Writing Mistakes You're Making

Dialogue: Differentiating Characters

A major mistake one can make is writing characters that all sound the same. This isn’t good because it makes your characters flat…homogeneous. Think about it, how interesting would your life be if everyone thought the exact same way? Each character should have a distinct voice –– the people you know in real life don’t all talk the same, and neither should your characters. (This includes the narrator.) 

There are lots of ways to make distinctions. For one, you can change things up with accents or dialects, taking into account what country they’re from if the country speaks a different language or what region of your own country they’re from. For instance, in French the adjectives come after the nouns, so a French girl might mix things up when she speaks English (as in, “I saw a dog brown today”), not to mention she’s going to have a lot of trouble with the -th sound and h’s at the beginning of words. You’ll need to research this –– watch some movies, read some books, hit up Google. You have to make a commitment if you’re giving your character an accent, because you can’t have it show only part of the time –– whenever they talk, the accent should be evident (look at Hagrid from Harry Potter). 

The background of your character is also going to greatly affect their speech. When taking backgrounds into account, the prince doesn’t sound the same as the pauper. And I’m not being racist or stereotypical when I say different people can speak differently, depending on what environment they grew up in. The truth is, Harlem isn’t the same as rural Oklahoma, and Jay-Z doesn't talk with the same country droll Carrie Underwood possesses. It’s how it is, and if your novel reflects this in a mature manner, you’ll earn points for class and being realistic.

Side Note: A reputable source of mine has this to say: If you want to make your character sound like he’s from the Midwest, have him truncate his speech. He will find the shortest way to say what he wants to say and use it. “Gonna,” “izzat,” “prolly,” “s’okay,” etc. Midwestern speech is all about truncation. Of course we’re not all like this but gosh, it’s really fun to write and makes a pretty distinct character voice. 

This is a good time to mention that grammar doesn’t apply to whatever is in quotes; the only thing that matters is how the real life equivalent of your character would speak. This counts for your narrator as well, when your narrator is someone like Tam Sawyer. Trust me –– if your character says “brung” instead of “brought,” and there’s a reason for it, I won’t turn you over to my grammar queen of a mother. (And how she would love that –– whenever my sister and I make grammar mistakes, she laments that her real children are somewhere down in Georgia, speaking perfect English...no offense to grammar-abiding Georgians.)

Side Note: The lack of necessary proper grammar does not mean you can use incorrect punctuation. You must use proper punctuation throughout the story unless you are directly quoting something that a character has written down if said character has incorrectly punctuated it. 

Example: Amber showed me the text she'd just received from Perry. It read, “I don't like that you're going out with him!!!!!!!!!”