Voice Guides

Have you ever read a scene where you had to scroll back up and check who was actually talking, because two characters' dialogue sounded exactly the same? That's the problem a voice guide solves, and it's common sense that most writers skip anyway.

Readers should be able to tell who's speaking just from how the dialogue sounds, and given enough pages, they build that association without even noticing they're doing it. The failure mode is exactly what I described above - two characters who read identically - and it's confusing in the moment, but worse than that, it makes your whole cast feel flat.

What shapes a character's voice

A few things do the real work here. Gender, since men and women often speak differently. Background and experience - where someone grew up, what they've lived through, what they do for a living all leak into how they talk. And mannerisms: favorite words, how long their sentences run, whether they crack a joke when they're nervous.

Imperfect on purpose

Here's something that might feel backwards at first: voice can be defined by what a character can't do perfectly. A character speaking a second language, or a non-human character talking to humans, shouldn't sound flawless - the imperfection is exactly what reminds the reader this isn't their native way of talking.

A quick test

Want a quick way to check your own work? Cover the names in a page of dialogue. Can you still tell who's talking? If you can't, the voices need more work, not the plot.

Connect it to your planning chat

The voice guides you build here slot directly into the story bible you started in Module 2.