Is the strategy described here an effective one, to distinguish character voice?

Question

I have roughly 30 speaking characters; about ten speak often enough that their voices should be well defined. I have compiled, from web sources, various considerations when building distinct character voice.

Originally, they all sounded similar to each other and to my education and background. I didn't worry about this in the mad frenzy to finish the first draft. Since then, I have been using a brute force, somewhat mechanical approach to making the characters distinct from one another (and from me).

The considerations I use for voice include: Gender, age, education, accents, personal verbal quirks, tone, emotional state, and so on. (I have not really included actions as part of voice, but I think their actions are distinct from one another.)

Thanks to Word, it is easy to go through a 200 page document and find all occurrences of an individual speaking, or of a particular dialect, or word. So I can make certain that Jane's lines are well developed (assuming she is educated) and Jill's lines are not (if she is not educated.) I can also identify my own verbal habits (I used Oh far more often than I realized), and scan through for them and correct them. This is one nice feature of writing with a word processor.

I've assigned specific (largely invisible) words to each character as part of their unique voices. One character is allowed to say Oh, but the others rarely are allowed to say it. Words like Well, to start a sentence. Or Hmm, in response to not knowing something. Or the use of another person's name, as a single word ... command? that that person should behave.

None of these are used overly much, but each pattern is limited to a single person, and the assignment is meant to fit their personality. The character who is most like a scientist, for example, is allowed to use qualifiers like a bit of (e.g. 'It will take a bit of time') but this is limited to him.

I am curious if there is a downside to assigning verbal tags to characters. It seems to me like one fast and effective way to distinguish character voice. As another example: One of my characters is withdrawn and uncertain of herself. She says I think a lot, and this is because she feels she does not "know" things the way others do. I went through the manuscript and made certain that every occurrence (barring a few) of the phrase I think was coming from this girl. I've done the same with verbal quirks for other characters.

Question: Does this approach, which is part of my attempt to distinguish character voices, seem valid? Is there a red flag here? I understand that I don't want to limit myself by prohibiting other characters from ever saying the phrase I think. (In some cases, where it was appropriate for them to say it, I left it. In others, I changed it to something like If you ask me.) Aside from the possible limitation of this approach (using a sort of mechanical approach instead of a more organic writing approach), are there pitfalls you can think of, that I am not aware of? Or, perhaps there are other simple strategies akin to this, but different, that you have used to distinguish voice.

(Thank you for the comments about actions to emphasize voice. This is something I hadn't put together before.)

Answer 1

Honestly, I don't think so. A characters voice is as much how they act, perceive things and present themselves as the words/accent they have.

I feel that it would soon become trite, repetitive and more than a little annoying if every character was like this. It may work for one or two, but everyone just seems a bit much.

The way that people talk, the words they use, the sound etc. is as much a product of their surrounds/society as the individual. It's how we recognize that someone is from somewhere else - they sound different.

Sure, there are variations within that, but by and large people from a certain area/region/society will speak the same way. Follow similar sentence structures, use similar words etc.

As a reader, I know that the voice I give the character is built on how their personality shows through in the writing. Use this - their actions, experiences and personality, to give them a unique voice.

On a practical side, how often does it come up that you need to differentiate between 30 different people without dialogue tags or some other identifier?

Answer 2

Be careful not to fall into writer as actor syndrome, imagining the movie of your book and how the actors might act the parts. You are writing a novel, not a prose description of a movie.

While you can certainly create a visceral experience of sight and sound (and smell, and tastes, and touch) in a novel, you can't bring out all the physical detail you would find in a movie because you can only present the reader with one word at a time.

The unique voice of a character in fiction is not based on how they say things, but on what they say. Think of each line of dialogue as an attempt on the part of the character to get what they want. No word is spoken idly. Every word is there to advance an agenda.

How you advance an agenda is based on what you want, what you fear, what you love, and what you respect. These define the path you are willing to take to achieve your objective, and therefore they define what you will say in any given situation in your attempt to achieve your objective. If your characters are well defined, then you know what they want, fear, love, and respect and from this you can figure out what they will say.

Can you add other inflections to this? Certainly. You can hint at an accent. You can play with word choice and sentence length. But these are secondary effects. The reader will know who is speaking because they recognize that this is what a particular character would say in this situation to advance their agenda. If you can take all the inflections out and the voice of the character is still clear from what they say, you have a strong character voice. If you rely on the inflections alone, but don't put genuine sentiments into their mouth, you won't.