I've been searching the net for something to give me tips on creating different voices for two first person narrators.

I understand it's something I need to do but I'm finding it difficult. The two narrators are from the same social group, the same place, etc. so for that reason, they would naturally sound quite similar.

The only difference is that they're male and female.

Can you direct me to anywhere that I can some advice on this? (Or give me your own advice if you have some!).

Have, even if it's just for your own private knowledge, each character listen to very different music, and then play this music when you are writing, switching from one to the other? That's what I often do. It works well because it changes the atmosphere around you and encourages two different, equally strong voices. But then again, I did train in music so it's second nature to me.

Yes, it isn't always easy when you've got two characters like that. You need to focus on what's different in their characters, and then how that would come out in dialogue and in narrative.

As well as general stuff about what kind of holiday/music/clothes they like, you can quite cold-bloodedly pin down some differences in their characters, and use them to make the differences in their voice as extreme as you realistically can. The most important ones are what of the world around them they most notice, and what they say about it. Then knowing their character should help you work out how they say it. Pick some ideas and make each character as different as possible in this aspect: some are more obvious in dialogue than in their narrative, but the more you really 'hear' their narrative - try reading some out loud - the more characteristic it will become.

So, are they by nature in a hurry or relaxed?
Change moods easily, or even tempered?
Chatty or taciturn?
Hesitant or fluent?
Analytical or empathic?
Do they use language to convey information? To tell stories? To make emotional connections? To play one-up-manship?
What do they notice about a scene: how people move? what they say? Whether the coffee was good?
Do they have an underlying sense of the world being a good or a bad place? That humans are powerless or powerful? That you get what you deserve, or that it's all random, or that the cosmos is positively spiteful.
Is their default to trust people, or not trust them?
Puritanical or sybaritic?
Do they have any kind of religion, and if so how much?
Do they notice feelings and implications but not talk about them, or notice and talk, or not notice at all but just talk about facts and actions? Do they talk/speculate about other people's motivations for doing what they do?
Articulate, or always struggling for the words to say what they want to?
Which sense do they notice most - sight, touch, smell, feel or taste? Which do they notice of food, clothes, decor, cars, kinds of voice, accents?
When they say 'it was like...' what kind of images do they automatically use?
Wide or narrow vocabulary? This can vary hugely even between people with similar backgrounds.
Do they use metaphors, or only similes?
Do they use adjectives and adverbs?
Short abrupt sentences or longer ones?
Colloquial grammar or formal grammar?
Properly constructed grammar, or sentences which are just a series of and..and...and...?

More far-reaching - and maybe not relevant to what you're writing but you could think about what your characters are actually doing in the structure of your novel. The first-person narrator is a convention everyone hardly even realises is a convention, but you could ask yourself why each of these is telling the story at all. Do they have a reason: self-justification, recording for posterity, re-living the events to heal themselves, telling someone else? How do they feel about the events they're telling us about: exasperated? nostalgic? relieved? And where are they in time as they tell us, in relation to the events in the story? Are we just faintly conscious of them as a storyteller looking back on the past, or is it all more-or-less happening as they tell us? Or is there a real frame-story of 'now', from which they tell us about 'then'?

Emma

Thanks ever so much Emma. Those suggestions will be hugely, hugely helpful. I'm really looking forward to developing the voices now!

I've not had any experience writing more than one narrator but I find these two questions yield terrific answers if you're forever asking them of characters:

What do they want?
How do they get it?

Each question being answerable on any number of levels about any number of things, from the superficial to the profound, from the straightforward to the perverse.

Pete

Itselena, you're welcome. I love writing in different voices, and very rarely don't.

Pete - You're right, those are really core questions about character, hugely important, and they do affect the voice, and we should probably have them carved on a brass plaque just above the screen...

Emma

Wow, Emma's answer looks pretty comprehensive (I might print that out!) but one thing I find interesting about first person narrators that I don't think has been mentioned that affects voice is how open/presentational they are.

For example are they telling the story in a completely straightforward way being very open about thoughts and feelings like to an intimate diary. Are they telling it casually and informally as to a friend, but this last would also invite the character to justify themselves and their actions, not always admitting their less-than-sympathetic side. Are they completely self-justifying and presentational (like a puff autobiography). I find this useful not just as an attitude to other people, but because it makes you think about the character's attitude to themselves and makes their narrative more dramatic.

For example Lockwood in Wuthering Heights likes to waffle on about his morals - but really seems inspired by nosiness and being excited by badness by proxy. Some of Alan Bennet's characters tell us they are doing something for altruistic reasons - because they can't admit their small-mindedness to themselves.

I think that's very true - it's partly the possibility of them being unreliable, and partly the question of why they're telling the story.

Emma

Elena, this was the work you put in YA I guess. I haven't read it but I know Luisa gave you some good tips.

I've a novel WIP with 4 MCs and I find I just know them, they're inside my head, I know how they talk and what they wear and what ticks they have.

When I started writing my first book, I read that one idea is to get a picture from a magazine and pin it up and imagine it's them, but it didn't work for me. They didn't live pinned on my notice board, they were in my head.

Then I wrote the characteristics down before I started writing, I found this worked to map out ages, accents, schools, siblings etc, things you may not write about but make you know the character. I rarely re-read my notes but that's just how I work but once it's down I think it helps.

After that, they live in my head.

Elaborating on what Emma was saying, we all experience life through what are termed modalities. That is touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. Most people experience principly through one modality with the others elaborating the experience. Furthermore, they usually articulate in their principle modality. So for example, you might say, 'I don't feel happy about this', if you primarily experience through the tactile sense. Or 'I can hear what you are saying.' Or 'Do you see what I mean.' If you use these modes of speech and then show the character experiencing though their principle modality you can achieve quite distinct voices.

Best

Prospero

we all experience life through what are termed modalities. That is touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste.

So when did they stop being called senses?

But it's a good point nonetheless.

Emma

"Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes."

Ulysses - James Joyce.

Jim

There you go! Seriously though Emma, it was me slipping into NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) speak. It won't happen again. I wil spend ten minutes in the naughty corner.

Best

John

<Added>

Thought I might add an example:

I have to admit I’m not comfortable with this.
But look at the advantages.
We can hear what you are saying, but are you listening to us.
Of course, I admit I am trying to show things in a good light, but…
I understand where you are coming from, yet somehow I don’t feel at ease.
I agree it sounds good, but even so something doesn’t ring true.

I have not written a novel length work, so my experience is limited to the short story form. Please do take this as only one person's experience... but one that works for me so I'm happy to pass it on.


I often write in first person, in the first instance. The narrators tell their own stories in their own way. They are frequently the same broad 'types'... and yet their voices are never similar.

I can't write until I know the characters pretty well. Then, their own 'backstory experience' (which may never ever surface in the story at all) colours their voices, and makes each one unique. The images, metaphors, vocabulary, cadence of each will come from them. Not from me.


So the key, for this writer, is to wait to know the characters. If I write too soon, I overlay everyone, and the voices become 'mine', and all too similar!

I hope that makes one iota of sense.

vanessa

This discussion has come up with a lot of very helpful ideas and approaches, but they may still leave you stuck when it comes down to actually spelling out the dialogue. To crystallise your thoughts into arriving at specifics to put down on paper, why not, after thinking about the guidelines already suggested, split a page into two columns, one for each character? Concentrating on one at a time you could then write down individual words and phrases that you might expect to hear that character saying when you listen to their general conversation with others (not necessarily in their more meaningful conversations with the second character). Everybody has certain words and expressions that they use more than others. Then, when you start on the second character, identify or concentrate on those that don't tie up with those in the first column. This may sound a bit gimmicky but it could be a way of at least getting started with differentiating their speech.

Just a thought...

Chris