitude.

So big things to use when trying to diversify dialogue are accents, vocal tics, word usage, and emotion. I strongly suggest "getting into character" when writing dialogue - act like them when you write, make faces, etc. If you know what they're personality/character is, their speech will roll right off your tongue.

Another fun exercise is to write a selection in the character's perspective. Get a hold of what they find important to talk about, how they describe it, and so on.

Well, there's two different things to consider concerning character dialogue:

• What A character says.
  • Words: Third-grade level? Sesquipedalian? Obscure turns of phrase?
  • Sentences: Short? Long? Unnecessary filler words?
• How a character says things.
  • Pick an applicable adjective, maybe 2 or three. Try to make that their "default" tone and pick words that carry that across.
  • (Thanks to ) Formality/Familiarity: Use different adjectives depending on who the character is with. He's relaxed and bawdy talking to his friends, but stiff and sensible talking with his principal. Or don't— It says a lot about a guy if he'll talk to, say, the president the same way he'd talk to his best friend, or vice-versa.

edited 14th Jun '12 4:54:13 PM by SalFishFin

• Level of formality/familiarity.

Also figure out whether the way a character speaks changes with their moods, and how much the situation affects their style.

I have one character who only practically has a single emotional tell, his speech. Normally, his style is a bit old-fashioned (he's speaking a second language; he also likes to keep distance to people so his formality level is almost always above the expected). If he's pissed off or stressed, his sentences grow even more convoluted, indirect, and sprinkled with formal flourishes. On the occasion he's relaxed, he starts to sound more like a normal person. And when he's in his happy place (which is very rare) he uses short, almost abrupt, and very straightforward sentences (according to the style of his native tongue). And when he's drunk... he tries to maintain his usual style but usually gets frustrated and is reduced to his native brevity.

edited 14th Jun '12 4:07:44 PM by peccantis

Do not go overboard with this, though. There's nothing so unconvincing as characters with overly stylized patterns of speech.

The story I'm working on doesn't try to sound convincing and laughs at the very idea of being remotely logical, so that won't be a problem.

Even if realism isn't a concern, it can grow annoying fast - look at that thread on Funetik Aksent a while back, which is sort of along similar lines.

Fair enough point. I can still get away with more exaggerated stuff than usual, though, as long as I keep it to minor characters.

I was writing dialogue in my writer's group, and I noticed that attitude is a good way to figure out a character's voice. He is cold (could be shorter, harsher sentences), meeker (longer, more formal sentences), immature (a little overboard), etc.

If they're all saying the same things in the same way, then not only should you take the above advice and adjust their individual mannerisms and speaking styles, but you should also firmly flesh out some of the details of the characters themselves;

What sort of things do they have in common? In which ways are they very different? Do they agree a lot because of familiarity, or do they have disagreements and discuss the things afterwards? Perhaps they disagree on lots of other things, but have other things in common?

My friends and I agree on a lot of things, but there's plenty of things we discuss and plenty of things we don't see eye to eye regardless of how many debates we have. If you ask these questions of your characters, but can't come up with answers, do what many other authors have done and base it on yourself, friends, and family

Also consider how much any given character says.

• Are they prone to rambling or digressing? Do they have a habit of cracking jokes or being clever at the cost of brevity?
• Are they hiding something? Do they get close-mouthed or drown the others in politics-style empty talk?
• Do they need the feel to be understood? How easily will they start to explain themselves?
• How curious are they? Will they satisfy their curiosity by asking questions or investigating themselves?
• How patient and knowledgeable are they? When someone asks them a question do they answer "Nunna ya bisn's" or "Well, the ancient Romans used to say that..."
• How sociable in general are they? Always up for a bit of chat? Or a "killjoy" who doesn't do smalltalk?

Also remember their company. Taciturn characters may be goaded for more words and talk fountains told to shut up for a while. Also, as mentioned earlier in this thread, company even without actively intervening does change the way you talk. Rare is the person who talks the same way whether they're in the presence of the Queen of England, their mother, or their best friend.

Thanks for all the tips, everyone.

If there aren't enough tips here already I was going to throw you some:

I typically have the same problem because I focus so much on plot and setting, to the neglect of my characters. But most people don't have vastly different vocabularies, because if say they all grow up in the same neighbourhood that makes no sense.

I tend to like to focus on a few things:

• What a person likes to talk about and their thought process. If a person finds certain topics boring or exciting they will say different things. If you have your characters as just mouthpieces for your plot/setting/theme, then that's why they sound bland.
• People interact with different people differently, but you want a general sense of what your character likes to do for dialogue. More open? More shy? Very curt? More verbose?
• Combine dialogue with actions and physical movement in your writing. If you just have only dialogue, it's more difficult to create a sense of what is happening (but this one is strictly situational)

I personally have a negative opinion of using accents/verbal tics/different vocabulary amongst characters who have known each other a long time to differentiate them. I can understand and don't mind say someone was supposed to be French and another was Spanish that they have different accents (but impossible to show in writing), but to have friends have different vocabularies and whatever just feels artificial to me. Friends tend to gravitate toward the same vocabulary, in-joke statements/sounds/tics and so on.

edited 17th Jun '12 1:54:43 AM by breadloaf

@breadloaf:

To some degree, but this varies. Some people are natural mimics and very quickly take on the verbal characteristics of their surroundings; others, once a particular style of speech is ingrained in them, don't change much. I think your experience of people is a little limited if you think this is a universal truth without qualification.

I'd also say that kids and teenagers are more likely to do this than adults, and the trait probably lessens with age.

I did say tend. Not that many people have a super cosmopolitan set of friends and I think it precarious for you to judge my actual personal experience based on that statement.

I'm trying to say that speech pattern differentiation is all about the situation. You want cosmopolitan friend ring, then by all means, have people from different geographic areas and thus have different accents. If you want them to have different verbal tics, it's also an indication of having different upbringing. If all your characters are from the same geographic area, then you'll have to focus on more subtle manners of speech differentiation.

Fair enough. My personal experience is altered by always having different speech patterns than my friends, because I moved a lot growing up and then moved from the UK to the US at 24 years old — and no matter how much my speech patterns have changed to be closer to Californians, they're never going to match.

Gender differences are also a big thing, I've found - I have difficulty writing female speech.

My female lead talked the male lead into asking her out to dinner. I was as surprised as he was.

THAT WASN’T THE NEXT BIT. I had to write a whole restaurant scene because she thought he was going a bit too fast.

Thanks dear. I sometimes wonder whose narrative it is!

The problem appeared to be the way I was writing her speech – it’s the classic joke about how a man can say three words on the phone, because he saw his mate last week, but a woman will speak for an hour because she isn’t seeing her friend until this evening. I felt she was speaking too much like a man.

Once I gave her a less clipped way of speaking; fuller sentences etc, what she said changed, and it became obvious the way she thought was different.

Speech is also a way that people's character surfaces - Lucy speaks differently to Jennifer: Jen has a hard edge to her, while Lucy uses words like 'Silly'. This then affects how people speak to them, or about them, Lucy is more 'girly', so they call her 'silly' when she is foolish. Gabe is harsher when speaking to estranged wife Jen than he is when speaking to Lucy, his one true love.

Gabe is a psychologist and psycho analyst, while his best mate Rich is an engineer, so this affects the way they speak: Gabe tends to hold himself aloft- 'I'm the psych, so I know best how to talk to someone'.

It is a problem - don't feel you are alone. One of the criticsms leveled at team written Sit-coms (especially true in US Sit-coms) is that many of the lines are interchangable, it doesn't really matter who says them, where as those written in close collaboration (Your typical UK one) of two people, character comes through.

edited 30th Jun '12 6:57:26 PM by LastHussar

OK, this was particularly helpful. When I tried actually asking a girl how she talks, she said the same way a guy would.

I don't know how true that really is, honestly.

I'm around enough girls at home to at least know the girl I ask wasn't being entirely truthful, but that's about it.

Writing girls' lines is extremely annoying for me and another issue I'd probably go as far as making another thread for. It's just about as glaring, since the few female characters I write sound... off.

edited 30th Jun '12 8:06:17 PM by burnpsy

Listen to people talk then. Take notes. Record them.

Another good piece of advice I've been given before is to speak the lines aloud once you've read them. If they sound right when spoken, things are working out. Hell, you could probably even try affecting different accents/speech patterns to match your dialogue.

I find the main thing that helps me with this problem is developing my characters. If I only have a vague conception of the character, then their speech is usually bland or confused. If however I have a dynamic and highly-developed image of them in my head, that image practically comes to life and makes suggestions, and it really shows in the dialogue. It's building a character wholly unlike myself to that level of depth that's the challenge.

Also I suppose what I said does presuppose a bank of existing associations in my mind between character traits and speech expression, otherwise even if I knew the character well I wouldn't be able to express it. I think subconsciously though most of us have absorbed quite an array of relevant data, it's just a matter of making use of it.

edited 1st Jul '12 12:59:13 PM by Kesteven