One of the standard rules of thumb for writers is that someone should be able to hear a line of dialogue from your writing stripped of any tags or identifiers and know from the word choice who’s speaking.
That is definitely beyond me and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone pull it off unless they had a small cast. It can easily turn into something simplistic, like giving everyone a distinctive catchphrase or quirk. This can work in small doses. In the Doc Savage novels, we have Renny’s “Holy cow!” declarations and Johnny’s catchphrase, “I’ll be superamalgamated.” both of which work as character tags. On the other hand, the four boys in The Gold Ogre have verbal tics that make them distinctive — I can tell Funny from B. Elmer from Mental — but getting annoying fast.
That said, having at least some variation in voices makes sense. An elderly academic should sound different from a young homicide cop. A nerd who’s into anime might have different metaphors than a football buff.
In Southern Discomfort, I worked to give Olwen McAlister, an elf well over a thousand years old, her own voice. Not the archaic dialog of Marvel comics’ Silver Age Thor but something that didn’t sound conventional either. For example: “You are both welcome to dine on whatever tongue or stomach crave, at my expense.” Or when she’s sharing her plans for dealing with Gwalchmai: “Rest assured I am far more dangerous than he. Only one of us will live to see tomorrow’s dawn.”
That sounds just enough ‘off’ to work, I think. By contrast, Maria, contemplating the possibility there’s a cop on her tail: “I’d ruled out the old fart in the window seat next to me. While I drew on my Winston and brooded, he’d fallen asleep with his Pall Mall smoldering between arthritis-gnarled fingers. Like I was still a nurse, I carefully extracted the cig and set it in the ashtray on the seat arm. Then I returned to worrying about the rest of the bus.”
(The book’s cover by Sam Collins, short a little more polishing)
Maria’s from Brooklyn. Sheriff Slattery’s a Pharisee Georgia boy and he sounds (I think) a lot more Southern: “Doesn’t matter. I swore an oath to protect and serve the people here, like my daddy and my granddaddy, and I gotta live up to that. If that means asking for help—well, I don’t think police work is any business for girls—”
FBI Special Agent Rachel Cohen is a cooler customer. One of the first female agents, she’s conscious if she fails, every woman in the FBI fails. She’s Southern, tough, and frequently forgets to put her iron fist in a velvet glove. When she needs to stay controlled, she does. When arguing with Liz Mitchell about the FBI’s ugly anti-civil rights history: “I won’t make excuses for Mr. Hoover. His actions were illegal, unjust, and at times monstrous. You have every right to be angry. As much as Hoover betrayed the FBI’s principles, those principles are sound. That’s why I joined.” Mitchell’s glare stayed icy. “I want to see justice done for Cannon, Smith and McAlister. I also know the Klan and their ilk hate Jews as well as blacks. We have common adversaries.”
While I think most of my key players are distinctive individuals, not everyone has a distinctive voice — I don’t believe Liz does, nor Father Michael. Still, now that I’m writing about it, I’m quite impressed with myself.
Doc Savage cover by James Bama. All rights to images remain with current holders.
A further complication is that people have different “voices” when in different company–many people code switch, sometimes quite extensively.
I was reminded of that suddenly in a video game context. I’d been playing 2v2 Starcraft 2 with a young man on a fairly regular basis, and one day we added voice chat to try to improve our teamwork. He said in shock, “You just changed from 20-something gamer guy to middle-aged college professor.” Apparently in the context of very brief typed messages during a game, I talk like any other player (though in fact I *am* a middle-aged academic). I certainly use slang that I never use otherwise: gamer slang is well adapted for quickly communicating about game situations! (I like “sus.” Why is that enemy unit poking around in my position so early? Where did it go? Sus!)