Characters make a story. While plot has importance, it will never overshadow the importance of strong, complex characters that audiences feel connected to.
One of the most important elements in character development is the character voice. This is how your character expresses themselves through dialogue. It’s how your character speaks.
But character voice is more than just word choice. It’s the style and expressions your characters use while speaking. Are they formal in their speech, or do they speak with heavy slang? Are they short and to the point, or are they long-winded? Do they filter everything carefully in order not to damage any feelings in the room, or do they let it all out in the open regardless of who gets hurt?
Character voice is incredibly important, but it’s also incredibly difficult to build. When I first started writing, I had the most difficult time trying to figure out this element. After writing a dozen novels and publishing a handful of them, I’ve finally gotten enough experience to share how to build a character’s individual voice.
ELEMENTS THAT CREATE VOICE
TIME AND CULTURE
Where is your character from? In this culture, how do people speak to their elders? How do they speak to children? How does this culture interact with strangers? What is acceptable language, and what isn’t?
If your character is Japanese growing up in Japan, the answers to these questions will be completely different to a character born and raised in the American Bible Belt. It will also be a completely different story if your character is from Japan living in the Bible Belt, or if they are from the Bible Belt living in Japan.
Also note that your character’s speech will be dependent on when they are from. The American Bible Belt in 1880 will be different than the American Bible Belt in 2020. The location may be the same, but the culture will have changed.
Character time and location will be a key starting points for how your character interacts with the people around them.
FAMILY SOCIAL STATUS
The next most important aspect of character expression is social status. Are they part of the super wealthy? The wealthy? The middle class? The poor? This will affect how your character sees the world and interacts with it.
You don’t need to be tempted by stereotypes, but you do need to create a connection to how a character speaks and why. Perhaps your character is the son of a wealthy CEO with a lot of enemies. He will be more reserved in his speech because of his father’s cutthroat business. Or maybe his family has so much money that he speaks however he wants because no one can touch him. Both are completely understandable options for a character. But social status should affect their speech in some manner.
Which leads to the next element:
FAMILY DYNAMICS
What are your character’s parents like? How many siblings do they have? Are they the oldest or youngest?
The neurotic first child of a family of twelve will have a different speaking style than a needy only child who spent most of their time alone. A character who is starved of their parents’ affections might speak more emotionally or bitterly than a character who has too much affection.
In addition, characters, like people, also inherit their parents’ mannerisms. Your character may have her father’s blunt honesty or her mother’s passive-aggressive questioning.
Allow your character’s family to affect your character’s expressions.
JOBS AND HOBBIES
What is their primary job? What are they most knowledgeable about? Also, what are their interests? Who do they spend most of their time with socially?
Hobbies may seem like a strange element to how someone speaks, but think about how your conversations change based on who you spend your time with. Your friends who fan over Star Wars will have a much different speaking style than those who spend their weekends playing golf with the boss. If those are your two hobbies, you will end up with a mix of those two speaking styles.
RELIGION
A character with a heavy religious bent may refrain from profanity and harsh words, while a character with no religious beliefs might swear like a sailor. Characters will choose words based on the religion they practice.
READING LEVEL AND EDUCATION
Vocabulary is a massive part of speaking style, and someone with a high reading level will probably use more complicated vocabulary words than someone with a low reading level. Someone with a master’s degree will have a different breadth of knowledge and vocabulary than someone who dropped out of a high school.
It’s important to note how educated your character is and how important it is for them to get recognition for their education. If your character is arrogantly proud of his Harvard doctorate, he will speak much differently than someone who went to Harvard and thinks it was a waste of money. Does your character need to impress everyone in the room? Or do they want to connect with others on a non-educational level? This will affect how they speak in a room full of people.
AGE
Young children have no filter. Much older people have a similar lack of filter, however, they might have more bitterness in their speech after 60 years of struggling. Adults over 30 will try to hold their tongues more. Adults over 50 hold their tongues less. The age of your character will determine how much they say and don’t say.
Think of your character’s age and how it might affect his personality and speech.
PERSONALITY
This last element feels a bit too broad, but really, it’s actually a smaller part of how someone speaks. We all have a personality trait or two that affects how we talk. Movie lovers will speak in movie quotes. Shy individuals will speak less in fear of embarrassing themselves. Anxious individuals will talk too much. Scatterbrained individuals will forget to finish sentences.
Choose a trait or two that might affect your character’s speech and pepper it into their expressions.
WHERE TO FIND CHARACTER VOICES
If you need some inspiration for character voices, there are a few places you can take notes:
- – From your own family members
- – Teachers you had over the years
- – Previous coworkers
- – Personalities you see on tv, in movies, or in interviews
- – Your own inner thoughts, or how you spoke during different parts of your life
A great way to do a character voice study is to take a TV show and note how each character in the show expresses themselves.
Here’s an example using the Big Bang Theory:
Sheldon: Super genius. No social skills. Speaks very bluntly, unaware and uninterested in the feelings of others. High vocabulary. Doesn’t understand sarcasm.
Penny: High school educated, but has high social skills. Is very good with people and aware of their feelings at all times. Uses a lower range of vocabulary, and a softer more comforting voice. Very sarcastic.
Leonard: Highly educated and socially awkward. Has a bit of a neurotic personality from being raised by an emotionless mother who used him as psychological case studies in child development. Voice tends to go high-pitched when he’s nervous.
I won’t do the rest of the characters, but you get the idea. You can analyze different people from your own life, or existing characters that you know and love to understand how to build your own character voices.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER
So what’s the best way to put all of this together and make a voice? First, flesh out the details of the eight elements I mentioned before. Then make a short list of how your character speaks and their mannerisms. Last, keep a page or note somewhere that compares your characters’ voices side by side so they don’t all have the same voice.
Let’s create a sample character named Theodore.
Theodore:
- – From Nashville, Tennessee, 2002
- – Middle class family
- – Family is devout Christian family in the Bible Belt
- – Theodore is the oldest of 5 brothers; he has his father’s sarcasm and his mother’s ability to talk to any stranger in the room
- – Theodore is in his late teens, thinking about going to university to study medicine
- – He and his friends created an astronomy club that meets on weekends
Theodore’s voice: Theodore is a respectable, approachable high school student who has strong vocabulary in the science fields. He is outgoing and social, and has a voice that can carry well because he’s had to speak over his 4 little brothers to keep them in line. He can recite scriptures from the Bible, and uses words like “fixin’”, “y’all” and usually uses “yes, ma’m” and “no, sir” when addressing adults.
Something to note is that your characters’ voices will solidify after you’ve written your first draft. Create the foundation, and then allow your characters to develop their voices on their own as your write out the story. Afterwards, go back and strengthen the characters’ voices as best you can. Lastly, use a line editor to make sure your characters all speak consistently.
Character voice is not an easy element to create in a story, but your audience will know if you haven’t put any effort into it. Your character’s voice is one of the most memorable pieces of your character, and deserves the best care. Just as you recall the fantastic and hilarious quotes of your friends and family, audiences will recall the great lines of your characters.