How to Not Make Your Characters All Sound the Same

Unique character voices is the topic for today. Here are some ideas we came up with for giving each character a distinct way of expressing themselves:

• Give them a strong personality trait. But don't overdo this, unless you want a cast of caricatures instead of a cast of characters.
• Know your character's age. Adults, teens, and kids all have different ways of talking.
• Think of someone you know and try to have your character say things the way they would say them.
• Listen to a lot of people. Get to know lots of different patterns of speech from different regions, cultures, professions, and backgrounds. Pick the best one for your character.
• Voice comes from who your character is, so know your character!
• Have imaginary conversations with your characters until you know their voices.

To practice distinct voices, we did a writing exercise. Everyone in the room filled in the blanks to the following sentence:

Three ___________ walked into a room and saw ____________.

I collected the papers, shuffled them, and handed them back out. Everyone had to write the first thing each character said in reaction to what they had seen, doing their best to give everyone a unique voice.

My sixteen-year-old son figured out a way to defeat my writing exercise. He wrote "Three vampires walked into a room and saw Medusa's face." Apparently they can't say anything. They're statues. So instead of writing, I captured their final, permanent, stony expressions.