Making Your Characters Sound DIfferent

 QUESTION:  My critique partners say most of my characters sound alike in dialogue.  Help!

Cast all your characters with actors you are very familiar with so you can hear their voices when you write dialogue.  Unless you have a tin ear for speech, you will rarely have two characters sound alike.

When you pick your actor, consider what part of the country or country of origin your character is from.  Make sure their voices reflect that. You don’t want an actor from DOWNTON ABBEY to play a cop from Philly.

Writing dialogue as what it sounds like rather than the proper spelling is frowned upon these day unless used very sparingly so don’t go overboard with phonetic spelling ("Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay.”--from HUCKLEBERRY FINN) or apostrophes to show words that are slurred together. (“If’n you think I’s stupid.  You be wrong!”)

If you aren’t that familiar with a region’s speech, be very careful how you write it because it’s easy to stereotype or get it wrong.  For example, most of us in the Southern US don’t use “y’all” that often, and, when we do, it’s in very informal speech and means more than one “you.”   (Jennifer turned to her cousins and smiled sweetly, “Y’all come home with me and have some supper.”  Her voice turned frosty as she glared at her brother.  “You don’t come, period.”)

You should also consider social class and education.  Someone with a college education and an upper middle class background won’t sound the same as someone who never finished high school whose parents never finished high school.

Read your dialogue aloud or in your head to see if you’ve got different voices, or ask a few friends or family to read your dialogue like a play to see how it sounds.

Another good test is one line of dialogue that isn’t attributed to who is saying it.  If a reader can tell who is saying it by how and what is said, then you’ve succeeded at your task.

Formatting Internal Dialogue

 QUESTION:  I have a query about the correct way to convey internal thoughts and sounds.

According to the Chicago Manual of Style:  "11.47 Unspoken discourse: Thought, imagined dialogue, and other interior discourse may be enclosed in quotation marks or not, according to the context or the writer’s preference."

I gather whether quotation marks are used and which type varies from publishing house to publishing house. Is that correct?

The only times I’ve ever seen quotation marks used for interior dialogue in popular fiction is along the lines of -- 

“Brilliant move,” I said silently to myself.  

The standard method is to italicize the thought--  

The bell slipped out of my fingers and clanged loudly as it hit the floor.  I winced. Brilliant move, Byerly.

Some publishers, particularly of nonfiction, will state the stylebook they prefer, but most fiction publishers don’t.  In the case of no stylebook mentioned, use grammar correctly and be consistent.

In deep third POV, it’s quite common to have a fair amount of interior dialogue.

I ask myself whether the person is asking themselves a specific question or stating some fact to themselves. If they are, I put the question in italics; otherwise, I don’t.

I tend to avoid italicized internal dialogue because it breaks the reader’s rhythm, particularly if it’s done too much or too little.  Instead, I write so that I remain deep in POV.

For example, to remove the internal dialogue of my earlier example, I’d write: 

The bell slipped out of my fingers and clanged loudly as it hit the floor.  I winced at my clumsiness.  

QUESTION CONTINUED:  I also have problems with the verb’s tense in internal discourse.  

She loosened her grip, so the rope slid through her hands and let her feet slide over the knot. Shit – rope burn. Her feet reached another knot. She clung to the rope, her body shaking, her palms sweating so hard they felt cold. This wasn’t working.

Should the last bit be This isn’t working.?

ANSWER:  If  “This isn’t/wasn’t working” is deep POV, the sentence would use “wasn’t.”  If it’s internal dialogue, use “isn’t.”  

If you’re confused about the tense, pretend the internal dialogue is regular dialogue and speak it aloud to see if it sounds right. 

If it’s a thought, the tense remains the same as the rest of the narrative.

QUESTION CONTINUED:  If you’re trying to signify there is a sound made, does it go inside single or double quotes or can you use italics? 

ANSWER:  If the sound isn’t dialogue by a human or other living creature, it is italicized.

The cow said, “Moo,” and its bell went clank.  

Say That in Elf

 QUESTION: I have several scenes where a man is around elves. I don't want to invent my own language, and I'm afraid to use Tolkien's elf language. What can I do?

You're right to avoid using Tolkien's language. I doubt Tolkien's estate would be too pleased about that.

The simplest way to write the scene without inserting the language is to use the viewpoint of someone who doesn't know the language. You can then write something like--

Adam listened to the two elves talking to each other. Their language sounded like the wind in dry oak leaves mixed with babbling creek water. 

Finally, the elf who could speak English said, "Our king says we will not help you."

Or you can have the scene from the viewpoint of the elf who speaks English.

The king said in their own language, "I do not trust these humans. Tell them that I will not help them find passage through our mountains."

Mossbark nodded and said in English to the humans, "Our king will not help you."

These tips works with any language.

NOTE: I use the word “English” as a catchall, but you should use the term for whatever language your viewpoint character speaks.  

Making a Long Story Short

 QUESTION: My novel is way too long. Someone suggested I cut four lines off every page instead of trying to cut whole chapters, etc.

Anyone who can do that needs to work on their writing skills because they are writing weak, bloated prose.

There are other ways to cut length.

From working with writers over the years, I'd say that the primary thing most writers need to cut is writer information. We sometimes do our thinking on the page before we write down what the reader needs to see, and we fail to cut that out.

Writers also tend toward too much introspection. If all a character is doing in a scene is thinking about other things, get rid of that scene, and insert that information into dialogue.

The great Phyllis Whitney once said that the only reason a character should be folding laundry and thinking is so an ax murderer can sneak up on her, and the reader knows this through subtle clues.

There's also the rule of three. If a scene doesn't contain at least one or two plot points (information or events which move the plot forward), and one or two character points (important character information) so that you have at least three points total, then it should be tossed, and whatever points included in that scene should be added to another scene.

For major cuts, you can also consolidate several secondary characters into one character who handles their plot needs, or a subplot can be simplified or removed if it doesn't influence the major plot or the influence can be moved to another subplot.

Happy cutting!

The Drama Queen Opening

 Here’s how not to start your novel.  

One or more of the characters is acting like a lunatic because she’s so frantic about something she doesn’t mention.

Dire language about a vague disaster is used.

The other characters and the pace are as frantic.

Then all this drama proves to be about a minor problem, or one that is such a problem that the overkill of the scene would be best replaced with one that is considerably more informative and lets the gravity of the situation speak for itself.

Drama queen opening scenes simply don’t work because the reader realizes she’s been fooled which may make her put down the book, or she won’t trust you when genuine disasters happen.  

Often, too, the drama queen scene proves to be unintentionally funny which can set the wrong tone for the novel.