Giving Characters Voices, Part 1

On vocalizing each character's character

“All of your characters sound the same.”

It’s got to be the most common criticism of manuscripts.

With a great book, it barely registers with the reader that the author has given different characters different voices. That’s because when it’s done well, it seems completely natural, inevitable even, for that character to sound like that. “Well, of course, Elizabeth Bennet speaks in that way,” we’d respond if forced to think about it. “Given who she is, that’s the only way she could speak!”

But getting the character voice to perfectly fit the character’s character is HARD.

In this column, I’ll discuss what I wanted to accomplish with the voices of three characters (Barb, Pith, and Blowtorch Len) and how I began to execute it.

In the next post, I’ll start to discuss how and why I give several characters multiple voices. For example, Kim has two personalities and a voice for each. Nelly’s primary voice is shaped by her guilt; her voice changes as her guilt lifts. And my narrator has three distinct voices (storytelling voice, stripped-down voice, and remembering-childhood voice).

But first, we have to talk about the author’s challenge when it comes to voice.