“In the book Finding Your Writer’s Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction, authors Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall tell us this: “Great impersonators throw aside their own way of talking and take on the voice of another. As you no work with character, letting yourself become possessed by this person, you want to abandon the automatic voice in your head that offers dialogue as you would speak it, and become the voice of this other person.” Okay, it sounds like channeling. We’ve gone from Zen to New Age. Call it what you want—it works.” (Gloria Kempton, Write Great Fiction – Dialogue)
Writing Exercise: Becoming the Voice That Speaks
Key Writing Techniques
1. Character Immersion: Writers must suppress their natural speaking patterns and fully inhabit their character’s voice. This requires deep engagement with the character’s background, emotional state, and worldview.
2. Authentic Dialogue: Effective dialogue should reflect a character’s specific way of speaking rather than defaulting to the writer’s voice. Syntax, vocabulary, rhythm, and subtext must align with the character’s personality, experiences, and setting.
3. Emotional and Psychological Projection: Writers must embody their characters so fully that their thoughts, emotions, and motivations emerge organically in dialogue and internal monologue.
Writing Prompt (500 words)
Write a scene in which a character receives unexpected news that upends their world. The news itself may be life-changing (a diagnosis, a revelation, a betrayal) or seemingly mundane (a sudden realization, a forgotten memory resurfacing). The challenge is to inhabit the character so fully that every spoken and unspoken response feels unique to them, rather than reflecting the writer’s instinctive phrasing.
Guidelines:
• Choose a character with a distinct voice—someone unlike yourself in age, background, profession, or temperament.
• Let their voice shape how they process the news. Do they ramble? Speak in clipped sentences? Use humor to deflect? Struggle to articulate emotion?
• Avoid over-explaining their feelings. Trust the rhythm and word choices in their dialogue to reveal their state of mind.
Evaluation Criteria
• Voice Authenticity: The character’s speech and internal monologue must feel distinct from the writer’s natural voice.
• Dialogue Specificity: Every spoken line should sound like something only this character would say. Generic phrasing weakens the effect.
• Emotional Depth: The way the character reacts to the news must reveal their personality, history, and emotional complexity without exposition.
• Consistency in Speech Patterns: If a character is formal, colloquial, hesitant, or verbose, these traits should remain consistent throughout the scene.
Strong vs. Weak Examples
Weak:
“Wow,” Mark said. “I can’t believe it. I mean, I guess I always suspected, but hearing it out loud is… a lot. What do I even do with this?”
Strong:
Mark let out a short laugh, the kind that doesn’t reach the eyes. “Figures. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Jesus, why not? Guess that explains a lot, huh?” He drummed his fingers against the table, then stopped. “So, what, you expect me to cry now?”
Workshopping & Revision Questions
• Does the dialogue sound like something this character, and only this character, would say?
• What does the way they receive the news reveal about their personality and emotional state?
• Are there any places where the writer’s own voice slips in?
• How does subtext work in the scene? Does what’s left unsaid add to the emotional impact?
Recommended Reading
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout – particularly for how dialogue reveals personality and unspoken emotions.
• Train Dreams by Denis Johnson – for deeply immersive character voice and interiority.
• The Round House by Louise Erdrich – for distinct and varied character voices across generations.
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