who could be speaking emotively versus sticking to the cold hard facts phrasing things as definites and certainties versus using a lot of maybes and mites and if it's okay rambling versus pointed language these will obviously create contrast between characters three word choice yep absolutely it does matter in the great gatsby gatsby is the only character to use the term old sport all to give the impression that he's aristocratic born to old money and an upper class background my girlfriend was telling me the other day that i use the words notorious and fundamentally all the time and that nobody else in her life does because you see fundamentally i'm a bit notorious for that it's probably because i like being academic i have a law degree and they like fancy words there but it does make me sound distinct doesn't it consider giving characters words or phrases that only they use every so often and it doesn't need to be extreme or it can be a bit gimmicky where they're using the same catchphrase every single line like a character from a video game to be honest gatsby's pretty close to that at times but lastly different metaphors and comparisons let's look at this line again from annihilation the surveyor spoke in this case i feel that we should rule out the tunnel as something invasive or threatening before we explore further it's like an enemy at our backs otherwise if we press forward the surveyor has a military background and approaches this discussion by framing it in these military terms the other characters are scientists and will often draw metaphors and comparisons that come from their discipline biology psychology or anthropology they all use technical language so in that way they're actually all quite similar but this contrast makes them distinct again five contrast how their dialogue looks on the page this is a really easy visual cue that just sits in the back of the reader's mind not just how they talk but who interrupts more who speaks for short periods versus long periods who has to have the last word in a conversation who dominates the conversation who takes a back seat now i wanna be clear you do not need to contrast in everything but contrasting a few of these things in dialogue scenes will really help sharpen those differences between them as people but again but here is the trippy thing part four it is okay if characters sound the same sometimes i have read way too many examples where characters are just a caricature of contrast especially where accents get involved hello there mcdougall would you like to go to cafe get coffee ah no laddie i have to go down to the pub well they're clearly different characters the whole advice you should be able to remove dialogue tags and still tell who is speaking is only uh sometimes helpful yes you want them to sound different and sometimes that will be the case but a lot of what we say can be said by a lot of people and that's okay that's why i prefer to look at focus in dialogue because people can sound similar and use similar words but it's still clearly one character or another the golden rule is really this not every piece of dialogue needs to sound like it could have only come from one character but every character needs some dialogue that only sounds like them part five realistic dialogue this is a rabbit hole to go down but here we go you've probably heard listen to real
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