Character Voice Is More Than Dialogue

By James M. Jackson

New writers are often told the bromide that each character in a story should “sound different.” As with most commonly offered advice, it has truth at its core, but the edges are as fuzzy as bunny slippers.

I remember reading in a craft book (being told at a conference?) that in great novels a reader should be able to identify the character solely by their dialogue. The word choices and cadence for each character should be unique. With a short story or a novel with only three or four characters, that might be a reasonable goal.

But I write novels. Complicated novels. My current work-in-progress, Niki Unbound, the third book in the Niki Undercover Thriller trilogy, has thirty characters with speaking roles. Neither the reader nor I has the wherewithal to recognize and keep straight thirty characters over 94,000+ words based on their dialogue choices.

However, it’s my goal that readers will have no confusion between the characters, other than a few Congressmen who could be mistaken for one another, and that is my intentional decision. How does that happen?

Word choices are important. A five-year-old, a pre-teen, and an adult woman will refer to the same person using different words. “Mommy,” from the child; the preteen’s choice of “Mom.” The adult referring to herself as mother, as in “… because I’m your mother!”

And actions without words can augment or substitute for dialogue. Bawling and striking out often accompanies a five-year-old's tantrum. A preteen might slam a door so hard the entire house shakes. And we all know the killer look a mother can deliver without uttering a single word.

When the words and actions are insufficient to clue the reader, the easiest approach to solve the problem—although often abused—is to label the dialogue. Most characters have names. When it is not clear who might have spoken a particular line, a simple “Jim said,” can do the trick. The abuse comes in two forms: unnecessary labeling, because the reader already knows who is speaking, and overuse, because the author didn’t use any other technique.

Other techniques? You betcha. Characters can have unique mannerisms. Set up correctly, if one character responds to any disagreement by standing up and placing their hands on their hips, it won’t take the reader long to associate that behavior with the character.

Internal dialogue can provide excellent character grounding. In Niki Unbound, two of the POV characters are women of the same age. The title character has spent her adult life working undercover; the other is a hacker-extraordinaire who has risen to the rank of brigadier general in the Army in charge of a cyber-ops skunkworks. Their experiences color their worldview. Niki sees the world as a series of physical threats with concrete actions she must take to counteract them; Lisa, the hacker general, sees more amorphous threats that she must deal with strategically.

Here’s an example of how I set up that difference between the two characters:

She motioned Lisa over and stood as she arrived. Unlike Niki’s entrance, which no one had paid attention to, many eyes followed Lisa. That woman had looks and a presence people remembered. Not a good thing for undercover work, but it could be useful if Niki needed a distraction. Either way, something to keep in mind. “I always sit with my back to the wall. If you’re the same, we can sit side-by-side.”

“I’m glad you waved,” Lisa said. “I wouldn’t have recognized you, which I know is the point. In my business, we fight with ones and zeros, not bullets.” She pulled out the chair opposite Niki and sat like a pianist, alert but relaxed. “If my phone explodes, it won’t matter whether I’m facing the door.”

“That’s a pleasant thought.”

Those worldview differences ground the reader, so each time the women face a threat, Niki’s internal thoughts home in on threat evasion; Lisa’s thoughts are about drawing resources to counteract. Seeding dialogue with internal thoughts that show those differences keeps the reader grounded as to which character is speaking.

Even with those alternatives, sometimes language is the only clue needed. One of my characters, an old codger named Owen, never uses a “g” at the end of a word. It is such a major component of his speech that the missing g isn’t replaced by an apostrophe; the word just cuts off. No other character in my novels has that quirk, which makes his dialogue unique. In my earliest novels, another character never used contractions, nor did he swear—so much so that other characters had a pool to pay off on catching him in either of those language “sins.”

Some authors choose to spell dialogue to show regional or other variations. My example of Owen’s missing g is one example. Other authors use that technique to project a Southern drawl, or a Yankee’s moving an “r” to the end of a word. You get the idear, and a little of that goes a long way.

Characters should be unique (unless, like the Congressmen, they are intended to be indistinguishable). Dialogue helps, but it’s the least reliable way to tell characters apart.

Agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts?

* * * * *

James M. Jackson writes justice-driven thrillers with brains and bite, including the Niki Undercover Thriller series and the Seamus McCree series. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read Low Tide at Tybee, a novella featuring Seamus, his darts-throwing mother, and six-year-old granddaughter, Megan).