Distinguishing Voices and Switching Code
In the previous post, I talked about how I stumbled into writing dual POV novels because the way my character arcs worked, I needed at least one character my readers could root for (and not just pity) from the very beginning. However, that introduced a new challenge: how do I write POV characters to sound differently enough from each other?
If I was going to do this, then I was determined to do it well. But how?
I understood the challenge. I wanted a reader to know which character was talking without looking at the dialogue tags. I wanted a reader to know which chapter they were in without looking at the chapter titles. I wanted a reader to feel like no one else would talk like this except that specific character.
I understood the challenge, and I read all the advice. Some of it was more doable than others. For example, the characters should be assigned specific phrases (Serena says “Thank God” while Kara would say “Thankfully” in the same context), the character’s occupation and other aspects of their background should affect their diction (Rissa uses phrases associated with diplomacy, Therise uses phrases associated with the law) and similes (Rhenise uses “true as steel” as a compliment and “soft as gold” as an insult), and the setting should be described based on what the character would pay attention to (Anisha notices details about how intercessors shaped the physical space).
However, some advice was irrelevant or difficult to implement because of the genre I was writing in and the fact that all my POV characters were highly educated women in their early twenties.
For example, was I going to make up accents for my fantasy world? Or try to describe a real world English accent and impose it on a region or a character? I describe Shikigo spoken in Shikiteikoku as flat, and high septimis spoken by the imperial family in Zhuresh as lilting, but those are different languages… It works to describe how common septimis (the language of Kazarah, Aeona, and Zhuresh’s commoners) sounds different when spoken by a Shikijin or Zhuri, but it doesn’t look different on the page.
The closest I came to that was coming up with different curses:
Nobles in Kazarah: “For God’s sake”
Commoners in Kazarah: “Demons take you”
Aeona: “Mother Above”
From near the peaks of the mountains: “May the mountains swallow you”
From closer to the base of the mountains: “Blast you”
Without being able to draw on preexisting accents or distinguish my POV characters by class and education levels, the challenge was formidable. At a minimum, within each novel, I tried to make sure the two POV characters’ voices were different from each other in terms of average sentence length and active/subjective versus passive/objective sentences. I have intuitively started assigning specific words to specific characters, but I probably want to build an actual Style Guide for that. Control F has been my friend every time inspiration struck and I had to change the way a particular character expressed joy, anger, and so forth.
The last thing I want to say about this topic is that a lot of writing advice emphasizes consistency to ensure the characters sound like the same person over the course of the novel (unless their character arc involves changes in the way they speak, I might add). However, the first time I came across a writing coach mention code-switching, I was ecstatic because it described how I was having my characters speak even before I knew that was what I was doing.
Code-switching is when an individual shifts between languages, dialects, and/or style. It can be done to “fit in,” to perform the social role expected in a given setting, and/or to express an identity. Code-switching is often described as something that happens in the context of a conversation, but I think it is broader than that. Yes, when I slip in an unaccented Japanese phrase into my English presentation to signal I speak Japanese fluently, I am code-switching in that conversation. But I am also code-switching when I speak differently in an academic seminar than I do over drinks with the same colleagues. Code-switching can happen both organically and strategically. To some people it is more of a burden than to others; likely, depending on how close their natural language/dialect/style is to the language/dialect/style preferred by the local elites.
To be clear, my characters are not code-switching to the same degree or for the same reasons as people do in the real world because I did not make up accents, dialects, and styles that indicate power disparities. The most I can do is have the characters change the formality of their English, or explain that they have switched languages. Even then, it is more of a pursuit strategy than a survival strategy.
The most extreme case is Rissa; when she switches between high septimis, common septimis, and Shikigo, she is literally speaking different languages. But she chooses which language to use to box out people she does not want to speak to who do not speak as many different languages as she does.
Kara also code-switches significantly – not just between speaking common septimis and high septimis – but even when she is speaking common septimis, between her inner circle of trusted friends and outsiders, especially nobles. I keep the idea of code-switching front of mind because I want the way Kara talks to someone to indicate how close she feels towards them, and how that might change over the course of the novel. It might make her sound different from her “true” self in some social situations, but that is actually truer to who she is, given the strategic nature of her personality.
Seira and Avril code-switch similarly, varying their degree of formality depending on who they are speaking to. But it is less of a burden for Seira and Avril, since they have been trained since birth to speak formally. Code-switching to be more casual is something they do to signal a closer relationship and less a matter of sounding more formal to “pass” among nobles like it is for Kara.
I also have enjoyed playing with how the way people speak changes depending on who they spend time with. I notice this in myself, how the way I talk starts to reflect the phrases used by my closest friends (e.g., “you still need to collect more data” in reference to a date, “can you clear on this?” when asking someone to look over a text for me, “oshantii,” a cutesy Japanese phrase meaning fashionable). A Kazari in Aeona might start cursing, “Mother Above.” An Aeoni who has spent time with Kazaris may start saying, “Demons take you.” When someone who was so sheltered they never heard a curse word, like Serena and Sage, start cursing, it is both a reflection of the situation and their transformation. Though it took me a while to come up with the country- and class-specific rules for speaking, once I had them, I could break them in an intentional way to show character change, which was really fun.
If you have any advice about distinguishing between character voices, then please drop it in the comments! I would love to hear from you.
