Writing The Character's Dialogue Not Yours

One thing authors must watch is dialogue that reflects the characters and not their own personality. Yes writer's voice is a phenomena that creates remarkable and identifiable writing styles. Each author uses sentence structure, musical rhythm in the words they chose. It's the way we hear a composer's music and know that it's the Beatles or Bach or Brahms or the BeeGees. (Notice I show my age here -- but not with Bach and Brahms)

Still, in fiction, an author must amid their writers voice create individual characterization that sounds like the personality, age, occupation, regional setting, and education of each character. As I mentioned, men speak differently than women in most cases. Men use fewer words; women use many more with more detail.

To create three-dimensional characters, you will want to spend time getting to know your character and his personality--all of the details that give him a recognizable voice.

Reading blogs the other day, I ran across one called Suite101.com and read a few of the blogs on dialogue. This topic of sounding like your character was discussed by David Brandl, called Putting Your Words Into Somebody Else's Mouth and I wanted to share the link with you.
Click here: Writing Dialogue - Putting Your Words Into Somebody Else's Mouth

Two other dialogue topics that caught my interest are listed below. Though they repeat much of what I already said, I think it's wise to see someone else's take on a subject. The explanation might trigger a new thought or a new idea.

Jennifer Jensen blogged on: Character's Need Unique Dialogue
Click here: Characters Need Unique Dialogue: Speech Patterns, Word Choices Make Each Character Sound Different

The topic of Dialogue Spices Up Fiction was blogged by Debbie Roome. Click here: Dialogue Spices up Fiction: Speech between Characters is an Important Part of any Novel

I hope you find these blog entries helpful.