A character’s voice is more than just how they speak, especially if the character in question has a point of view within your story. This voice performs significant feats within your plot, contributing to multiple aspects of your writing and even how the story presents itself to the reader. But how do you work to understand your character’s voice once you create them and place them into a story in a way that they stand out to the reader?

 

Focus on Headspace

Whether you’re writing in first person or closed third person, headspace is vital for understanding a character and getting their voice on paper. To clarify, headspace is the part of the story that gets inside a character’s head. In this space, readers learn not only how a character talks, but also how they think and what they often think about. Getting into a character’s head allows your readers to understand the problems that they face and how they plan on solving those problems.

Now you’ve likely heard of show; don’t tell. It might seem like headspace comes across as telling, since the character is literally describing their problems, hopes, dreams, etc. to the reader directly. However, you’re supposed to make allowances for headspace. Having a character talk about things in their head will actually show the reader what’s important, even if it seems like it’s just information being fed. Show; don’t tell is mostly prevalent when it comes to information you the writer need to give. Your characters are part of the story. If they need to talk about certain things, let them, because your readers are on the same journey as they are. You, on the other hand, are the guide, meaning it’s your job to show.

To recap, examining a character’s headspace is the biggest step to understanding their voice. Once you figure out how you want your character to think, other features like how they speak, interact with others, and how they solve problems will become clearer. This sets the foundation for other aspects to a character’s voice outlined below.

 

Set the Tone for How They Speak

While headspace creates a platform for how characters think, a character’s voice also needs qualities that set them apart from the other characters when they speak out loud. The characteristics you create for the headspace don’t add up to much if all the other characters speak the same way and maintain the same tone. A character’s voice should contain specific characteristics that set the character apart. This not only helps readers distinguish the character, but it also helps add dimension, revealing the inner and outer workings of a whole person.

For example, imagine you want to write a story in first person, and your main character is a boy just starting middle school. Think about how you want that character’s voice to sound, as it should reflect the medium you chose (Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series is a great example of this, just to name one). Is your middle school character angry and upset most of the time? Are they confident or nervous facing this new obstacle?

No matter what emotion you pick, their voice should reflect that to set them apart from others who don’t feel the same way or come from a different perspective. Additionally, their headspace might be different from how they talk. They could speak angrily, but their headspace is filled with worry that they relate to the reader. In either case, the tone you create can’t be confused with any other character voice in your story.

 

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Create Their Backstory for Their Voice

Lastly, when creating a character’s voice, make sure their backstory implicitly comes into play throughout. A nuanced character must have a reason for being a part of the story if you want to focus on them. You’ve got their thoughts and their tone down, but you also need a reasoning behind these thoughts and this tone.

For example, imagine you have a teenaged character who recently lost her father. Her mindset would likely be affected by that, so her headspace would reflect the grief, the confusion, the anger she would feel at that time. Her tone would also reflect this emotion, so she probably speaks angrily to others or avoids them altogether. Both the tone and headspace are affected by a past event, allowing the readers to understand why the character feels this way and giving them a reason to feel sympathy for them.

A character’s voice is more than just how they speak. To establish their voice, you need the inner and outer workings to work together to create a whole character because a three-dimensional character is always important. After establishing this information right away, readers will want to learn more about them and hear what they have to say when your character starts their journey.

 

 

E. S. Foster is a fiction writer, poet, and graduate student at the University of Cambridge, St. Edmund’s. She is also the creator of the Foster Your Writing blog. Her work has appeared in over twenty literary journals, including Aurora Journal, Sour Cherry Mag, and Paragraph Planet. Her chapbooks have been published by Yavanika Press (2022) and Ghost City Press (2023). You can find more of her articles here.