From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   On Tuesday, April 22, 2014 5:57:07 PM UTC-4, Michelle Bottorff wrote:   
   >    
   > My take on making characters not sound the same is to give them   
   >    
   > different personalities, and figure that as long as the personality is   
   >    
   > coming through in the dialog, of course it won't sound the same as the   
   >    
   > dialog of anyone else.     
   >    
   >    
   I think the most severe situation is to make secondary or tertiary characters'   
   dialog seem distinct, when they have the same rank or place in society, same   
   gender and age, same ethnic speech pattern, and so on.  Probably, their   
   personality traits need to    
   be chosen specifically to make their dialog distinct, as where one of two   
   soldiers habitually complains about his lot, or what he perceives to be the   
   king's strategy, or is generally clownish or sarcastic.  Then you probably   
   don't even need dialog tags,    
   because that character is assumed to take the cynical position in any   
   argument.  The personality traits that don't directly affect their dialog   
   wouldn't matter.   
      
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