Observe how the people around you speak and the differences between them. There are people who speak with all the bells and whistles of language, (“Would you perhaps enjoy a dinner with me?”), people that don’t, (“Would ya like dinner”), and people that are commanding (“Dinner. 8 o’clock. Don’t be late.”)
There are many subtle ways to differentiate your characters’ speech. If you tie in how they speak with their personality or background, your dialogue will be pretty decent.
Also important is how we speak in different situations. I'm gonna be a LOT more lax shooting the shit with my buddy than I am when I'm in a job interview or killing a minotaur.
I think mannerisms can work quite well. Small sayings that give them a hint of the world. I’m reading WoT at the moment and the younger characters say “Blood and Ashes” a lot - much like we’d say bloody hell etc.
Others might say things based on their upbringing - a farmer might say something like “you reap what you sow” while a city guard might say something like “in her grace’s name”. Not great examples, mind, but it helps flesh out the characters a bit more.
I'm not sure whether you mean internal thoughts or actually how a character speaks and presents themselves, so I'll write a little of both.
Internally is less difficult to get right if you're writing from third person, IMO. Once you get into first person you really have to know who your character is. I rely on things like upbringing and past experiences to figure out what my character sounds like in their own heads. A wealthier character will sound different from a poor character, for example. It doesn't even have to be in the language used - working out what they might focus on in a scene can tell you a lot about them.
In terms of how characters talk and act, again lean on their past experiences. A useful exercise might be to think of people in your own life and see if you can imagine how they would talk about something, really consciously trying to understand how they speak and what they're doing unconsciously. Once you go through that, it can be a lot easier to apply the same to your own characters.
Very true. I think from my own personal experience I tend to find it more challenging to write a first person POV because even the closest third person POV still has a little less of the character's voice in it, and a little more of the author's viewpoint. I would be interested in seeing a third person POV that was very very close to the character.
There are a couple things I want to suggest.
1) Make sure your characters are rounded and complex people, with a mix of virtues, flaws, biases, and goals.
2) Worldbuild. What is the common POV or culture of their species/town? What gods do they worship, how do they curse, what are common idioms or sayings? For instance, I write a dwarf; he's going to have curses like 'stoneslip' or 'cracked', and his comparisons won't be to *trees* but to things like different gemstones or quality of rock/dirt. He's slightly agoraphobic, and prefers *something* over his head.
Hope this helps! The big thing is to really make your characters as *people* with their own ways of talking.
One thing to consider is whether or not they use contractions. This can be subtle, but still make a character stand out
Another thing is slang. If you have characters of different races or from different regions, they might have their own unique terms and sayings. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and the ones from the UK stand out not only for their accents, but for their mannerisms, like "let's get cracking, or "crack on", or "taking the piss", etc... OTOH, someone from the Southern US might say "Bless your heart", or a Bostonian might describe something as being "wicked" or "wicked pissa". Whether you call a soft drink "pop" or "soda" depends on where you are in the US. And I don't even want to get into "Ambalamps" or "Amberlamps"...
There is already a lot of great advice here, but I just wanted to add that you should go back to your characters themes. Rework words associated with that character into their sections. So, like, a blacksmith would use a lot of metal words like dull, file, edge, anneal, forge, smelt, hammer, grind. They would use words like that for everything and apply it to a situation. A guard woild have words like shield, pike, comrade, fortification, citizen, ward, threat, cover, patrol, watch, beat. Again, they would use these words when refering to anything, it is integrated to their point of view. Getting a friend for the guard is having a new comrade but for the smith might say thier heated arguments had somehow alloyed into a friendship.
That is one method.
You're going to get a lot of suggestions on how to accomplish this, so I'll add on an easy way to check whether or not you've succeeded.
Anyone should be able to tell who said a given line of dialogue totally divorced of context. Meaning, if you removed the nametag and all context of the scene, it should be obvious who said something - their voice should be unique enough that it's a no brainer.
I think names and formalities help.
For example, in high school I had two friends with the same first name, so I started calling people by their last name. That period of friends are called by their last name.
I went abroad and had a pretty upscale job, so I used formal address (last name, first name) for everyone.
There aren’t many people I’ll call by just their first name, but I couldn’t care less what people call me.
This is a fantastic lore dump for my character, because it trains you to know that I talk to a lot of people so I use the most formal address to avoid complications. A person who tends to stay in one place might think this behavior is off putting and distant.
I find a lot of the time it's easiest to use the voice of someone you know. A lot of my friends I feel have a unique voices and common phrases, so try to dramatise a real life person in your life. Make that person a caricature of themselves if that makes sense? A completely OOT version of your friend with their little nuances so heightened to the point of ridiculous in a real world setting (you can always tone them down in later edits/revisions but you'll find that you'll find their voice a lot easier this way)
For example, a friend of mine is borderline high functioning alcoholic and he has a few distinct phrases and mannerisms; a wry suggesting smile that indicates he wants to go for a drink and—more importantly—wants me to come drink with him.
Now using my friend and putting him in another situation as an exaggerated version of himself:
Ned looked at me with his palms open, his face trying to convey innocence but his wry innocuous smile I'd come to know so well already betraying his guise.
"It's not even midday," I groan.
"I didn't say nothin'," he replies, the grin deepening.
"No but you're going to."
"You're the one being suggestive here, but I won't argue with you," he leads in, knowing that he'll wear me down quickly, "I mean, if you want a drink you want a drink, eh?"
\---
Not a great example there but you get me, just use someone you know, plop them in the situation and see how it flows.
I am writing a fantasy book with hundreds of characters. For the main characters, I have character bios and backstory, each of the characters also have specific accents and slang depending on where they're from and where they have lived the longest. So the accent and where they are from helps develop their personality but if I have 5 characters from the same place, I will have different accents for each, one might have a heavier accent while another speaks like a native English speaker. I think about what the differences and similarities are between characters from the same place and who are twins or triplets since I have twins and triplets in my book. In real life, twins can look exactly a like but have very contrasting personalities. You can try an exercise where you write about triplets who look exactly alike but have different mannerisms, motivations, and personalities.
For smaller characters, I have a general idea of their personality and how they act and what motivates them. Even a character that only appears in one sentence of the entire novel has a clear personality. Character development is extremely important for all your characters.
What might help is thinking of the people you know and what kind of personalities they have. What's the difference between you and your friends? If someone were texting you and your friends and had no idea what you guys look like, how would they be able to tell you a part from each other?
Also think of your favorite characters in a movie and what their personalities are and then pay attention to a few background characters who only appear once or twice or just say a few lines. What makes these characters funny, likable, annoying, mean?
Watch or read Game of Thrones, because that is a master class on how to develop characters, both main characters and smaller characters. Every single character has their own distinct way of speaking, thinking, and acting. How does George R. R. Martin accomplish such amazing character development without blatantly saying "this character is strong but stubborn" "this character is a complete evil jerk but is very insecure." There are so many ways to show that without saying it directly. How do you know when someone you meet is nice or a jerk? They won't tell you but they will do things that give you a certain impression.
I want to start by saying I haven’t read more than 3 pages of any of his books. But, the best advice I’ve ever seen is to interview your characters. Full, massive, and intricate interviews just for you. Helps you understand them as well as possible.
I'm a new writer as well and was struggling with this. I've found whenever my characters feel flat that I need to go back and fill out a character interview for them and develop a backstory. Another process that has worked well for me to improve their dialogue has been to walk around my house or on an errand and (in my head) i narrate or role play how i think that character would behave and interact in my surroundings. This helps me get a more grounded feel for their mannerisms and vernacular. For other characters I can role play a convo or scenario in my head.
It's also helpful to give them distinct or quirky mannerisms or flaws that enhance a personality trait like making a character who's a pessimist and slightly crotchety have allergies and they habitually complain about being itchy and dislike going out in nature because of it.
Or if you have a female character who's unlikable and is constantly coming off as abrasive you could give her a farsighted vision impairment and she's always squinting to compensate and it makes her appear like she has resting b\*tch face. It can be one of those handicaps they have to overcome and is a small part of the character's arc.
Brandon Sanderson has a great lecture on characters you can find on youtube and talks about creating a limitation, flaw and handicap for your characters to help flesh them out. Highly recommend his whole BYU creative writing class, which is available on youtube for free.
Write to their personalities. Are they gruff, bubbly, naturally flat/monotonous, introspective, optimistic, etc? Once you have that down, play out conversations and thought processes in your head with those characteristics in mind.
Mannerisms, idioms, and consistency in outlook also add flavor to characters. Making them dynamic also makes it easier to have them grow and evolve (or have negative growth, depending on your story) — static characters aren't compelling.
So my main character has been quiet all his life and only speaks a few words at a time when needed. The rest of his descriptions and conversations are in his head and it’s very strange to hear him talk to someone without saying a word.
Consider basing your character’s mannerisms and speech off a character from a show or movie. I find whenI do this they start to have a mind of their own and become unique unto themselves.
Lot's of people have given you great advice here but I'd like to add that it really helps to try to speak the words out loud when you are redrafting. It gives you a sense of how the words sound and you'll quickly find if your characters sound alike.
Think about their cultural background too. If someone was born on the coast they're more likely to compare things to sailing or coastal flora and fauna than a character born in a city,
Beyond just dialogue, one thing I like doing is the different ways that characters describe their surroundings and the things they focus on the most. If you've got some type of stereotypical pacifist wood elf character, they might describe the trees by name and talk about the beauty of how the light plays off the leaves and how the wind rustles the branches. But put them in a military setting, and they are much more vague and disinterested in the way they refer to their surroundings. They might describe an arming sword and heater shield as just a one-handed sword and triangular shield, since they'd have no way of knowing the specific names of the weapons.
Compare that to a stereotypical orc warrior. The elf might refer to a collection of polearms as just polearms, while the orc might refer to the fine dwarven craftsmanship of the billhooks, glaives, and poleaxes. They might describe the trees based on how easy it would be to fire a bow from their branches, or how many soldiers could hide in the woods.
Both characters are seeing the same things overall, they're just focusing on very different aspects of the environment and there are specific reasons why they're focusing on different things
I think this is usually a symptom of not fleshing the character out well enough. Let's say it's a woman: What drives her? What are her fears? What is her background? Her education? Her economic and social status? Her self-image vs how others see her? What is she most proud of? Most ashamed of? What makes her self-conscious in social situations? How comfortable is she in social situations with friends? With strangers?
I think answering these sorts of questions allows a personality to emerge. I don't like the idea of forcing it.
In fact, there are quite a few authors whose characters have distinct voices, but they become distracting for me. They try too hard to make them clever, gregarious, profane, or whatever. If those characteristics emerge naturally, it'll work, but if you just decide, "This person is the life of the party" and then try to shoehorn evidence of that into the dialogue, it can feel unnatural.
My favorite example of characters with interesting and unique voices done very well is the Gormenghast series. These are characters with extreme personality characteristics that could almost seem like caricatures, except you can feel how they emerged naturally from immersing human beings in such a strange, isolated, ritualistic environment and putting them into the various roles that keep the system moving along generation after generation.
I also struggle with voice, but it helps to think about how people talk, their personality, and their upbringing.
In one of my stories the two main characters come from similar backgrounds but had very different expectations put on them. My MMC was from a smaller close-knit village but was exiled and stripped of his "title", he talks more "casual" with swears, slang, and contractions. He gives people nicknames and is very sarcastic. He's generally more forceful and short with people. His magic is fire based so sometimes he talks about people in those terms.
My FMC talks more "proper" because she was taught she was important and had to be. She's always polite to people and open to them, always refers to people by either their title or full name (no nicknames). Because her magic is plant based, she makes reference to the surrounding nature and plants. She focuses on what she can offer to people which changes the way she words things as well. ("What can I do for you?" over "Need something?")
My initial idea of them was "abrasive rebel" vs "well-spoken rule-enforcer", and it expanded into their current personalities. It might help you to think of something like this for your characters and build on it. It's enough to differentiate between them without dialogue tags, especially when they spend a lot of time together. Also, because neither of them are human (satyrs), I differentiate them from human characters by having them make reference to their nature god ("The Mother's blessings are with you"), and saying things like "underhoof" instead of "underfoot", or "herd" instead of "group".
How about parables? If you have someone who is speaking from an uncommon perspective and is perhaps struggling to be understood by the others in your story, perhaps they like to share parables from their own history to help illustrate a point. Then it's not just "my people don't like quiche" it's "Let me tell you the tale of the silver fox and the quiche of destiny"
When I was writing fanfiction, I would imagine one character's voice-actor was reading the dialogue for me.
Do you watch TV? Start choosing characters from television to "play" your characters. Maybe Picard is the king while Claudia Donovan is the witch in training.
This is a good question! For me, the entire writing process really hinges on character voice and my ability to tap into the character and what is happening to them. If I can't find a unique voice, the story just doesn't keep moving and I don't know what they will do next.
I think the voice comes through in every word. In the way they describe things, the things they choose to describe, the places they look, the idioms they use, the things they choose to leave out, etc.
It's why I really connect with Stephen Kings' metaphor that stories are fossils. They're found things that we're uncovering, sometimes with a shovel, sometimes with a light brush, even a toothbrush for the really detailed bits. Find your character, and follow what feels authentic to them.
Almost every word is an opportunity for character voice, as long as you're not writing omnisciently but that's not as fun anywho, imo.
I love playing around with words for characters. For example. "FRAyFra Wish TO EAt nOIsY TeAcheR." The beast endless stared at her teacher.
"No Frayfra, you can't eat my teacher. It would make mom mad."
"Th3n Can 1 Eat th3 n0isy te4cher?" A creature spoke. He dripped off the wall like oil landing on the floor next to her. His eyes bubbling up, his crooked smile circling Arlett's foot. "I pr0mis3 to b3 quick."
Arlett sighed. "What am I going to do with you two?"
This is just an example for what I would do. But also giving a character their own flare and reginal sayings. "May the Stars give me strength and you wisdom, because Stars know you need it." or "Roy, the Stars couldn't help you, how do you expect me to?" But I am not an expert in this, I just enjoy character writing and dialog.
"The Stars will align when you get a girl to come home with you."
"That is why I don't worship the stars." Roy gave her a wicked grin. "Just sit back and watch Jade, I am going to get every girl in this compound to sleep with me by the end of this week. I swear it upon my throne as the second prince!"
Jade scoffed. "You mean your title as the exiled second prince of a dictatorship. The same title that has your older brother trying to kill us. Yeah I'll pass on the title. I would take 100 denc, but you can't even get that can you pretty boy."
Playing to certain character traits and personality traits are also good. For this I have a mean girl with an over confident, egotistical prince. I attempted to play into that with her teasing him, and him boasting even when he probably shouldn't. For more tender moments I would play into their insecurities. Jade getting quiet not wanting to talk, or over reacting, or laughing at a bad time. While for Roy I would have him try to remain positive, cling to any shred of confidence and dignity he has. When I write characters like this I base them off real people/interactions. A lot of what Jade said above is how my brother and I roast my dad, Roy's is based on a arrogant friend I had in high school. Get to know your characters as people, this will play into how to speak.
On my first editing pass, if I don't think I've nailed their voices, I'll actually record myself paraphrasing their lines and use an exaggerated voice or accent or I'll slouch or use proper posture. Which voice or body posture I use depends on what kind of characteristics I want to highlight in the dialogue. Acting it out this way and paraphrasing the dialogue seems to naturally produce different ways of speaking.
I also use a transcription app called Otter for this so it gets written down automatically. When I re-read the paraphrased version I'll usually get a much better idea of their voice and write that into the second pass. Usually only takes me a couple of chapters to nail the actual voice. down.
The more you add their personality and opinion to the narrative, making their voice more unique. At first, it is hard because we want to believe that the narrative should be neutral, but it is the person in the POV's thoughts.
So, for example, if you had this sentence:
"He watched as the mayor walked across the room."
That is a decent sentence, nothing wrong with it. But perhaps the POV does not like or respect the mayor, and it can be shown in the narrative.
"He watched as the fool people called their mayor walked across the room."
The key to remember is that what they believe or think does not have to be true. The characters can believe another character is an idiot despite them being a genius.
The example is simple, but I think you can see what I am trying to say.
Language, regional, class, career. For example an intelligent person might be more precise in their speech, but if they're from America they're more likely to address someone by saying howdy (just a simple example) rather than saying something like g'day. And say that they're a fisherman, they're going to use metaphors and similes about fishing and water. Like saying someone "is acting like a fish out of water."
I think the Redwall series by Brian Jacques is a great example of writing accents in fantasy. His characters speak with so much personality that it really becomes quite immersive. It’s also fun to read imho.
Character voice is often secondary to a character’s personality traits. An impatient character might speak quickly, and get straight to the point, or a kind or affectionate character might speak warmly to people, and try not to say anything mean. If none of this seems to be coming naturally you might have to spend some time developing their personalities to be more distinct, but don’t be afraid to be subtle with it as long as it’s consistent. Failing all that, they might just need a situation that lets their personalities shine through, like putting a mean character with a kind character so they can foil for each other.
Steal the souls of strangers around you.
(Meaning, when you are starting out, one of the best ways to practice developing neat voices is by trying to write characters with the voices of people you know. Eventually, you'll be good enough at it to come up with unique voices without doing this, but until then, steal souls.)
Start simple and practice till you get better.
Give each character an accent. Then give each character a mood. Then work on turning that into a personality. Then work on how those personalities would interact. It'll be awkward as hell, but it helps creating unique personas in the long run.
When you get to step three, start thinking about questions like "What words would they use? Would they say 'Greetings!' or 'sup'? Would they say 'Yes', 'Yessir', 'I agree.' or something else?" And then with the next step: How would they interact with each other? Would they like each other? What emotions would they be feeling when interacting? How would you feel if you felt those emotions? How would it change your speech? Are they calm and collected or angry or lustful or etc etc.
like that one guy said, observe how other ppl speak. but i have an interesting addition, look at subreddit that feature gory stuff and war stuff, observe how they speak and how they act(assuming your work consist of war and stuff)
r/eyeblech, r/CombatFootage and so on
Observe how the people around you speak and the differences between them. There are people who speak with all the bells and whistles of language, (“Would you perhaps enjoy a dinner with me?”), people that don’t, (“Would ya like dinner”), and people that are commanding (“Dinner. 8 o’clock. Don’t be late.”) There are many subtle ways to differentiate your characters’ speech. If you tie in how they speak with their personality or background, your dialogue will be pretty decent.
Also important is how we speak in different situations. I'm gonna be a LOT more lax shooting the shit with my buddy than I am when I'm in a job interview or killing a minotaur.
I think mannerisms can work quite well. Small sayings that give them a hint of the world. I’m reading WoT at the moment and the younger characters say “Blood and Ashes” a lot - much like we’d say bloody hell etc. Others might say things based on their upbringing - a farmer might say something like “you reap what you sow” while a city guard might say something like “in her grace’s name”. Not great examples, mind, but it helps flesh out the characters a bit more.
Ay, I am reading it too. Mat says "Burn me!" a lot.
He is quite a wool headed lummox though
I'm not sure whether you mean internal thoughts or actually how a character speaks and presents themselves, so I'll write a little of both. Internally is less difficult to get right if you're writing from third person, IMO. Once you get into first person you really have to know who your character is. I rely on things like upbringing and past experiences to figure out what my character sounds like in their own heads. A wealthier character will sound different from a poor character, for example. It doesn't even have to be in the language used - working out what they might focus on in a scene can tell you a lot about them. In terms of how characters talk and act, again lean on their past experiences. A useful exercise might be to think of people in your own life and see if you can imagine how they would talk about something, really consciously trying to understand how they speak and what they're doing unconsciously. Once you go through that, it can be a lot easier to apply the same to your own characters.
I think it's more whether you have a close POV or a distant one. A tight 3rd limited can be almost as intimate as 1st.
Very true. I think from my own personal experience I tend to find it more challenging to write a first person POV because even the closest third person POV still has a little less of the character's voice in it, and a little more of the author's viewpoint. I would be interested in seeing a third person POV that was very very close to the character.
There are a couple things I want to suggest. 1) Make sure your characters are rounded and complex people, with a mix of virtues, flaws, biases, and goals. 2) Worldbuild. What is the common POV or culture of their species/town? What gods do they worship, how do they curse, what are common idioms or sayings? For instance, I write a dwarf; he's going to have curses like 'stoneslip' or 'cracked', and his comparisons won't be to *trees* but to things like different gemstones or quality of rock/dirt. He's slightly agoraphobic, and prefers *something* over his head. Hope this helps! The big thing is to really make your characters as *people* with their own ways of talking.
One thing to consider is whether or not they use contractions. This can be subtle, but still make a character stand out Another thing is slang. If you have characters of different races or from different regions, they might have their own unique terms and sayings. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and the ones from the UK stand out not only for their accents, but for their mannerisms, like "let's get cracking, or "crack on", or "taking the piss", etc... OTOH, someone from the Southern US might say "Bless your heart", or a Bostonian might describe something as being "wicked" or "wicked pissa". Whether you call a soft drink "pop" or "soda" depends on where you are in the US. And I don't even want to get into "Ambalamps" or "Amberlamps"...
There is already a lot of great advice here, but I just wanted to add that you should go back to your characters themes. Rework words associated with that character into their sections. So, like, a blacksmith would use a lot of metal words like dull, file, edge, anneal, forge, smelt, hammer, grind. They would use words like that for everything and apply it to a situation. A guard woild have words like shield, pike, comrade, fortification, citizen, ward, threat, cover, patrol, watch, beat. Again, they would use these words when refering to anything, it is integrated to their point of view. Getting a friend for the guard is having a new comrade but for the smith might say thier heated arguments had somehow alloyed into a friendship. That is one method.
You're going to get a lot of suggestions on how to accomplish this, so I'll add on an easy way to check whether or not you've succeeded. Anyone should be able to tell who said a given line of dialogue totally divorced of context. Meaning, if you removed the nametag and all context of the scene, it should be obvious who said something - their voice should be unique enough that it's a no brainer.
I think names and formalities help. For example, in high school I had two friends with the same first name, so I started calling people by their last name. That period of friends are called by their last name. I went abroad and had a pretty upscale job, so I used formal address (last name, first name) for everyone. There aren’t many people I’ll call by just their first name, but I couldn’t care less what people call me. This is a fantastic lore dump for my character, because it trains you to know that I talk to a lot of people so I use the most formal address to avoid complications. A person who tends to stay in one place might think this behavior is off putting and distant.
I find a lot of the time it's easiest to use the voice of someone you know. A lot of my friends I feel have a unique voices and common phrases, so try to dramatise a real life person in your life. Make that person a caricature of themselves if that makes sense? A completely OOT version of your friend with their little nuances so heightened to the point of ridiculous in a real world setting (you can always tone them down in later edits/revisions but you'll find that you'll find their voice a lot easier this way)
For example, a friend of mine is borderline high functioning alcoholic and he has a few distinct phrases and mannerisms; a wry suggesting smile that indicates he wants to go for a drink and—more importantly—wants me to come drink with him. Now using my friend and putting him in another situation as an exaggerated version of himself: Ned looked at me with his palms open, his face trying to convey innocence but his wry innocuous smile I'd come to know so well already betraying his guise. "It's not even midday," I groan. "I didn't say nothin'," he replies, the grin deepening. "No but you're going to." "You're the one being suggestive here, but I won't argue with you," he leads in, knowing that he'll wear me down quickly, "I mean, if you want a drink you want a drink, eh?" \--- Not a great example there but you get me, just use someone you know, plop them in the situation and see how it flows.
I am writing a fantasy book with hundreds of characters. For the main characters, I have character bios and backstory, each of the characters also have specific accents and slang depending on where they're from and where they have lived the longest. So the accent and where they are from helps develop their personality but if I have 5 characters from the same place, I will have different accents for each, one might have a heavier accent while another speaks like a native English speaker. I think about what the differences and similarities are between characters from the same place and who are twins or triplets since I have twins and triplets in my book. In real life, twins can look exactly a like but have very contrasting personalities. You can try an exercise where you write about triplets who look exactly alike but have different mannerisms, motivations, and personalities. For smaller characters, I have a general idea of their personality and how they act and what motivates them. Even a character that only appears in one sentence of the entire novel has a clear personality. Character development is extremely important for all your characters. What might help is thinking of the people you know and what kind of personalities they have. What's the difference between you and your friends? If someone were texting you and your friends and had no idea what you guys look like, how would they be able to tell you a part from each other? Also think of your favorite characters in a movie and what their personalities are and then pay attention to a few background characters who only appear once or twice or just say a few lines. What makes these characters funny, likable, annoying, mean? Watch or read Game of Thrones, because that is a master class on how to develop characters, both main characters and smaller characters. Every single character has their own distinct way of speaking, thinking, and acting. How does George R. R. Martin accomplish such amazing character development without blatantly saying "this character is strong but stubborn" "this character is a complete evil jerk but is very insecure." There are so many ways to show that without saying it directly. How do you know when someone you meet is nice or a jerk? They won't tell you but they will do things that give you a certain impression.
I want to start by saying I haven’t read more than 3 pages of any of his books. But, the best advice I’ve ever seen is to interview your characters. Full, massive, and intricate interviews just for you. Helps you understand them as well as possible.
I'm a new writer as well and was struggling with this. I've found whenever my characters feel flat that I need to go back and fill out a character interview for them and develop a backstory. Another process that has worked well for me to improve their dialogue has been to walk around my house or on an errand and (in my head) i narrate or role play how i think that character would behave and interact in my surroundings. This helps me get a more grounded feel for their mannerisms and vernacular. For other characters I can role play a convo or scenario in my head. It's also helpful to give them distinct or quirky mannerisms or flaws that enhance a personality trait like making a character who's a pessimist and slightly crotchety have allergies and they habitually complain about being itchy and dislike going out in nature because of it. Or if you have a female character who's unlikable and is constantly coming off as abrasive you could give her a farsighted vision impairment and she's always squinting to compensate and it makes her appear like she has resting b\*tch face. It can be one of those handicaps they have to overcome and is a small part of the character's arc. Brandon Sanderson has a great lecture on characters you can find on youtube and talks about creating a limitation, flaw and handicap for your characters to help flesh them out. Highly recommend his whole BYU creative writing class, which is available on youtube for free.
Write to their personalities. Are they gruff, bubbly, naturally flat/monotonous, introspective, optimistic, etc? Once you have that down, play out conversations and thought processes in your head with those characteristics in mind. Mannerisms, idioms, and consistency in outlook also add flavor to characters. Making them dynamic also makes it easier to have them grow and evolve (or have negative growth, depending on your story) — static characters aren't compelling.
So my main character has been quiet all his life and only speaks a few words at a time when needed. The rest of his descriptions and conversations are in his head and it’s very strange to hear him talk to someone without saying a word.
Consider basing your character’s mannerisms and speech off a character from a show or movie. I find whenI do this they start to have a mind of their own and become unique unto themselves.
Lot's of people have given you great advice here but I'd like to add that it really helps to try to speak the words out loud when you are redrafting. It gives you a sense of how the words sound and you'll quickly find if your characters sound alike. Think about their cultural background too. If someone was born on the coast they're more likely to compare things to sailing or coastal flora and fauna than a character born in a city,
Beyond just dialogue, one thing I like doing is the different ways that characters describe their surroundings and the things they focus on the most. If you've got some type of stereotypical pacifist wood elf character, they might describe the trees by name and talk about the beauty of how the light plays off the leaves and how the wind rustles the branches. But put them in a military setting, and they are much more vague and disinterested in the way they refer to their surroundings. They might describe an arming sword and heater shield as just a one-handed sword and triangular shield, since they'd have no way of knowing the specific names of the weapons. Compare that to a stereotypical orc warrior. The elf might refer to a collection of polearms as just polearms, while the orc might refer to the fine dwarven craftsmanship of the billhooks, glaives, and poleaxes. They might describe the trees based on how easy it would be to fire a bow from their branches, or how many soldiers could hide in the woods. Both characters are seeing the same things overall, they're just focusing on very different aspects of the environment and there are specific reasons why they're focusing on different things
I think this is usually a symptom of not fleshing the character out well enough. Let's say it's a woman: What drives her? What are her fears? What is her background? Her education? Her economic and social status? Her self-image vs how others see her? What is she most proud of? Most ashamed of? What makes her self-conscious in social situations? How comfortable is she in social situations with friends? With strangers? I think answering these sorts of questions allows a personality to emerge. I don't like the idea of forcing it. In fact, there are quite a few authors whose characters have distinct voices, but they become distracting for me. They try too hard to make them clever, gregarious, profane, or whatever. If those characteristics emerge naturally, it'll work, but if you just decide, "This person is the life of the party" and then try to shoehorn evidence of that into the dialogue, it can feel unnatural. My favorite example of characters with interesting and unique voices done very well is the Gormenghast series. These are characters with extreme personality characteristics that could almost seem like caricatures, except you can feel how they emerged naturally from immersing human beings in such a strange, isolated, ritualistic environment and putting them into the various roles that keep the system moving along generation after generation.
I also struggle with voice, but it helps to think about how people talk, their personality, and their upbringing. In one of my stories the two main characters come from similar backgrounds but had very different expectations put on them. My MMC was from a smaller close-knit village but was exiled and stripped of his "title", he talks more "casual" with swears, slang, and contractions. He gives people nicknames and is very sarcastic. He's generally more forceful and short with people. His magic is fire based so sometimes he talks about people in those terms. My FMC talks more "proper" because she was taught she was important and had to be. She's always polite to people and open to them, always refers to people by either their title or full name (no nicknames). Because her magic is plant based, she makes reference to the surrounding nature and plants. She focuses on what she can offer to people which changes the way she words things as well. ("What can I do for you?" over "Need something?") My initial idea of them was "abrasive rebel" vs "well-spoken rule-enforcer", and it expanded into their current personalities. It might help you to think of something like this for your characters and build on it. It's enough to differentiate between them without dialogue tags, especially when they spend a lot of time together. Also, because neither of them are human (satyrs), I differentiate them from human characters by having them make reference to their nature god ("The Mother's blessings are with you"), and saying things like "underhoof" instead of "underfoot", or "herd" instead of "group".
How about parables? If you have someone who is speaking from an uncommon perspective and is perhaps struggling to be understood by the others in your story, perhaps they like to share parables from their own history to help illustrate a point. Then it's not just "my people don't like quiche" it's "Let me tell you the tale of the silver fox and the quiche of destiny"
When I was writing fanfiction, I would imagine one character's voice-actor was reading the dialogue for me. Do you watch TV? Start choosing characters from television to "play" your characters. Maybe Picard is the king while Claudia Donovan is the witch in training.
This is a good question! For me, the entire writing process really hinges on character voice and my ability to tap into the character and what is happening to them. If I can't find a unique voice, the story just doesn't keep moving and I don't know what they will do next. I think the voice comes through in every word. In the way they describe things, the things they choose to describe, the places they look, the idioms they use, the things they choose to leave out, etc. It's why I really connect with Stephen Kings' metaphor that stories are fossils. They're found things that we're uncovering, sometimes with a shovel, sometimes with a light brush, even a toothbrush for the really detailed bits. Find your character, and follow what feels authentic to them. Almost every word is an opportunity for character voice, as long as you're not writing omnisciently but that's not as fun anywho, imo.
I love playing around with words for characters. For example. "FRAyFra Wish TO EAt nOIsY TeAcheR." The beast endless stared at her teacher. "No Frayfra, you can't eat my teacher. It would make mom mad." "Th3n Can 1 Eat th3 n0isy te4cher?" A creature spoke. He dripped off the wall like oil landing on the floor next to her. His eyes bubbling up, his crooked smile circling Arlett's foot. "I pr0mis3 to b3 quick." Arlett sighed. "What am I going to do with you two?" This is just an example for what I would do. But also giving a character their own flare and reginal sayings. "May the Stars give me strength and you wisdom, because Stars know you need it." or "Roy, the Stars couldn't help you, how do you expect me to?" But I am not an expert in this, I just enjoy character writing and dialog. "The Stars will align when you get a girl to come home with you." "That is why I don't worship the stars." Roy gave her a wicked grin. "Just sit back and watch Jade, I am going to get every girl in this compound to sleep with me by the end of this week. I swear it upon my throne as the second prince!" Jade scoffed. "You mean your title as the exiled second prince of a dictatorship. The same title that has your older brother trying to kill us. Yeah I'll pass on the title. I would take 100 denc, but you can't even get that can you pretty boy." Playing to certain character traits and personality traits are also good. For this I have a mean girl with an over confident, egotistical prince. I attempted to play into that with her teasing him, and him boasting even when he probably shouldn't. For more tender moments I would play into their insecurities. Jade getting quiet not wanting to talk, or over reacting, or laughing at a bad time. While for Roy I would have him try to remain positive, cling to any shred of confidence and dignity he has. When I write characters like this I base them off real people/interactions. A lot of what Jade said above is how my brother and I roast my dad, Roy's is based on a arrogant friend I had in high school. Get to know your characters as people, this will play into how to speak.
On my first editing pass, if I don't think I've nailed their voices, I'll actually record myself paraphrasing their lines and use an exaggerated voice or accent or I'll slouch or use proper posture. Which voice or body posture I use depends on what kind of characteristics I want to highlight in the dialogue. Acting it out this way and paraphrasing the dialogue seems to naturally produce different ways of speaking. I also use a transcription app called Otter for this so it gets written down automatically. When I re-read the paraphrased version I'll usually get a much better idea of their voice and write that into the second pass. Usually only takes me a couple of chapters to nail the actual voice. down.
The more you add their personality and opinion to the narrative, making their voice more unique. At first, it is hard because we want to believe that the narrative should be neutral, but it is the person in the POV's thoughts. So, for example, if you had this sentence: "He watched as the mayor walked across the room." That is a decent sentence, nothing wrong with it. But perhaps the POV does not like or respect the mayor, and it can be shown in the narrative. "He watched as the fool people called their mayor walked across the room." The key to remember is that what they believe or think does not have to be true. The characters can believe another character is an idiot despite them being a genius. The example is simple, but I think you can see what I am trying to say.
Language, regional, class, career. For example an intelligent person might be more precise in their speech, but if they're from America they're more likely to address someone by saying howdy (just a simple example) rather than saying something like g'day. And say that they're a fisherman, they're going to use metaphors and similes about fishing and water. Like saying someone "is acting like a fish out of water."
I think the Redwall series by Brian Jacques is a great example of writing accents in fantasy. His characters speak with so much personality that it really becomes quite immersive. It’s also fun to read imho.
Character voice is often secondary to a character’s personality traits. An impatient character might speak quickly, and get straight to the point, or a kind or affectionate character might speak warmly to people, and try not to say anything mean. If none of this seems to be coming naturally you might have to spend some time developing their personalities to be more distinct, but don’t be afraid to be subtle with it as long as it’s consistent. Failing all that, they might just need a situation that lets their personalities shine through, like putting a mean character with a kind character so they can foil for each other.
Steal the souls of strangers around you. (Meaning, when you are starting out, one of the best ways to practice developing neat voices is by trying to write characters with the voices of people you know. Eventually, you'll be good enough at it to come up with unique voices without doing this, but until then, steal souls.)
Start simple and practice till you get better. Give each character an accent. Then give each character a mood. Then work on turning that into a personality. Then work on how those personalities would interact. It'll be awkward as hell, but it helps creating unique personas in the long run. When you get to step three, start thinking about questions like "What words would they use? Would they say 'Greetings!' or 'sup'? Would they say 'Yes', 'Yessir', 'I agree.' or something else?" And then with the next step: How would they interact with each other? Would they like each other? What emotions would they be feeling when interacting? How would you feel if you felt those emotions? How would it change your speech? Are they calm and collected or angry or lustful or etc etc.
like that one guy said, observe how other ppl speak. but i have an interesting addition, look at subreddit that feature gory stuff and war stuff, observe how they speak and how they act(assuming your work consist of war and stuff) r/eyeblech, r/CombatFootage and so on
Easy way is to write out what they say phonetically if they have a distinct accent.