While there�s nothing wrong with making characters sound different by giving them specific accents, it�s not something you can do for every character in a story. Not unless your tale takes place at the United Nations.
And while giving them vocal tics is useful, yeah? It helps identify them quickly, yeah? It also gets old just as quickly, yeah?
Rather than using how people speak to make them stand out, it is much easier and more effective to use what they say rather than how they say it.
And while giving them vocal tics is useful, yeah? It helps identify them quickly, yeah? It also gets old just as quickly, yeah?
Rather than using how people speak to make them stand out, it is much easier and more effective to use what they say rather than how they say it.
If one person is for the new helipad on the local hospital and one is against, and a third is only interested in getting the other two to stop arguing, then their individual positions on the matter is what marks them out.
In order for this to work you have to streamline the conversation a bit. In real life, people may go off on tangents or use chit chat to pad out lulls in a conversation, but doing that in fiction will only undo any work you�ve done to establish which character is taking which stance.
Obviously, you can still use dialogue tags and the characters� names to identify them, but even if you do that, it can become confusing in dialogue heavy sections if you allow them to go off-topic.
You don�t just want a reader to be able to follow who�s saying what if they carefully read every single word at full concentration, you want them to be able to get into the flow of things and automatically get a feel for who�s speaking.
By staying focused on the matter on hand, whether it�s robbing a bank or going shopping for shoes, and giving each character a distinct objective, who�s speaking will become much easier to work out.
In order for this to work you have to streamline the conversation a bit. In real life, people may go off on tangents or use chit chat to pad out lulls in a conversation, but doing that in fiction will only undo any work you�ve done to establish which character is taking which stance.
Obviously, you can still use dialogue tags and the characters� names to identify them, but even if you do that, it can become confusing in dialogue heavy sections if you allow them to go off-topic.
You don�t just want a reader to be able to follow who�s saying what if they carefully read every single word at full concentration, you want them to be able to get into the flow of things and automatically get a feel for who�s speaking.
By staying focused on the matter on hand, whether it�s robbing a bank or going shopping for shoes, and giving each character a distinct objective, who�s speaking will become much easier to work out.
If you found this post useful, please give it a retweet. Cheers.
*
Check out my latest stories for free on Wattpad. 
