A vital part of the creative process is developing unique characters with recognisable and differing personalities. You can achieve this either by quirky behavioral traits and/or through their speech and dialogue. In other words, the reader would instantly recognise which character is speaking just by their dialogue. A character has to be multi-layered to stand any chance of sounding believable to the reader. The reader must believe in them or they will never care if the character reaches their objective or not. In regards to dialogue, there are many ways to achieve uniqueness; by their accent, speech patterns (someone in authority will speak very slowly, whereas a nervous person will speak in short sharp sentences), or by their mannerisms.
Before you decide how they will speak, you have to create a detailed backstory for the character, as the person’s life history will have a profound effect on their speech patterns. If you think of a confident person you know, how do they speak? Is it different to a shy person? Another person may constantly add, ‘Do you know what I mean?’ or ‘Do you get me? when they tell a story. What if one of your characters had a lisp or spoke in a gravelly tone because they are a heavy smoker. If you want to create a very boring character that tends to ramble on, it may be a good idea to have another character interrupt the conversation or refer to them as quite a verbal rambler, so the reader doesn’t have to read long pieces of dialogue causing the action scenes to suffer. All of your characters, like the real world, will have their own distinctive personalities. If you have a person that is quite an extrovert, they would most definitely jump at the chance to relay their life. An introvert would tend to talk in a whisper, use very few words, if any, and definitely avoid eye contact. Another important consideration is their dialect and their age. A person of 60 years of age is going to use a different vocabulary to their grandchild.
A great technique to add to your dialogue toolkit is to study people from differing backgrounds. Do these people use any slang words, what vocabulary do they use, are they open to discussing taboo subjects and what do their verbal patterns say about them? You will soon have plenty of ideas to flesh out the bones of your character. When you are creating the backstory for your character, try asking yourself what is unique about them compared to the other characters. Do they have any comical sayings, do they constantly tell jokes (bad jokes) and then get the person to laugh at them? Do they burst into song at the most inopportune moments?
If you spend some time getting to know your characters and making them intriguing and full of flavor, your story will become much more engaging. One word of warning; if you are going to create a character where English is not their first language, never write the dialogue to show their accent. This is totally frowned upon. Instead, make a reference to their country of origin when introducing them into the story.
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