[Writing Challenge] How to Make Your Fictional Characters Sound More Natural

For a ton of my top coaching clients (who come to me for various forms of creative writing support) I provide weekly and bi-weekly “homework” assignments to keep their writing on track. 

So when I recently received one of these assignments back from a client, I was really excited to share with her a pattern I had started to notice in her work: she had two ‘voices’ while writing, the character, and the writer. 

The Character vs. The Writer

This can happen when I’m writing a first draft, too. I’ll start writing a character one day, and then come back another day and try to ‘access’ them again…

…only for the character to sound a little different. Not quite the same. 

In the past, this alone would have been enough to stop me from writing at all. Instead, I would wait until I was in the ‘right’ mood to write. I wouldn’t even touch a character if I couldn’t ‘get in their head’ right away. 

But that’s changed as I’ve accepted two of my greatest writing adages: 

1. All of our first drafts will need editing. 

2. Don’t wait to be inspired to write.  

With these writing ideologies in mind, it’s a little easier to be messy when I’m in the flow, knowing that I’ll be back later to trim and snip and mine out the gold. It becomes more ‘okay’ when my characters don’t match right away, or when their voices sound different. 

In short:  

"I can no longer wait ‘to be possessed’ by a character in order to sit down and start writing. It’s better if I just start doing it, and then I can work out the kinks in a later pass-through.”

The point is, though, that when I go to write and my fictional character doesn’t sound like ‘themselves’, my own ‘writing’ voice ends up getting in the way of the character. 

Put differently, I often get caught up in telling the reader what the character is thinking through my own lens, as opposed to allowing what the character’s thinking to tell the story itself. 

This is exactly what I saw happening with my client’s first draft, but because of my own experiences as a writer, and because of my exposure to her work, I was able to point out exactly where the two voices started vying for attention. 

That way, when she does her next round of edits, she will be able to see really clearly when her ‘writer’ voice is coming through the page, and when her ‘character voice’ is taking the lead.

Then she can snip her ‘writer’ voice where needed to create more authentic, consistent, and believable characters. 

How to Separate Your Writer From Your Character

I know not everyone has access to a creative writing coach, so when you’re out there on your own and don’t have someone reviewing your work…

…how can you figure out which is your writing voice, and which is your character?

The answer to this is multi-fold. We are all going to have different styles, voices, and ways of writing. But, I was once given a piece of writing advice that I think will move mountains here: 

Use your journal as a way to understand how characters write their experience. 

You might be thinking…okay? But let me explain using my client again as an example. 

After I received her homework assignment, we hopped on our regularly scheduled coaching call to explore it further. 

What struck me was that, when asked about the experience of sitting down to write this particular piece, she mentioned that she could have kept writing and writing, but that she ‘cut herself short’ in an effort to make the piece ‘work’. 

Obviously I was crushed! I wanted to see more and more of her work from this one piece, BUT it revealed to me just how much we ‘censor’ or ‘clip’ our creative impulse in order to fit a specific mold even while we write our first draft. 

Which is why it was suggested to me to go and look at the last entry in my journal to help me understand my natural writing voice. . 

Your Writing Challenge: Explore Your Uncensored Writing Voice

Disclaimer: This will work even if you’re the type of person who feels watched while writing.

Here’s your homework. 

Before you sit down to write next, go and pull out an old journal of yours (or a recent one, doesn’t matter). 

Then, find a piece of your writing that you created for something: a competition, an award, or just for the plot. 

Open your journal. Peruse a few of the pages as if you were reading a character’s journal entries in a book. Though, you could also imagine you’re doing a book report on your entry. 

Whatever gets you into the headspace of analyzing how the character writes. 

The idea here is, when we’re in a safer journaling space, and when we’re (mostly) feeling unwatched while writing, we actually write differently. Our expression changes. Our writing is not trying to be something it’s not, and there are fewer degrees of separation between our thoughts and the page. In effect, it becomes more natural. 

So when we look at this unfiltered style of writing in our journals, it gives us two things: 

1. A sense of what ‘natural’ writing really looks like

2. More familiarity with our individual ‘writing’ voice (we’re a character, too!)

Armed with those two things, we can then take what we’ve learned to make our fictional characters sound a lot more natural! 

How to Make Your Fictional Character Sound More Natural

This is where you’ll want to go back and look at your old piece of fiction or non-fiction writing. 

Check in with your characters and the narrator of your story. Are there any major differences between how you write in your journal, and how you write for publication? What are they? 

Now consider: how can you employ some of that style (or mimic that style) for your characters in your latest project? Not just during the first draft (where we should allow flow, even if it’s bad), but also during the editing phases, when we’re trying to make our characters consistent and believable?

In answering these questions, and in doing this analysis, I suspect you’ll have a much greater ability to separate your characters from your writing voice, and make them sound more natural on the page. 

And if you’d like me to get to know your work, find patterns, and improve your skills, I’m always happy to book an initial coaching call to get us started. 

Happy Writing!