From: nicky.matthews@btinternet.com   
      
   On Wednesday, September 3, 2014 11:44:48 AM UTC+1, David E. Siegel   
   (siegel@acm.org) wrote:   
   > On Sunday, January 19, 2014 5:57:44 PM UTC-5, David Friedman wrote:   
   >    
      
   >    
   > I would say that the voice of a character consists of several things: the   
   rhythm of the character's speech, word choices, particularly choices habitual   
   to that character and uncommon elsewhere, prolixity or brevity, unusual   
   grammatical choices (the    
   consistent omission of articles by Manny in _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_   
   comes to mind, a rather unsubtle example) and other things that make the   
   character's speech distinctive.   
   >    
   I am not particularly good at this but for me one of the key things is the   
   character's background -religion, gender, place of origin, cultural   
   upbringing, language world etc etc. Not that I necessarily work it out before   
   the words appear on the page.  I    
   am working on something right now where the character's distinctive voice came   
   first and I'm inventing the world to explain why. The hardest thing for me is   
   characters in the real world- partly because I don't listen intently or   
   intelligently enough to    
   non-Nicky voices, but also because younger people inhabit a world that is   
   largely closed to me and misusing their language is fatal to a story.    
    Public voices are also different from private voices and getting a character   
   to modify their language depending on their audience and still sound like   
   themselves is enormously challenging for me.   
   >    
   > I don't know of any handy list of techniques for giving a character a   
   distinctive voice. I think that doing so is not essential, but it can help   
   flesh out a character, and make the reader feel that the different characters   
   are in fact different people,    
   and to care about them.    
   >    
   I think doing so is essential for 'good' writing ( as it is commonly accepted)   
   but as we have often discussed here not so necessary for books where character   
   isn't really the point.   
   >    
   > I suggest that a very good way to improve on this is to read or reread   
   authors who do it particularly well, paying particular attention to the   
   various voices and how they are achieved.   
   >    
   >You can also just listen to real people.    
      
   Nicky   
   >    
   >    
   > --   
   >    
   > -DES   
      
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