Cat Fight In The Kitchen-Wattpad Rant

Character Voice

My bracket and my nose both busted. But the nose is getting better at least.

Where have I been!? No one cares. Let's just rant about something I think it's time for: Character Voices

You ever read a story where you couldn't really differentiate between who was talking (or if anyone was even actually speaking or if it's just the narrator's inner thoughts)? And I don't even mean because they didn't use dialogue tags or quotation marks. I mean because there is not differentiation in voice. Like, you literally feel like it's one person talking the whole way through. No one has a unique voice with specific vocabulary or syntax.

So I'm here to offer suggestions for when you write dialogue, because I like to be able to tell which character is speaking based only on what they say. Because let's face it, does anyone talk 100% like someone else? Probably not.

I'm not doing a very good job. Let's just jump in and I'll make my suggestions and everyone can just pretend it helped them to make me feel better about myself.

1. Consider age

The most obvious way for me to describe to you what I'm talking about is to bring up the fact that most writers think they're good at differentiating between teenagers speaking and adults speaking. Teenage dialogue tends to be more sarcastic and informal (and laced with curse words). Adult dialogue, especially when it's an authority figure like a parent or teacher or boss tends to be super formal with big words. And that, to me, is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. That's when you're trying too hard.

I have a more expansive vocabulary than my dad even though he's thirty-two years older than me (actually 31 years, 360 days. Isn't that cute that our birthdays are five days apart? I love it). And my best friend has a more expansive vocabulary than both of us, he just doesn't use it. Word choice doesn't dictate age.

A lot of times I'll see a scene where a teen comes home from a party and their parent catches them coming in past curfew and the parent yells something along the lines of "[Insert first, middle, and last name here]. Why are you sneaking in at such a late hour? I have never been so irate and this level of disrespect is absolutely unfathomable and I'm irrevocably disappointed in you."

Quick question, if you're mad, are you seriously able to speak so coherently? When I'm mad I can barely form sentences. They're choppy. I'm not using the biggest words I know. Doing that doesn't make your character seem more mature. It makes it seem like you're trying to hard.

2. Consider personality

This is another thing that gets me. Too often the main character is also the narrator. And the new major craze is to have a really snarky, really sarcastic main character (because apparently that's tough?). So absolutely everything in the story has a sarcastic undertone. Even another character's dialogue.

Here's a little tip for you: the narrator's voice usually shouldn't leak into another character's dialogue. Obviously, there are exceptions, but typically not. And to combat this, think about a character's personality.

Okay, take this for example. I have a really cynical personality. My brother has a really bubbly personality. My best friend has a really optimistic personality. And my dad has a really witty personality. So all three of us would verbally respond to the same situation differently.

So let's pretend we're all three talking about a cat scratch on our nose (because that just happened and I have one and it's so terrible). Here's how each of us would probably say that:

Me: It's seriously the ugliest thing you've ever seen.

My brother: I got to play with the cat today! We got wild.