Character Voices, Or Bookplayer Doesn't Know When To Stop Talking · 6:31am Nov 10th, 2015
I have a Monday blog post! Sorry I missed a few weeks, but it has been a crazy month for me. (A household emergency had my family relocated for the time being.) Things are still kind of up in the air, and the holidays are approaching fast, but I’ll make every effort to keep this blog running on schedule (especially because I really need the money right now.)
And this is a looong one. A couple of people asked for a blog on how to write character voices, and I was talking with someone else about it in terms of original fiction, so I spent a long time thinking about it. I broke it up into sections, and I’m going to give you guys a table of contents here:
Intro What I'm talking about and the tools we're working with.
The “Feeling” of the Voice is the Important Thing What character voice really comes down to and how to think about it.
Types of Ways of Speaking An incomplete list to get you started.
Accents, Patterns, and Catch Phrases and Verbal Tics What character voice isn't, and how to use these without driving people crazy.
Variations on a Character’s Voice Because I got yer exceptions right here.
Final Thoughts I don't know how to end things.
Read it all below the break!
Intro
I’ve had two people ask me to write a blog on writing strong character voices, so I sat down to write it. And it’s haaard! My first thought is, “Just write what the character would say!” To be honest, in fanfiction and original fiction it just comes kind of naturally to me; I hear the character in my head and I write what they would say. If I can’t hear the character in something I read, it’s wrong.
But, that’s not exactly helpful, because if you try hard enough you can imagine a character saying anything. It might not be something they would normally say, but if an author can’t tell that it’s not something they wouldn’t normally say, that’s not a useful distinction.
I spent a lot of time thinking about it, and trying to figure out what character voice really is, why it’s important, and how to help people with the part that’s important. And in the end I think I figured out how to approach it. But I’m still not sure, and it’s still hard to explain. But I think this is the best I can do.
Character voice is the word choice and phrasing that’s specific to a character’s speech in writing. On a basic, technical level, it’s important to give characters different voices because it helps readers to tell who’s talking, to hear the voices in their heads, and to get a sense of the character.
That’s the important part, I think. Getting a sense of the character through word choice and phrasing. I’m going to talk much more about that in a minute, including how to translate that from a TV show to text and how to think of it in terms of original or mostly original characters.
First, though, let’s talk about our tools. Both are tricky for a lot of authors to use.
Word choice is the primary tool of any author in any situation, so you’d think it would be natural. But it’s not always, when it comes to dialogue. In narration, our options for word choice are only limited by our vocabulary, and as long as we know the right words to convey the information we want in the tone we want, we just use those words.
But in dialogue, you’re working with a character’s imagined vocabulary, which isn’t always as large as your own, or might include words that you’d never use. On top of that, the character isn’t always even looking for exactly the right words to convey information they want in the tone they want; a lot of characters are intentionally or unintentionally vague or lazy or confusing in how they speak.
Phrasing is even trickier, because there are rules for phrasing things in writing. We know where punctuation goes, we know what parts of speech a sentence should include and in what orders we’re allowed to put them. But when people talk, they don’t always do that, and some characters are going to be more prone to breaking those rules or using antiquated, stuffy sounding phrasing.
So the first thing we can see about a strong character voice is that it’s almost never going to be how you normally write. If all of your characters speak how you normally write, none of them will have strong voices.
At the same time, it’s not really possible (or at least not efficient) to look at every line of dialogue you write and try to figure out if the character would use those words in that way. We don’t know Applejack’s full vocabulary, and especially in her case her phrasing is going to be a mix of traditional American country phrasing and more modern phrasing that we all use. It’s almost impossible to look at an individual line and decide if it’s “right.”
Which brings me to the second thing about strong character voices: They’re more about the feeling than any set of rules you might make up.
The “Feeling” of the Voice is the Important Thing
The feeling of a character’s voice is a part of the character. It’s not necessarily everything about their character, but it does give people a good chunk of information about them. We have certain associations we make with characters who speak formally or informally or with accents. We have associations with characters who speak bluntly or carefully, or who are vague or specific.
In fandom, we already have these associations with the voices the VAs use, even if we don’t realize it. On the show, they do half the work for the writers: Rarity’s voice feels formal and ladylike, no matter what she’s saying. Rainbow’s voice feels rough and careless. On the show, the characters say things all the time that would seem out of character in a fanfic, but seem perfectly normal when it’s Tara Strong or Ashleigh Ball saying them in Twilight or AJ’s voice.
But we can’t get Tara or Ashleigh to voice our fanfics, so the voices we write have to use nothing but text to convey that feeling that hearing the voice gives naturally. To that end, it makes sense to exaggerate the way a character speaks slightly in text, to make sure you’re conveying the same information that the VAs give us by opening their mouths.
And, when you’re talking about an original character, you’re using the voice you choose to tell people who that character even is. They do not exist until you write them, so the feelings their voice evokes are a large part of the information that exists about them in the world-- making sure it conveys what you want, and that it conveys everything you can about them, is even more important.
As an example, or an exercise for people struggling with character voices, consider the following:
Pick an episode of MLP, and choose a character in that episode who has plenty of dialogue.
Ignore what they’re saying. You’re going to have them talking about different things, and for a different audience. And, like I said, the show writers have the VAs doing the half of the work that we have to worry about.
Also ignore what you know about the character. There’s a lot about who you think Pinkie Pie or Fluttershy is that isn’t in their voices. That’s fine, a complex character is going to be more than how they sound, and we’ll get to some ways to show that through their dialogue later, but for right now, we’re just looking at their voice, in general.
Now, focus on how their voice seems to you. Not the content, but the feeling you get about the character from hearing them, over all the things they said. What traits does it suggest about them?
That’s the character’s voice. That’s what you have to get across when you’re writing their dialogue. In text, getting that feeling for the characters is actually more important than writing something they could say.
Sure, Rainbow could say, “That was a perfectly good try. Now let me have a turn.” She knows what the words mean, and on the show that line would be fine because Ashleigh Ball would be saying it, and she would give it the right tone and inflection to sound like Rainbow Dash.
But “perfectly good” doesn’t give the feeling of Rainbow Dash. Her voice is rough, blunt, and often veers to extremes of emotion. “That was okay. Now let me show you how it’s done!” or “Nice try! Now it’s my turn!” feel more like Rainbow, at least to me.
You can start from the same place on a background pony or an original character: what should their voice feel like? What aspects of their character should their voice show to the reader?
Types of Ways of Speaking
Now, it’s important to note that not everything a character says is going to be able to give people that feeling. Sometimes a character just has to say “He went that way!” and 90% of characters are just going to say it that way. And that’s fine, don’t try to force the character into every single sentence. But you do want to offer people enough lines that only that specific character would say in that way to understand what makes them unique.
To that end, it helps to think about kinds of words and ways of speaking, and what people associate with them. Here are some pretty common ones, off the top of my head. These are spectrums, very few characters will always speak entirely one of these ways, but most characters will lean one way or another:
Formal vs. informal/casual is a good example. A formal character is going to use proper grammar, of course. But there are other kinds of things we associate with formal speech: The use of “one” instead of “I” or “you;” antiquated or flowery words; not as many contractions. Casual speech is going to ignore some grammar, they probably don’t pay a lot of attention to “who” vs. “whom” or “you and I” vs. “you and me.” They’re more likely to use slang, common expressions, shorter words, contractions. Obviously Rarity’s speech tends towards formality, while Rainbow Dash’s tends towards being casual.
Fancy vs. plain speech is related to formality, but it’s not exactly the same. A character can speak in perfectly correct, formal, plain speech. They can speak in informal but flowery speech. It’s a question of how large their vocabulary is, but also of how easily they want to be understood; fancy speech is often associated with ambiguity and overwhelming people. Flim and Flam are informal but fancy, while Celestia is often formal but plainspoken.
Careful vs. blunt is something you might think of as being more about the information the character is conveying: if they’re telling the unvarnished truth, they’re being blunt. It’s also a tone of voice and way of speaking. Andrea Liebman could have Fluttershy say “You were mean.” in a way that’s careful and gentle, or have Pinkie say it in a way that’s blunt and careless. So, in text, tt makes sense to play up how carefully Fluttershy is saying it or how blunt Pinkie is being.
Focused vs unconcerned is how I decided to say “smart vs. dumb” because it’s not really about intelligence or knowledge for character. A focused character speaks quickly and casually about specifics, while an unconcerned character is more slow and considering about even simple or incorrect information. It’s common for any character to have subjects they’re more interested in, and therefore focused on, but focusing on even everyday subjects will make a character seem smarter (whether or not the story bears that out.)
Modern vs old-fashioned probably makes most people think of Luna Eclipsed-style Luna, but but it can be present in a lot of different styles of speech: American Country accent incorporates a lot of old-fashioned words and phrases (reckon, for example,) more formal speech also tends towards antiquated styles, bureaucracy and legalease uses dated forms of language (unless they get into buzzwords, then, Celestia help everypony.) Generally, characters who speak in an old-fashioned way feel set in their ways, while the other extreme, using a lot of slang, can either make characters seem cool or shallow (or both.)
There are a million other traits you can show through a character’s voice, and not all of them are a spectrum. The important thing is to consider what you want to show about them, and understand in general how to use text to achieve that. Thinking about it in a general way lets you get into that style without having to think about how it affects every single line; even writing a character who speaks in a formal, fancy way shouldn’t require more than occasionally making sure you’re using a word correctly.
Accents, Patterns, and Catch Phrases and Verbal Tics
Now that we’ve said all that, let’s talk about things that a lot of people think of when you talk about character voice.
Accents are specific to speech; the only reason we ever try to write an accent is to mimic speech, and if a character speaks with an accent there’s nothing wrong with using the text to show that. There’s a lot of discussion among writers as far as how phonetically you should write an accent, but for me it comes down to two things: Phonetic words are hard to read in English, and the accent itself is actually giving you very little information about the character. In the real world, it might tell you where the character is from, and that’s it. In Equestria, it doesn’t even do that. It tells you nothing about Applejack that she pronounces “I” as “Ah,” and it’s harder for people to read.
Now, other parts of accented speech, like word order or specific word choice, are different. They can tell you about a character: Granny is more likely to use a word like “flibbity-gibbit” than Applejack (or anyone else,) Mac’s slurred pronunciation of “eyup” is part of his character (until recently, it was most of his character,) and words like “reckon” or “ain’t” say something about the characters as parts of old-fashioned or informal speech. Even more common contractions of words that non-accented characters sometimes use, like “gonna” or “wanna,” tell you something about how informal, fast, or lazily they’re speaking.
So, when you’re writing with accents, consider them carefully. A character might speak with an accent, and you might want to convey that in your writing. But different accent isn’t all, or most, of the character voice, and laying it on too thick isn’t going to add anything.
Unusual speech patterns are similar. On the one hand, unlike accents, they do stem from something about the character; Pinkie speaking in run on sentences, The Great and Powerful Trixie speaking in the third person, or Fluttershy hesitating are conveying information to the reader. But like accents, they can be hard to read or annoying. There’s a reason we have rules for writing that tell us when to end a sentence or where to place a comma. So use them sparingly, when the character’s trait needs emphasis.
Finally, catch phrases and verbal tics like “darling,” “sugarcube,” or “okie dokie lokie” are a strong spice. They can tell you exactly who’s speaking in one word, and like speech patterns they’re born of the character’s specific traits. But they’re also cheap; it’s easy to use them too often, and make the character seem like a parody of themselves.
Consider what it says about a character when they use those words, and try using them only when you want to bring that aspect of them to the forefront. Or try to find other ways to show the same thing. For example, AJ often uses “sugarcube” to address somepony more gently when she’s trying to offer sympathy and encouragement, but you can get the same effect with something like “Aww, Twilight. Don’t you worry.”
Oh, and when it comes to meme catch phrases like “20% cooler,” that a character said once or twice in canon and are instantly recognizable: No. Just no.
Variations on a Character’s Voice
First of all, even when we’re talking about canon characters with voices we all know, it’s important to acknowledge that we’ll all interpret them differently, and sometimes we’ll even use different variations between works to emphasize different parts of a character. Having a different version of a character's voice doesn't make it bad, and a person not liking a version of it doesn't make it out of character if you can see they thought about the character, and can identify what part of the character is being focused on and where you're taking that aspect from in canon.
As an example (and because I've wanted to get this off my chest for a while now) I'm not a fan of Contraptionology! by Skywriter (who is a wonderful writer, by the way.) I’ve tried to read it twice, and made it six chapters in, but I just don’t like AJ in it. In trying to explain to Bradel where my problem was, I hit on this: She doesn’t say “sugarcube” until chapter six (I think? Might have been four.) and then she’s insincere.
It’s not the word “sugarcube” that I cared about, it’s the feeling behind it in the way AJ talks that was missing from the first person narrative voice; that sympathy and desire to nurture. And the thing is, I can totally see where he’s taking her character from: it’s perfectly in line with a lot of her early focus episodes like Applebuck Season, Look Before You Sleep, or the Dodge Junction parts of The Last Roundup. What’s missing, to me, are the parts of AJ we see in the first episode, or Dragonshy, or Sisterhooves Social. But the story, at least what I read, runs more towards the former, and it’s a comedy. I can totally see why other people might hold the fic in high regard, but it doesn’t work for me.
(And since I don’t like saying negative things about writers I adore, I’ll add that I love Skywriter’s Applejack in Roaming. Don't hate me, Skywriter!)
Even within one fic, character voice is going to vary based on the situation. But it’s important to realize that when that happens, it should be on purpose because you’re saying something else about the character. Rainbow Dash is usually unconcerned and mentally lazy in her speech, but when it comes to Daring Do, her interest and focus flick on like a light switch. If something makes Rarity angry enough to break her cultured facade, she might slip into more modern vernacular.
These changes are giving the reader information about the character, and that needs to match up with the character being presented. Just because Rarity clearly knows and might slip into more informal speech in certain situations doesn’t mean it’s right for Fancy Pants or any cultured character. If Rainbow talks like she’s comfortable with the technical details of baking cakes, even if Pinkie just explained it to her, you’d better explain that or it’s not going to feel like Rainbow Dash.
Final Thoughts
So, that’s pretty much everything I know about character voice. There are some other dialogue tips I have that I wrote up in the blog post Talking about Taking, which covers a little of the same ground.
I suspect some people might have been hoping for something more like “You write Rainbow Dash like this, and Rarity like this,” but I don’t think it’s possible to put that down in a way that’s really helpful. There are too many characters, they talk about too many different things, feel too many different ways, and are colored by our perceptions of who they are. This is the closest I could come to something that will help people with whatever they’re writing.
And I’ve talked a lot about this through a pony lens, but it’s really the same for original characters: Character voice comes down to the feeling you want the character to give when they speak, and that’s part of who they are and how other characters and readers react to them. If you want them to stand out, consider how they should stand out. What are the things people who talk to them notice or remember about them? What are they always saying that’s endearing or annoying to people? How formal, or educated, or trustworthy do they seem?
It’s worth considering this for important characters, whether it’s fanfic or original fiction, because dialogue is one of the easiest, least intrusive ways to get character across.
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All I have to add is my opinion on becoming so absorbed in perfectly translating a character's voice into text that you end up writing narration, dialogue, or a combination of both in dialect. My opinion is this:
Don't.
Just... don't.
Please.
Please.
AESWRAWEOIRAJWSEIRAWIJERIA I can't wait to read this tomorrow THANK YOU BOOKPLAYER! <3 <3 <3
I've always struggled with voicing characters properly. I always end up making them sound how I think they should, which... well let's be fair, is NOTHING like they're supposed to.
I'm gonna research this tidbit for a while. Thank you bookplayer. Very helpful, as ever. You and Bad Horse are my literary mentors.
Household emergency? I hope everyone is alright.
Man, if I personally hated everyone who had any issue with my writing I would never sleep at night. No worries—constructive criticism is welcome! For the record, you're right, though; "Contraptionolgy!" is absolutely 100% Dodge Junction-style A.J. That entire fic was based pretty much exclusively on "The Last Roundup" and nothing else. If you like motherly nurturing A.J., that fic is a damn wasteland.
Micromanaging character dialect is basically the reason I hate writing Cadance, even though I keep trying to do it. When I try to write fluidly, the kind of writing that actually gets stories done, I always write her in a sort of aimless upper-crust wander which is extremely divorced from Britt McK.'s actual delivery, which trends toward remarkably warm and down-to-earth. (It's no surprise that she's a country music artist when she's not doing V.A. work!) This is why it has been for fscking ever since I've completed any writing on my ostensible favorite character, and why my slush pile for her keeps growing; I have to go over every single damn line with a fine-toothed comb to get it to sound right, and nothing kills a writing buzz like spending literally ten minutes on a single sentence.
Anyhow, thanks for the post!
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Everyone is fine, we just have some renovations that need to get done before we can move back in.
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Blech, that's never fun. Still, it's good to know everyone is alrighty.
Great article! Just two very minor nitpicks:
1) While it's heavily implied through the article, I would have liked to see this explicitly stated: A character's speech (phrasing, intonation, accent in some extreme cases) also depends on who's the intended recipient (and/or who is also in attendance) and their current mood/emotional status.
2)
And the social circles they tend to frequent, and the places they have formed moderate to strong interpersonal relationships, and whether they are native speakers or not (and what's their main language), and it can give you some idea on their education (in an academic and 'behavioral' - manners, etc - sense[1]), and their age (although it's mostly due to all the previous points...
), even some personality quirks (ex: whether they're outgoing or shy), and the list probably goes on (whether any of this matters for a given story is a completely different subject though 
)[2].
[1]: I know two grown men that speak exactly how I'd imagine Fluttershy speaking in my main language (minus the pitch).
[2]: Yes, all these factors affect phrasing, word choice and intonation (a lot) more than accent (at least as used in that specific context); the point still stands.
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I'm not sure, some people are amazing with words, but it seems to me that except for whether someone is a native speaker, those aren't things you're going to be able to show with a phonetic accent in text, (where there's not a lot of control over how much of an accent the person has or showing nuances of it.)
All of those things can come across in word choice and speech patterns, but just based on phonetically spelling or contracting words, I don't see how you could express any of that, which was what I was focusing on with the question of what an accent can tell us.
Illuminating
Been a while since I've seen this particular one abused, but the point remains no less valid. Lifting a joke verbatim from the show that isn't a clear running gag* always ruins the joke.
*A line used twice, e.g. "You are so random." is a callback, not a running gag. There is a significant difference.
Thank you!
Where do you stand on using fillers ("uh", "um", etc.) in dialogue?
I'm not fond of the use of phonetic accents, unless it's used to show someone's "other-ness" or characters having difficulty understanding each other. Calling attention to it makes it stand out, and it takes some extra effort to decipher. Neither of those is what I associate with Applejack's speech, where it's commonly used.
though I might be biased because I'm used to southern accents, so maybe to some others it does stand out.
Which fics do you think have the best voicing for the Mane Six?
This is a topic I have thought immeasurably about concerning one particular pony. There are some characters who are a breeze to write for me; their voice and personality and behavior spring up in each scenario I place them in, seemingly without effort. And then there are some characters who are impossibly difficult for me. I have to think, really think, about every little detail and I second guess myself so much and feel so self-conscious that the entire experience feels blocky, uncomfortable and just plain wrong. Sadly, it is these characters who I want to write the most. Desperately so, even. Why is this? I do not know. I wonder if everyone experiences this.
People consistently tell me that characters are my strongest aspect, so I feel qualified to weigh in here. Unlike issues of grammar, consistency and plot holes.
I know this blog was more about the speech and words themselves, but I agree with you. The easiest way to write in a character's voice is to better understand the character. I have two pieces of advice with that in mind;
1) Never plan a story with your intended character emotions. You can plan interactions, but always allow yourself to stray from that storyboard.
I encourage you to storyboard rigorously, yes, but only ever on what obstacles the character will have to overcome and when, and how it's overcome and when.
If you write with intended emotions in mind, as opposed to the goals or objectives of your characters, you're going to manipulate that character into that path rather than allowing them to breathe through the words. Allow your characters to surprise you, to change the course of your story, to have a reaction different to what you predict but now that this character has phrased something in a certain way, suddenly you find them reacting with anger rather than sadness like you'd planned. Don't rewrite stuff like that! Replan around it. If your characters are real enough to be surprising you, it shouldn't be considered a mistake.
2) This one's a lot harder; Allow your characters to disagree with you. Allow your characters to say things you find absolutely abhorrently wrong and have them believe it with all their heart. And then, and this one's very important, don't punish them for it. Your character is fundamentally different from yourself and should hold their own opinions. It's what makes them them and you you. But if you're doing it solely for the reason that you want to show that your worldview is more correct, well, you're still their God and Creator. You can absolutely show their ideology being patently false.
I can tell you three very successful authors who are a wrathful God like this: Stephen King, Terry Goodkind and Ayn Rand. I can name for you most of their works, I might have even loved some of them, but I couldn't for the life of me remember a character of theirs that wasn't either a lead antagonist or protagonist. And even then...
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My personal take is that when it's part of a unique speech pattern (like Fluttershy) you want to consider it the same way you do ellipses and questioning statements. You might want some of all of those, but you don't want to make it so every line has two different indicators that Fluttershy isn't sure about something.
In the speech of characters who don't make it a habit, I think it's fine as a way to pace the line. Timing is important in a lot of kinds of writing, and the way you control that timing is through words, including filler. So, for example, I think an exchange like this is fine:
In that case, the filler is important because it stretches out the reactions to give the awkward pauses room to be awkward.
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To be honest, based one what I said about variation, i don't think any one person has a perfect mane six for every circumstance. We all see the characters differently, especially when we're translating them into unusual situations. This is a cool thing about fanfic, because it presents a lot of different takes on the characters, but it also can make it hard to compare. (Also, I tend not to read much Rarity or Fluttershy or Pinkie, so I don't have a large selection of authors I'm really familiar with who have written all of the mane six.)
Great reading. Thank you!
Interesting to hear what turns you off of Contraptionology!, because that's totally legit but just never occurred to me. I think I'm a little too comfortable with slipping between character interpretations to have internalized that that might be a dealbreaker for someone.
3534864 I didn't really mean all in the same fic. I just mean who do you think writes a good Fluttershy or a good Twilight, for example. But I understand the point about it being down to personal taste.
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3533862 One of the bitter truths I'm going to have to swallow is that story conversations run way more smoothly than real conversations. which are minefields littered with the ghosts of ums, ahs, wells, hmms, and a million other buffers for us to come up with what to say next. Plus we often have a lot of grammar erros as we switch what we're going to say on the fly.
thanks a ton for writing this Bookplayer!
Why did it take me so long to get around to reading this? This is fantastic stuff.