Giving Each Character Their Own Voice

Try this with a page of dialogue you've written: cover up the names next to each line, and read just the words. Can you still tell who's talking?

If every line could belong to anyone, you've found a common problem in early drafts — every character quietly sounds like the same person, just wearing a different name tag. Real people don't all talk the same way. Some use short sentences. Some ramble. Some crack jokes exactly when they're nervous, and some go completely quiet instead. Giving your characters different voices is one of the fastest ways to make a cast feel like separate, real people instead of one person in different outfits.

A simple test

This might sound like it takes an accent or a catchphrase to pull off, but it usually doesn't. Word choice, sentence length, and what a character tends to talk about — or pointedly avoid talking about — are usually enough on their own to tell two people apart.

Does this mean you need to plan out every character's voice before writing a single line? Not really. It's usually easier to write a rough version first, using whatever words come naturally, and then go back through each character's lines asking one question: would they really say it exactly like this? Asked line by line, that question is often all the revising a voice needs.