Character voices?
Hallo everyone, I've got a problem -- I fear all my characters sound the same, or have the same voice >_< Or at least, that's what a couple people told me, and after they had I also started to really notice it.
I've heard it said that you can use accents to give them more flavour, but that can get annoying and it certainly feels lazy to me to do it for everyone. I know there's apparently tricks like deciding what kind of vocabulary they have, or if they speak in short sentences or long ones, or if they're always formal, and that kind of thing. But a lot of my characters have aristocratic backgrounds, and I can only think of so many different ways to handle that.
I fear I'm not much of a wordsmith in this regard, or that all the voices I know of are cliches already, like the suave, smug villain voice, or the kid hero who grew up poor and doesn't necessarily speak proper English, or the dude with the funny accent, or something. I dunno, I really have trouble making each one unique, espeically if they come from similar backgrounds.
It's probably so easy to be a screenwriter, since your dialogue is immediately given a unique voice when it's being read by an actor, so long as it's not crap to begin with, of course ^_^
Any suggestions?
( I apologize if this has been asked about before, feel free to hit me and direct me to that post if it has ^__^' )
ETA: Thanks for all the comments, you guys! Sorry it took time for me to say it ^__^' I am kind of a lurker that way. But thank you very much! The character questionnaire looks espeically helpful, as does figuring out idiolects for everyone, which I'm sure will come as I write. I will have to try all of those things.
I've heard it said that you can use accents to give them more flavour, but that can get annoying and it certainly feels lazy to me to do it for everyone. I know there's apparently tricks like deciding what kind of vocabulary they have, or if they speak in short sentences or long ones, or if they're always formal, and that kind of thing. But a lot of my characters have aristocratic backgrounds, and I can only think of so many different ways to handle that.
I fear I'm not much of a wordsmith in this regard, or that all the voices I know of are cliches already, like the suave, smug villain voice, or the kid hero who grew up poor and doesn't necessarily speak proper English, or the dude with the funny accent, or something. I dunno, I really have trouble making each one unique, espeically if they come from similar backgrounds.
It's probably so easy to be a screenwriter, since your dialogue is immediately given a unique voice when it's being read by an actor, so long as it's not crap to begin with, of course ^_^
Any suggestions?
( I apologize if this has been asked about before, feel free to hit me and direct me to that post if it has ^__^' )
ETA: Thanks for all the comments, you guys! Sorry it took time for me to say it ^__^' I am kind of a lurker that way. But thank you very much! The character questionnaire looks espeically helpful, as does figuring out idiolects for everyone, which I'm sure will come as I write. I will have to try all of those things.