This is my go-to dialogue exercise anytime I want to try on a new character, and I promise the more you do it, the easier it gets (and the better your writing gets).
Picture it: You’ve got a wide cast of diverse and dynamic characters, but no matter what you do, they all sound the same. Aside from the fact that one of them really likes turtles, there’s really no telling who’s speaking at any given moment. It happens to all of us, especially in the first draft. Let’s fix it.
The Exercise
Choose a celebrity or podcast host with a similar vibe to your character. If you’re starting new, just choose someone you like. Watch a couple interviews or podcast episodes featuring this person, and take notes: Which words or phrases do they lean on? Which words and topics do they avoid? Do they ask more questions or make more statements? Do they use long complicated words or short simple words? Do they use twenty words when three would do or are they reticent and succinct? How much do they talk about themself? When and how do they repeat themself? What topics do they keep steering the conversation back toward, and how do they do it? Do they interrupt people frequently or wait to speak? What sorts of nonverbal communication do they use? What other quirks and habits do you notice about their speech patterns?
Once you have a robust list of dialogue details, try to write that person into a scene.
If you want to go simple, write a short scene in which this person—using all their dialogue quirks and habits—explains your favorite movie or book or Starbucks order to you, including your own responses to them.
If you’re looking to flesh out a specific character of yours, choose the elements from your list that would apply to the character (given their culture, background, and current situation), and write a story-relevant scene using all those elements in their dialogue. It may sound clunky at first, but just keep writing.
The Purpose
So much of the way we speak is subtle, unconscious habits we picked up from people along the way. We rarely notice how our friends talk, unless there’s something particularly weird or annoying. But every single person is their own unique mix of speech patterns and habits, and every character should be, too.
Many people will tell you to eavesdrop in coffee shops to pick up speech patterns or character quirks, and that’s not a bad idea, but I find celebrities and podcasters better because (1) they’re trained to speak well, so you get fewer filler words and more coherent sentences, (2) they usually have a consistent image that will be easier to pick up on than Susie with the oatmilk latte who has a lot of the same regional speech quirks that you do, and (3) interviews and podcast episodes are designed to keep moving and have a purpose (much like dialogue in fiction), so you’ll gather relevant data points faster than you would eavesdropping.
The goal here is not to wholesale make your character into a specific celebrity, but to actively begin noticing speech quirks that will set your characters apart from one another and apart from the masses of copy-pasted characters in fiction. Even if you only pick up one or two patterns initially (Jack says everything in triplicate, and Jill constantly interrupts her own sentences), you’ll start to train your brain to think in terms of character differentiation, and it’ll get easier and easier over time.
Do you have to differentiate character voices? Nope! Many writers get by just fine without it. But it’ll set your writing apart and give your characters a little extra depth if they don’t all sound exactly the same. Have fun, and remember that writing exercises are designed to get your story where you want it to be, not just as another “rule” you need to follow.
Happy writing!
Kristen Sommers 