Who said that?: A Dialogue Guide

Crafting unique, distinctive voices for each and every character.

Writing individual character voices is one of those skills where the best way to learn is by listening, but the problem with advice that amounts to “Just listen!” is knowing precisely what you’re listening for.

Dialogue in fiction, regardless of the medium, can be difficult in itself to craft — in writing a dialogue between characters, you want to write speech that reads as natural to how real people talk to one another, but also does what you need it to within the text, whether that’s to drive the plot forward, to show tension or conflict between characters, to be a vehicle for humour, tragedy, and so on.

But the thing about dialogue in any extended narrative is that it’s exchanged between those who are, hopefully, developed characters in their own right, and therefore will have their own unique, distinctive voices.

Crafting these voices and ensuring that they are strong and individual to the characters they belong to is a complex process that has a lot of moving parts. When we’re listening to dialogue in a radio show or a podcast, or when we’re listening to dialogue from a TV show or movie, many of us can differentiate between the current speakers based on aspects like the depth of the character’s voices, the way they use tone, their accents.

I say “many of us” because this isn’t always the case — many people who are D/deaf or Hard of Hearing may not be able to differentiate between speakers based on these more subtle cues alone, and not everyone has an ear for the more subtle distinctions between certain accents.

For me personally, the litmus test for good, strong character voice is this: if you put only your dialogue on a page, and include no dialogue tags to tell the reader who is speaking, will your reader still be able to tell who is saying what?

Before I get on with the rest of this guide, I just want to note that what I’m not going to do is include a list of ways to write dialogue and imply that some are correct and some are wrong — I have my personal preferences and pet peeves, but I believe that just listing the “right” ways to write dialogue would be just as useless as saying, “Just listen!”

My priority here is listening to character dialogue in order to craft our own, but specifically, it’s about how to listen and what to listen for.

This guide is going to be separated into 5 sections, each with a variety of questions to ask yourself about the character in front of you, what their voice sounds like, and why it sounds that way, with examples and comparisons.

The guide as a whole is pretty intensive, so feel free to give it a scan, see what bits you’re most interested in going over, and then come back to it later. This guide is written with analysis in mind, so you might want to come to it when you have a spare hour to really dig into it, as a lot of it is posed in forms of questions to ask yourself, which might be overwhelming if you just want to read through the guide casually.

What I’m going to focus on instead is a list of core questions you can ask yourself while analysing character voice that you can then turn around and apply to your own work. It’s by no means an exhaustive list of every question you could or should ask yourself when listening to dialogue or writing it, but my hope is to cover a wide range here to give you enough angles to work with.

Last disclaimer is that I’m a white, English-speaking guy for whom English is my first language — we all have personal biases in terms of how we process language use and conversation, but as a white first language English-speaker, my biases are more likely to be accepted as truth or default without further examination.

Part of the reason crafting strong voice is so important is because of the ways language use and accent particularly can be policed and targeted for prejudicial reasons, and one of the things it’s important to be cognizant of as writers from any background, but particularly as white EFL (English First Language) writers, is harmful stereotypes and stigma associated with certain accents, dialects, and vocal tics. It’s not just bad, lazy writing — it’s alienating to readers who may be from those backgrounds or have those tics, and can uphold harmful misrepresentations that bear no similarity to real life.

So, the five sections are:

• how a voice sounds I (tone, pitch, texture, volume)
• where a voice comes from (accent and dialect, as influenced by the character’s background, age, class, time period, etc)
• what a voice says (choices made in speech, including character expressions, language use, direct versus indirect communication, personality)
• how a voice sounds II (speech patterns, filler words, verbal stims, tics, repetitions)
• what a voice means (values communicated in speech, additional information that can be inferred from speech analysis that isn’t just from accent and slang)

These sections are loosely grouped and all of them will and do have crossover, each of them impacting the other, but splitting into sections just makes things easier to digest than a big wall of text.

How a voice sounds I

Let’s start with an iconic voice.

Chances are, even if you’ve never even watched a clip from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you might have attempted an impression of Gollum, or would recognise one if you heard one.

Gollum just has a voice that’s incredibly recognisable — yes, a great deal of that is to do with his speech patterns and repetitions, his devotion to his precious, but before we get into the words he uses, let’s think about how the actual voice sounds.

You don’t have to watch the whole clip, and if the above isn’t available in your country, any Gollum clip will do!

Listening to the above, how would we describe Gollum’s voice? Not the words he says or the way he pronounces them, to begin with, but the actual sound of his voice.

Where is his voice coming from?

Where does it sound like Gollum is speaking from?

From his diaphragm, from the base of his throat, from the back of his mouth, from the front of his mouth, from his nose?

If you try to imitate Gollum’s voice, do you open your mouth wide, or do you keep your lips close together? Do you speak with your lips covering your teeth, or do you pull your lips back and speak through your teeth? How much breath are you putting behind the words?

Do you hear how he breathes, how he hisses and lisps wetly on the inhalations, how he growls and moans on his exhalations? Do you think those sounds are voluntary or involuntary? If they are involuntary, how do you think they affect how he speaks?

How would you describe the pitch of Gollum’s voice? Is it very deep, or is it very high? Does his pitch remain consistent, or does it vary widely from sentence to sentence, word to word?

Do you think, compared to any other speakers, that Gollum speaks very loudly, or very quietly?

Think about the quality of the sound Gollum produces — not the actual volume, but how strong or full it is. Is it smooth or hoarse? Gruff and gravelly, or soft and sing-song? Is it fruity, musical, theatrical, dramatic? Is it monotonous or boring to the ear? Is it whiny? Is it commanding?

Would you say that his voice is clear? Do you think he projects it well? Would it be easy to understand what he was saying from further way, assuming his volume remained the same? Do you think this voice would be easy to ignore?

Do you think Gollum’s voice is nice to listen to? Would you want to listen to him read a book, or recite poetry? Do you think the actual sound of his voice is pleasant to the ear? Why, or why not? If Gollum is aware of his voice and the effect it might have on others, how do you think he feels about it? How does this affect how he modulates his tone when speaking to new people, or when he’s trying to de-escalate a situation?

I picked Gollum’s voice as a first for this exercise because Gollum’s voice is an extreme that evokes strong reactions. It can be extremely easy to brush off a voice as “nice” to listen to or “unpleasant” to listen to, but thinking about what makes it that way can make it easier to create distinctive voices.

Gollum’s voice is largely considered to be unpleasant and frightening in itself, because his voice is so hoarse and raspy, he radically changes pitch and tone, he growls and squeaks and wails, he lisps, he hisses. Even if he had a speech pattern more like another character’s, say Frodo’s, his voice would still be difficult to understand and unpleasant compared to others, which would heavily affect how others think of him and interact with him.

So, let’s look at the other end of the spectrum, at the voice of an icon who’s lauded as incredibly pleasant to listen to: Morgan Freeman.

Listen to a little of the above clip from The Shawshank Redemption or another clip of Morgan Freeman’s voice, either while acting or doing an interview, and go back through all the questions I asked about Gollum.

Imagine Andy Serkis and Morgan Freeman swap dialogue, but not voices. Red’s speech from Shawshank doesn’t really sound the same when hissed, whistled, and growled through — and Gollum’s ramblings don’t have have the same unsettling impact when presented in a smooth, confident drawl.

Our stereotypes can definitely influence the way that we take interpret certain voices, particularly when we’re listening to them with or without certain visual cues.

Look at each of the people in the above photograph. What do you assume about the pitch or quality of each of their voices? Which of them do you think will have high voices, and which will have low voices? Which will sound smooth, and which will sound raspy? Do you assume any of them will have singsong qualities, or will sound monotone?

Why do you assume these things about them? Do you think that you can always tell what someone’s voice sounds like just by looking at them? Do you make assumptions about how people look based on hearing their voices, or how someone’s voice will sound based on how they look?

Do you expect shorter people to have higher voices than taller people? When you think about people who are fat versus people who are muscular versus people who are skinny — what assumptions might you make about their voices? Will those assumptions change depending on whether those people are men or women?

Do you have different standards for how a man’s voice sounds versus a woman’s voice? For example, are you likely to find a man’s voice more soothing, or a woman’s voice? Assuming one was a woman and one was a man, would you ascribe the same vocal qualities to a pilot, a steward, a bartender, a rabbi, a singer? What would change across the gendered lines, and why?

When you consider genderless or androgynous voices, what qualities do you ascribe to them? Do you dehumanise the voices that sound androgynous to you — associate them with being alien, inhuman, or in some way robotic?

Does someone’s sexuality affect what you expect their voice to sound like in terms of pitch, smoothness, lilt? Are there ways in which you expect a gay man’s voice to sound, or a gay woman’s? Do these assumptions also apply to bisexual people of any gender?

Do you make assumptions of people’s race based on how their voices sound? Do you associate some traits, again, like pitch, smoothness or hoarseness, lilt, with whiteness or with Blackness, with South Asians or East Asians, with indigenous people of different nations? Why do you associate those vocal traits and not others?

How do you think that age shows in people’s voice? Some voices deepen with age, or become more hoarse, more raspy, more breathless. Young voices might sound higher or less resonant to the ear, might be less even — is this always the case?

And lastly, consider disability and different neurotypes — when you imagine an autistic man, what assumptions do you make about his speech? Do you assume things about his vocal pitch, about speech impediments he may have, or assume that he will speak in a monotone? Do you ascribe these same assumptions to autistic women or nonbinary people?

Do you assume that D/deaf people will also have certain vocal traits? Do you assume any specific vocal traits of people with breathing difficulties, those who may wheeze or become out of breath in conversation?

Of all the above, are the associations with these traits negative or positive?

Do you use certain traits — for example, tonelessness or speaking in a monotone — to communicate that your character is unfeeling or cruel? Why?

Do all of your male Black characters have the same kind of deep voice? Do you always write young women as having a high-pitched or “annoying” voice? Do you associate women with raspy voices with age or injury?

The actual sound of a character’s voice can be something that’s difficult to describe on the page, but once you make an impact and make something distinctive, it’s something that can really linger with a character and make a huge impact as to how they’re read, how they’re presented and interpreted, and so on.

Where a voice comes from

From left to right, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, via Wikipedia; Mr T as B.A. Baracus, via WriteUps.Org; Bruce Lee as Cheng Chao-an, via Wikipedia.

If you recognise any, or likely all, of the above actors, in their roles in Star Trek: The Original Series, The A-Team, and The Big Boss respectively, you probably imagine them with drastically different voices and accents, but all three of them were born in and grew up in the USA in the mid-20th century.

Leonard Nimoy was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1931; Mr T was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1952; and Lee Jun-fan, Bruce Lee, was born in San Francisco, California, in 1940, and all of them were professional actors.

Does this mean they have the same, or even remotely similar accents when speaking English?

Not at all, not in the least.

It’s very easy to boil someone’s accent down to being based on their nationality — we think of American or British accents, French or German accents, Japanese or Filipino accents, etc, but honestly, these are best used as descriptors of accent umbrellas rather than as descriptors of individual, distinct accents.

There is no such thing as a singular American accent — for many of us, we might think of the Midwestern accent cultivated for film and television in the USA as a “neutral” accent, but this doesn’t make any of the other myriad American accents less American.

There is certainly no such thing as a singular British accent — much of the time, when people describe a British accent, they tend to refer to Received Pronunciation or upper class English accents, especially those common among classically trained actors.

With that said, there are broadly words, terms, and phrases that typically belong to British dialects of English that don’t belong to American ones and vice versa — Mum versus Mom, a car’s boot versus its trunk, a jumper versus a sweater are a handful of examples, but many words can change between different dialects from different areas of Britain and Ireland —”sweatpants” are unheard of, but you might have tracksuit bottoms, trackies, jogging bottoms, joggers, etc.

An accent is the particular or distinctive way that a person pronounces the words they speak; a dialect is the language specific to a particular region or community.

These things aren’t mutually exclusive, and nor are they always mutually inclusive. Region by region, community by community, you will always have overlap of certain linguistic flourishes, uses of slang, and uses of dialect which will impact how “pure” or “complete” that dialect seems to be — many people live between communities, or live close by communities they themselves are not apart of but impact their language.

So, with all that taken into account, trying to think about what sort of accent and dialect a character speaks with…

Where the fuck do you start?

If you’re from a country in Britain or Ireland, or if English is a second language and you were taught by an English-speaker from these islands, this British-Irish dialect quiz by the New York Times is tremendous.

It asks you a lot of questions about what you might call certain things, how you might use some descriptors, and based on the array of words you use, it lights up areas of the map where your influence appears mostly to come from:

The British-Irish Dialect Quiz
Do you call the common playground game tag, tig or it? Is that bit of bread on the table a roll, a bap or a bun? And do…www.nytimes.com

If you’re from the USA or learned English from US Americans, they also have a really cool one here:

How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk
Create an account or log in to take the quiz and share your results.www.nytimes.com

What I really loved about doing both of these quizzes is that they both drew my attention to certain aspects of dialect and accent I wasn’t always aware of — especially as someone who grew up in South Wales on a main road, with a few Northern English and Northern Irish influences on my dialect use in the house, and who now lives in Ireland, where a lot of my everyday dialect and slang is at home with the West of Ireland, I try to be aware of where certain quirks in my speech come from, and it’s so so interesting to be able to track certain aspects on maps like those above.

When we consider the way in which someone speaks and also the dialect or general lexical sets they use, we’re going to be considering the below factors:

• Geographic location — What is the character’s country of origin? Where in that country do they live? Do they live in the same country now? Do they travel or move often? Did they stay longer in some areas than others? Are there any strongly developed dialects in the area they grew up in — for example, dialect common to certain nearby neighbourhoods?
• Social class —Is the character rich or poor? Did they grow up in poverty, are they working class, middle class, upper class? Did they have an established address, or did they move often from place to place? Did they have access to classrooms, to libraries, to private tutors, to online resources, to community educators? If yes, was this education interrupted or patchy due to interrupting factors, e.g. a need to work to support the family, or a need to leave mainstream education via classrooms for private tutelage? Does the character’s social class affect the area(s) in which they live, the extent to which their communities are close or more distant?
• Occupation — What is your character’s occupation? What were their parent or guardians’ occupation(s)? What are the occupation(s) of their closest friends, family, or room mates? Are their words, phrases, idioms, and other language facets peculiar to those occupations? Would outsiders to those occupation(s) be able to find those linguistic quirks easy to follow, or would they struggle to? Is your character cognizant of this? Is your character extremely involved in a hobby or sport that may also have particular language facets to it? Might this affect the character’s language and communication style?
• Age —Is your character young or old? Growing up, did they spend a lot of time with people their own age, or were they often the only child in a room? What about now, do they primarily interact with people their own age, or those who are older or younger than themselves? How long ago was your character born? How has language changed since they learned to speak their first language, and/or any other languages they might use? Are they up to date with people their own age, or with modern slang and terminology? If your character is older and speaks an endangered or uncommon first language, how does this affect how they use it?
• Ethnicity and Culture — How does your character relate to their ethnicity? Do they belong to an ethnicity or ethnicities that are considered to be very common or rarer in their local area? If their ethnicity is not the “dominant” in their local area, do they belong to or interact with communities of those with the same ethnicity? Do they buy from certain markets or businesses, eat at certain restaurants, attend festivals, or attend classes or other community events run by members of the same ethnic group(s) and culture(s)? Does this affect the languages they may or may not speak, or the slang and dialect they might use?
• Religion — Is your character actively religious? Did they grow up in a religious community? When attending religious events, performing acts of worship, or saying prayers, celebrating certain festivals, etc, does your character use the same language(s) as their primary language within the text? Is their religion common in the area they live in, and is it well established? If religious events do occur in the primary language, would the words specific to that religion be known by the general populace?
• Gender and Sexuality — Does your character belong to any specific groups because of their gender and/or sexuality? Do they belong to any gender-segregated communities? Is their use of language or dialect likely to be policed or analysed in more than usual detail because of their gender? Are they likely to use certain code in order to be safe in their sexuality? Is there any slang that is particular to their community, e.g. if they’re LGBTQ, is there any language that might be common within that community but not the “mainstream”?
• Language blending — Is the language they’re speaking in the text their first language? If no, where did they primarily learn it? Do they regularly use other languages that affect how they use their primary language within the text? Do they often use compound languages or blended languages (e.g. Wenglish = Welsh + English)? Do languages they use affect how they speak the structures they use speaking another language (.e.g in Ireland, it’s common to say “I have Irish” instead of “I speak Irish” due to influence from Irish/Gaeilge, and other languages like Yiddish can have a similar influence)? Do they use second languages to fill in gaps in their knowledge, or do they do so to express meanings that simply aren’t communicated in the primary language (e.g. communicating subtleties of affection or respect, untranslatable terms and words)? Are there any idioms in one language that they might struggle to adapt to another? Does your character find it easy or difficult to switch between languages and dialects, if they do so?

And if all of the above wasn’t enough, with all the above taken into account, please consider:

• Are there aspects from different of the above sections that may contradict each other in your character’s accents, or that they may overlap?
• Is your character proud of their accent or dialect? Are they ashamed of their accent or dialect? Have they attempted to learn another or learn multiple accents or dialects? Does their original dialect and accent make an appearance when they return home or reunite with family, or in instances of high emotion?
• Are there any reasons your character may choose to emphasise certain aspects of their accent or dialect over others? For example, if they have a difficult relationship with one of their parents and therefore desire to remove that parent’s influence on their voice, or if they are trying to show another person how close they are to their community?
• Is there any reason your character might wish to, or might be expected to, obscure some aspect of their identity by sanitising their accent or using a different dialect of their primary language? Will your character face prejudice due to their social class, ethnicity, religion, or something else that may be revealed in their language use?
• Is your character’s accent or dialect stereotyped as difficult to understand by outsiders? Will assumptions be made about unrelated aspects of your character’s background because of their accent — e.g. how much education they have had?
• For sci-fi and fantasy writers, if a Universal Translator or similar technology is used, how does it translate accent and dialect? What happens if it comes across words or emphases that are untranslatable?
• For ancient or immortal characters, how have they fared with the change and evolution of language since they were born? Do they find it easy or difficult to pick up new slang? Do they use old-fashioned or out-of-date language constructions? Do their metaphors and idioms still translate in the modern tongue?

My last thing I would say about accent specifically, and not about dialect, would be this.

Sometimes, when writing prose, people make a decision to write accents phonetically.

There are degrees to which one can sound out an accent phonetically — you might choose to use apostrophes to show certain contractions in speech, certain missed sounds (like Gs or Ts). Much of the time, accent can be communicated simply by using a few relevant contractions or linguistic structures common to the accent and/or dialect, as well as describing the sound of the accent — the lilt or drawl, the clipped sounds of the vowels or consonants, etc.

Alternatively, you might spell words phonetically in a way that you think put across how they are being said.

It is not to say that this is inherently bad, as this can often work for emphasis when showing two people’s different pronunciation of a word, for example, however, when a person chooses to write an accent phonetically throughout that character’s dialogue, it can range from uncomfortable or irritating to wildly offensive, or simply embarrassing for the author in question.

If you want to write an accent phonetically, please consider why you wish to do so. Is it to emphasise how difficult the person is to understand to everyone, or simply to your protagonist? Are you implying that the accent or dialect the character is using is somehow uneducated or humorous in nature? Is your goal for the reader to laugh at the speaker? Is your goal for the reader to be frightened of or baffled by the speaker?

Are you relying on lazy racial or ethnic stereotypes to make your point? If your goal is to make a joke… Is it actually funny?

When writing an accent phonetically, do you expect people with that accent to actually read the work you have written? What do you expect them to think of it, if anything? Are you assuming that someone with that accent won’t read your work? Why are you making that assumption?

Just some food for thought.

What a voice says

Strangely enough, this aspect of character dialogue is the one I often feel is most neglected.

It’s the character’s actual character.

So much of the time, especially if you’re watching a television series that has multiple writers from episode to episode, you’ll often find yourself frustrated with the way a character is acting, because you think, “But this character just wouldn’t say that!”

I’m basically going to be looking at in this section the choices individual characters make in speech, and the ways in which they choose to express themselves as a result of their personality traits, their preferences, their priorities, and so forth.

Let’s talk about what your character says and crucially what they don’t say, and also how they say it — or not.

• Extrovert or introvert? In general, does your character like other people? More specifically, do they like or dislike the people they are currently with? Do they get more energy from talking with people, or from relaxing in their own space? Do they prefer being amongst large groups of people, or do they prefer one-on-one discussions with individuals or small groups? How comfortable is your character with attention? Are they socially awkward, do they struggle with social cues, or do they find it very easy to command other people’s attention? Is your character charismatic? Does your character know if they are/n’t?
• Self Esteem — How confident is your character? How do they respond to criticism? Are they frightened of being interrupted, contradicted with, argued with? Do they fold quickly if someone disagrees with them? Do they have a high opinion of themselves, or a low opinion of themselves? Are they likely to advocate on their own behalf, and defend themselves? Are they likely not to self-advocate, but to advocate on behalf of others?
• Knowledge and Expertise — Does your character know what they’re talking about? Do they have a strong understanding of current affairs or politics — and crucially, do they feel that they have a strong understanding? Does the way that your character talks change based on how much they understand the subject at hand? Is your character’s knowledge and expertise something they are open about, or something they try to keep secret or under wraps, especially if that knowledge and expertise is in some way illicit? Is your character often viewed as an expert — and/or does your character like to present themselves as an expert? How good is your character at feigning expertise they do not have? Do they have formal qualifications in their area of expertise? Do these formal qualifications or lack thereof impact how much other people respect this expertise, and how does your character feel about that?
• Language Use — An extension of the above — does your character feel confident communicating in the current language they’re using? Is this their first language? Is their education in this language formal or informal? Is there any specialist language involved in the current situation that the character isn’t familiar with? How does your character feel about learning new words or new turns of phrase? Do they struggle to learn new words or pick up new language? Are they likely to police the language or others, or attempt to control other people’s language use? For example, do they attempt to exert power over others or assert their expertise by correcting grammar or pronunciation errors? Do they feel negatively about slang or certain language use? Do they code-switch with intention, or incidentally? Do they notice when others code-switch? How do they feel about this?
• References and Popular Culture — Does your character make a lot of references in every day conversation? Is your character conscious of whether those around them share knowledge of whatever your character is referencing? For example, does your character frequently make reference to academic texts or arcane knowledge that other characters find difficult to follow or understand? Is your character aware of other people’s ignorance or lack of interest in this topic? Does your character infodump or speak at length about their favourite topics? If your character is religious, do they regularly quote and reference scripture? Do they regularly reference religious philosophy or ideals in conversation? Is your character very familiar with popular culture in the context of your world? For example, if the character is very well-read, has watched a lot of television, have listened to a lot of music, do they often reference those media and genres of media? Do they quote fictional characters or celebrities often? Do they quote any catch phrases?
• Manners and Politeness — How seriously does your character take respecting others? Are they, in general, very polite or very rude? Do their personal views of manners and politeness impact how they conduct themselves in conversation with certain people — are they more or less respectful to people of certain genders, races, castes, cultural groups, professions, ages? For example, do they take respecting their elders very seriously, or do they think negatively of people in certain professions, meaning they’re going to speak disrespectfully to them? Do they often curse or swear? Do they use a lot of contractions or slang? Do they code-switch or change the language they are using as an act of good manners? Does your character feel anxious about being perceived as rude or impolite, or are they hyper-vigilant of perceived acts of impoliteness? Does your character often insult or undercut others? Do they feel any guilt about doing so?
• Bigotry and Prejudice — When talking about certain topics, does your character speak in ways to devalue those topics and their inherent worth? Do they do this frequently when speaking about certain groups of people, such as people of certain genders, sexualities, races, castes, cultures, etc? Does this character frequently use, unconsciously or consciously, slurs, phrases, or turns of phrase that are rooted in bigotry or supremacy of one group of people over another? Does your character fetishise, sexualise, or praise other people or cultures in ways that are condescending and/or intended to objectify or commodify those people or cultures? Do they become defensive when they are asked not to use specific turns of phrase? Do they use language specifically to push their superiority over others? Do they do this consciously and intentionally, or do they do so unconsciously from a position of power and influence?
• Direct vs. Indirect Communication — Connected to the above point of manners and politeness — how comfortable does your character feel asking direct or blunt questions? Does your character tend to state things plainly, or do they couch the things they say in a lot of politeness, or speak about some topics in a very roundabout way? Does your character consider it rude or impolite to talk about some things too directly? Are they likely to use certain innuendos to discuss certain matters, or declare some matters inappropriate to speak about entirely? Is your character assertive, aggressive, passive aggressive, or passive? Is your character likely to avoid saying certain things or voicing some thoughts out loud? Are there some things your character will absolutely never say or communicate to others?
• Positive vs Negative Communication — Does your character typically express themselves positively or negatively? Are they an optimist or a pessimist? Do they focus more on the positive or negative aspects of a situation? Do they first address good news or bad news? Is your character free with their praise or their criticism? Do they struggle to see the good in bad situations? Conversely, so they struggle to meaningfully address negative things? How does this affect they how address certain topics or talk to certain people? How does your character respond when other people point out their positive or negative bias?
• Power Dynamics and Control—How much does your character care about controlling the situations they are in? Does your character consider it important to have power or influence over others? How does your character feel about being outdone or one-upped in conversation? Do they feel a need to be impressive to others? How does this impact how they speak? Does your character worry about not being seen as in control or powerful? Historically, has your character experienced a great deal of power or influence over others? Has this changed or fluctuated over time?
• Truth and Deception — Does your character always tell the truth? Does your character tell lies? If your character lies often, do they do so on purpose, or is it reflexive? Is honesty or dishonesty a big part of your character’s life? Have they previously had to rely on compulsive honesty or dishonesty in order to survive? Are they good at lying? When they tell the truth, is it perceived by other characters as sincere? How does your character feel when they are accused of dishonesty, correctly or incorrectly? Is your character dishonest without directly telling lies — for example, do they intentionally avoid certain conversational topics or obscure facts?
• Emotional Honesty — How in-touch is your character with their emotions? How comfortable or confident do they feel displaying their real emotions to others? Do they feel the need to hide or obscure certain emotions? Do they become stoic or abruptly angry when the conversation turns to certain emotionally impactful subjects? Are there some emotions that they struggle to control? If your character becomes emotional, and people they do not trust are witnessing this, do they lash out or attempt to flee?
• Expressing Affection — How comfortable is your character telling people they love them? Do they do so often? Is it something they only do under pressure or under duress? Do they believe affection should be kept private? Do they believe affection or praise must be earned before it can be given? Are they very free with their affection? Do they verbally express affection frequently, to a lot of different people? How verbose are their expressions of affection? How specific are they? Do they express affection in indirect ways, such as praising other characters’ hard work, standing up for them or defending them in conversation, or by using nicknames? Do they use terms of affection such as brother, love, darling, honey, sweetheart? Do they come up with personalised nicknames for certain loved ones? If they are less comfortable expressing affection, does their affection for a character manifest in the other direction — for example, are they more likely to insult or criticise a character they love? Do they play fight or playfully insult other characters? Do they sometimes cross the line?
• Personal Language— Does your character have any catchphrases or pieces of slang that they constantly use, and that set them apart from other characters? Do other characters point out or notice these catchphrases? Do other characters incorporate these catchphrases into their own vocabulary, consciously or unconsciously? Are there any phrases, figures of speech, or words that your character regularly uses that they’ve inherited from other characters or previous professions or hobbies they’ve devoted themselves to? If your character has a distinctive way of expressing themselves that is recognisable to their friends or enemies? What combination of qualities makes it so distinctive?

How a voice sounds II

This section is one that I love exploring in my own work, but it’s a pretty heavy hammer — a lot of people have very distinctive vocal tics that aren’t necessarily something that they do consciously, but can make their voice incredibly and immediately recognisable.

There are some voices that are very distinctive because of certain tics in them — Elvis Presley’s “uh huh”s, for example, are often what people will immediately incorporate into their speech when trying to do impressions of him.

Here’s an incomplete list of some verbal tics, little idiosyncrasies, that you might notice in other people’s speech:

• unusually frequent use of filler words and which filler words they use, especially if they use a lot of filler words and phrases — some people might regularly use fillers like um, uh, ah, hm, but there are filler words such as like, so, etc
• some people use phrases in the place of individual filler words, especially idioms — Man of the Match, a song by the Axis of Awesome, has a great example of using filler phrases when they parody a sportsman giving a post-match interview (lyrics on Genius)
• repeating certain words or entire phrases mid-sentence (Dionysus in Hades does this frequently) or repeating (especially in a mutter or mumble) words or phrases other people say in conversation with them
• unusual speech patterns, especially from characters who are very old or from a different species — they might change sentence structure or word order, use unexpected pronouns, omit certain words from phrases or sentences, etc
• stutters, stammers, slurs, and other speech impediments
• vocal stims— a stim is a self-stimulating behaviour, and everyone stims, but stims are often considered especially noticeable in autistic and other neurodivergent people. Vocal stims like whistles, pops, hums, etc or repeated phrases are common enough, but there are also vocal stims like shouts and yells in conversation, sudden high-pitched noises or screams, etc.

One of the examples I absolutely love to use when talking about people with certain distinctive verbal tics is Jeff Goldblum!

Jeff Goldblum repeats certain words and phrases, interrupts his own trains of thought, uses certain filler words and sounds, and on top of certain other verbal tendencies — he uses a lot of innuendo, he uses “old-timey” exclamations like jeeze and golly, he trails off and uses atypical and unexpected inflections — it lends to a really distinctive way of speaking.

If you ever want an example of what Jeff Goldblum sounds like with 90% of those tics and idiosyncrasies taken away to compare, watch one of Wes Anderson’s live-action films — Goldblum is in a lot of them, and you’ll notice that his speech is very controlled with a lot of the Goldblum-iness ironed out.

(You’ll also notice that Anderson somehow glues his hands down, because he also doesn’t gesticulate or stim with his hands the way that he does in most roles!)

When thinking about any of the above and specifically how they occur in disabled and neurodivergent people, it’s important to keep in mind that disabled voices are far more likely to be policed and criticised — those with stammers and stutters or other speech impediments are often interrupted, mocked, and attacked in conversation; vocal stims and other autistic behaviours, such as repeating phrases, are frequently nitpicked at and prompt abuse from neurotypical people, especially neurotypical parents of autistic children.

Therefore, when considering verbal idiosyncrasies, remember that some are repressed or trained out of — and that this repression and training is not always consensual, and can even be traumatic.

Many people stutter or stammer as children, but attend speech therapy in order to suppress that stammer, but in high pressure situations, the stammer or stutter can re-emerge — it’s also important to remember that for some people, speech therapy doesn’t work!

Drew Lynch, the stand-up comedian, has a neurogenic stutter caused by an injury to his throat, for example:

What a voice means

This last part I’m going to talk about is related to the What A Voice Says section, but it’s a lot more subtle, and isn’t something that you’ll always want to introduce with every character.

This sort of stuff can be really really useful especially for stage and radio plays, and also for longer narratives which put an emphasis on word usage and phrase usage. It’s great to be aware of for high-stakes political plots, mysteries, but it’s also just perfect for comedy.

What you’re looking for here is unconscious word or language use that is unintentionally revealing, especially of a secret or the big plot twist, et cetera.

For example, you might see:

Freudian Slips — The most basic one here, but a Freudian Slip is when you accidentally slip up in conversation, using the wrong word or name, which might be revealing that your mind is elsewhere — e.g. in FRIENDS, when Ross calls his fiancée Rachel at the altar instead of her own name, etc.

Incorporating other character’s expressions into their everyday speech — Consider two characters that are never seen “on screen” together, and from the perspective of your protagonist, don’t know one another. Character A has certain unique inflections in their speech — they regularly use certain idioms or phrases, they consistently use specific language, et cetera. After the plot goes on for a while, Character B begins to use those same inflections, despite having still never met “on screen”.

What does this imply to you, the reader?

This sort of thing can be a really fun way to show secret relationships, but it can also be highly revealing of secret feelings — for showing a found family dynamic, for example, where one character views another as a parental figure, and begins mimicking or copying a lot of their speech?

To use Supernatural as an example, Dean Winchester frequently speaks in the same way his father, John Winchester does, but that doesn’t really count as a father-son relationship — what does, however, is how when Sam and Dean Winchester begin to associate more regularly with Bobby Singer, they frequently begin picking up phrases Bobby introduces to them, curse in the way that he does, etc.

It’s such a subtle but meaningful way to add depth and evidence of character’s relationships and their affection for one another, especially when it comes to unsaid or unexpressed feelings, such as in found family dynamics, or secret and repressed feelings, such as in crushes and romantic attachments.

Another way you can do stuff like this, if you have a character who’s a spy or has a secret past, is for them to use words and phrases associated with an organisation, quoting a handbook that they shouldn’t have knowledge, or regularly using certain phrases in conversation that are associated with another region or loyalty, even if their accent matches the role they’re taking on.

Textbook avoidance — You can also look at characters who avoid using certain words or phrases, especially to the extent that it becomes noticeable in the text.

Think of someone in your life who seems to be genetically incapable of saying anything positive about a situation. Everyone knows someone like this, someone who constantly criticises or undercuts others, who only ever sees the glass almost empty, let alone half-empty — think about the rare moment when they try to say something positive.

It’s often cringe-worthy, right? It’s extremely awkward and uncomfortable, it’s someone who’s often trying very hard to say a positive thing but simply can’t, often even attempting to voice something positive but twisting it into criticism in the process, etc.

There’s a lot of subtle meaning you can put into things like that, especially when it comes to characters who take politeness or manners to the extreme — a character who is so repressed, for example, that they’re frightened to say a word like “penis”, and do everything to avoid saying it; characters who desperately avoid ever having to criticise or praise someone if they’re wired best for one more than the other; characters who can’t say “I love you” or voice affection.

When a character tells you the plot twist — This is my absolute favourite.

The most delightful thing in the world, for me personally, is when you read a story, you get to the end, you reread it later on — and suddenly you see where the evil character was constantly telling you that they’re evil, constantly telling everyone their plots and plans, but because you, the reader, is missing a crucial piece of the puzzle, you don’t realise exactly what they’re doing!

This is wonderful for characters who are narrators and are sharing a sort of schadenfraude with the audience, or just for characters who are very smug and self-satisfied — NBC Hannibal’s Hannibal Lecter constantly makes cannibalism puns in conversation, and it’s so much fun!

The other people he’s sat down to dinner with don’t know what the joke is, but Lecter does, his villainous friends do, and crucially, we, the audience does!

This sort of irony is great fun for villains, but if you have a character that’s set up as a sort of Cassandra — a character who is constantly accidentally predicting what will happen, and has an unknowing flair for divination — you can have a lot of fun with this dialogue flair too!

Additional Resources

If any of the questions about different life experiences made you take pause because you genuinely weren’t sure how to answer those questions because the experiences were not like yours, Writing the Other have a huge number of resources for writing different experiences, especially in regards to race, sexuality, gender, and disability. They have some great videos on their YouTube channel, especially conferences between different authors and creators which are incredibly useful!

I have a few absolute favourite media which I consider to have some extremely tight screenwriting and/or extremely strong character-led dialogue, and specifically very unique individual character voices, which are:

• Cabin Pressure (Radio comedy. Comedy, 4 seasons between 2008 and 2012. Written by John Finnemore.)
• The Great White Hype (Movie, 1996, dir. Richard Hudlin. Sports comedy.)
• Deep Cover (Movie, 1992, dir. Bill Duke. Action thriller.)
• Hustlers (Movie, 2019, dir. Lorene Scafaria. Comedy/drama.)
• The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett, particularly The Truth, Going Postal, and Lords and Ladies.
• Jeeves and Wooster (TV Series, 4 series from 1990–1993, but I only really recommend S1 and S2, as S3–4 are much weaker. With that said, the whole series is very directly adapted from the Jeeves books by P.G. Wodehouse, so I would recommend those).

If you’re specifically looking at writing comedy, even if you’re never planning on pursuing stand-up yourself, I can’t recommend taking a stand-up special you enjoy and analysing it line-by-line yourself.

I do it all the time with John Mulaney’s work, just take everything apart to keep looking at it from different angles, and see what makes it so funny to you personally, but like…

Just comparing John Mulaney’s The Comeback Kid to Live At Radio City, for example, you can really see how much his Chicago accent has jumped out since he’s moved from New York City back to Chicago. In general, though, Mulaney has a specific distinctive way of speaking that’s very fast-paced and replete with constant references (ADHD mood, biggest love and respect for it), and I could spend hours picking his voice apart and applying what I learn elsewhere.

I know this guide has been a huge swathe of text, but I hope it’s useful!

This is a real passion of mine, and I absolutely love dissecting character’s speech and language use, because it’s just so rewarding, and when character voice is really taken seriously and a lot of effort is put into it, a huge amount of depth is added into the work, and it becomes so much more fun to take in.

So… Good luck? And have fun!