From: willreich_77@yahoo.com   
      
   On Thursday, April 24, 2014 2:31:44 PM UTC-4, Michelle Bottorff wrote:   
   > William Vetter  wrote:   
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   > > On Tuesday, April 22, 2014 5:57:07 PM UTC-4, Michelle Bottorff wrote:   
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   > > > My take on making characters not sound the same is to give them   
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   > > > different personalities, and figure that as long as the personality is   
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   > > > coming through in the dialog, of course it won't sound the same as the   
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   > > > dialog of anyone else.   
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   > > I think the most severe situation is to make secondary or tertiary   
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   > > characters' dialog seem distinct, when they have the same rank or place   
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   > > in society, same gender and age, same ethnic speech pattern, and so on.   
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   > > Probably, their personality traits need to be chosen specifically to   
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   > > make their dialog distinct,   
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   > But that in and of itself tends to feel contrived after a bit, doesn't   
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   > it?   
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   > I would like to put forward the possibility that there may not actually   
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   > be a reason to make two tertiary characters of similar rank, place in   
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   > society, gender, age, etc, sound different.   (Emphasizing that we are   
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   > talking about "tertiary" characters.,so, by definition, they're not   
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   > important to the story.)   
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   > In my epic fantasy (only about halfway written), my prince of a   
   >   
   > protagonist has a personal guard of ten men who accompany him when he   
   >   
   > travels.   
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   > It has occured  to me that going out of my way to make each of the ten   
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   > distinct, might be more of a burden to the reader, than a boon.  It   
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   > wastes braincells (and story wordage) on something that doesn't really   
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   > matter.   
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   > As long as I successfully give the impression that they are not   
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   > identical cardboard clones, does it really matter whether or not anyone   
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   > can actually tell all ten apart?   
      
   If you wish your prince to seem admirable, to many of us, it should be clear   
   that _he_ can tell them apart.   
      
   --   
   Will in New Haven   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)