Voice in Character Development

I have a very diverse world/universe. Race plays a big part in my stories. I have everything from normal human races to elves, shifters, and demons. I would like to give each of my characters a distinctive voice that will make them relatable to the people that read them. I would like to know how some of you achieve this when it comes to people of different races and cultures.

Right now I am working with a strong headed black woman and I would like to do her justice not only for the sake of writing well but for the people who will be reading about her. While she is not a main character she is an important support role in my story.

When dealing with people of color/race in the media or in fiction in general what are some things I should consider? What are some things that bother you guys? What are some of the important/serious things I should be aware of? Do's and don'ts kind of thing.

Open to any suggestions. Preferably would like to talk to people of non-white (Caucasian) heritages. Although all are welcome to comment.

Please let us keep this topic mature and responsible.

 

Whitey here, despite asking for people of color. Be careful not to infuse too much dialect in dialog. The biggest threat, if it's too syrupy, is distraction. Imagine how hard it would be to take seriously a man walking in public without pants wearing a lamp shade on his head. Same thing can happen with speech. As much as I enjoyed Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, his characters' dialog, while it may have been accurate for the era, was pushing the limit of what I can handle. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would be a good reference for how a master writer uses varied dialect.

 

Is your world modeled after the real world, or something else? "Black", alone, doesn't seem to give enough context.

 

I think I'll check this out at the library and give it a read so I have a good example what to do and not to do. Thank you.

 

No not modeled after the real world. It's not an alternate earth. She lives in a desert colony across the border of the main land where most everything takes place. She will be assisting my character in various ways. Teaching her a trade and she is a very abrasive person. She's hard to get along with because she is blunt and is interested in what you can do for her in return. Which makes sense in the region because of the hostile environment. If you get something you have to expect to give something for it in return whether it's money or a favor. She will literally stab you in the back to get what she needs if she has to. It's just how things are in the area. You have to look out for numero uno. She is a very pretty woman and can be a very kind person if you can get on her good side. She only really plays a minor part so I didn't fully develop a backstory or anything. She will be appearing briefly for a few chapters to help train the mc and help her on her way. She's a bartender but will be teaching my main character the art of deception and subtle information gathering.

The area is in a hostile desert and such there tend to be darker complected peoples and fair skin is a minority.

 

Hello!

You talked about many sorts of races like elves and demons and then you talk about a black woman, I'm not sure what you want to know.
Do you want the Dos and Don'ts when writing non caucasian people? Or do you want help for the way to make voices feel different from one race to another?
I'll try to help you for both but please answer my first question because I am not sure about what you asked exactly.

Firstly I hate it as a reader, but in general, when in a movie or a comic or a book or in an animated series, they make those 'racial placement' in a story just to make it look good. And even worse I hate the stereotypes that sometimes feel extremely racist. 'The black guy is athletic' 'The asian guy is smart'. I can't believe some movies sometimes...

Then about the writing, I would encourage you to describe the character first. If you explain how your big ass dark demon, 20 meters high, with twenty horns and a snake like enormous tongue looks, nobody's going to believe that it has a tiny high pitch voice saying 'Hello' to nearby demon friends. So by describing the character you did most of the job. Maybe for creatures like elves or dwarves you could go and explain the accent you made up.
Simply don't over write the details of the voice, spend more time over the character's look.

I hope I helped you a bit

 

I get to do the same thing when portraying people from my region--that is, I get to ask myself how to portray them and the way they speak. The correct solution is generally not to.

 

A little bit of both. I'm trying to keep humans diverse like they are on this planet even if I change cultures a bit, I also want people to sound different from race to race. My elves will reflect race to there human counter parts, Dark Elves in video games are either black with white hair or white with black hair (In the literal crayola sense) but I thought let's try something different and kill the Dark elves original concept and just have elves like human's who are different colors and have different attributes. Diversity without out and out coming out and naming it in a cliche way. Not wanting to pander here just want to try a different concept, but no matter what you do when it comes to race someone will always think your pandering.
ETA: Instead of three racial types for elves just one race with multiple ethnicities. No wood elves just regular people.

ETA2: My husband just told me this is cheesy and pandering so I guess I'm not doing it. He told me it's too mtv like. I thought I was onto something. I don't wanna waste your time. My husband says what I would be doing is blurring racial lines which could be construed as offensive but that wasn't what I was going for. I feel like peoples bs agendas are killing a good thing. Why not explore something like this from a non-agenda pov where it's more for adding color to a universe. I guess I'm just bored of the same old same old. I'll find something else. Maybe being raised in the age of political agenda's has made me not able to see that what I am doing. Being pandering without trying no matter what I do. I guess you can't win. ... God, I hate politics and agendas...
Gah what do I do...

 

The idea is to just aim to entertain. I like it when I can sit in a theater and watch a movie that doesn't have an agenda. I don't even give the agenda movies a chance anymore. I just want to create a story that is imaginative, and different for the stereotypical fantasy.

 

I'm a black person, and honestly, I'd say just write them like you would write any character. Think of them as who they are as a person and not their race. As far as culture goes, that would play a part in who they are as our environment tends to play a part in what we believe, how we behave, how we react, etc. but a person's race doesn't really determine who they are as a person.

For example, I grew up in the suburbs. Most of the kids I played with were white because those were the majority of kids that grew up in the neighborhood with me. I, like a lot of other black people, do not fit into the stereotypical idea of what black people are. However, if you do have a character who is black that meets those stereotypes, I really don't see anything wrong with that either, but the reason they would meet those stereotypes would be more of who they grew up around and where they grew up and not so much their skin color.

There's no right or wrong way to write a character of color anymore than there is to write a white character. It's a matter of giving them dimension and making them believable and interesting.

My advice for writing a character from a particular culture is to study said culture and learn about their customs, manners, etc.

 

My view here is that since your world isn't based on the real world, the fact that your character is non-white doesn't mean that the character has any link to non-whites in our world. To decide how to depict this character, you would first have to decide how your world responds to skin color, and what culture the character comes from, and so on.

 

Thank you, Someone, finally got what I was trying to say! OMG I love you. I have a bartender and a paladin from the same area and culture. So I would love to incorporate a theme that involves a nomadic feel. I'm glad you feel that same on the environment as well. I just wonder some times if there are things I haven't considered. I guess maybe in my struggle for believability I was over thinking things. Part of my world is really dry desert and sand lands. I have to admit if I could one day visit a place in the world I would choose an area like this because they intrigue me. I've been around a lot of green and cities so when I envisioned this environment I wanted to be taken away from what I was used to. I needed something refreshing for me.

Thank you for your advice, again, I feel like I have been overthinking things. People will like or hate characters no matter how you create them. It's a damned if you do and don't kind of thing, I'm struggling to get over. Like someone else said they hate stereotypes but we all fit them, I do too.

I wondered about this as well. One example I really love is the elder scrolls for the Redgaurds their race is a mix of Muslim, Egyptian and Japanese samurai tradition but it all blends seamlessly how Bethesda did it. 3 radically different cultures! HEART!!! Makes me feel like the skies the limit! And I want that ultimate kind of control to be creative for me and my worlds.

So what I can take away from this is go with the culture's voice. I like this. Thank you guys for your thoughts they mean a lot to me!

 

Well do as you like of course!

I'm totally with you when you talk about changing the same old same old. Soooo many different fantasy stories just look exactly the same. (even though some can be extremely popular ex: GOT).
So even though you don't want to go on with the idea, I thought it was brilliant! Doing some different skin colours from different elves. But if you take it to the biological perspective, we have all different attributes as humans because of the place we live in. (you know, dark skin when its hot, chubby when its cold etc.).
So you could describe perfectly well your three different elves but it will be hard to recognize a certain voice or tone. Just explain their tones of voices and work a background to each category of elves (or demons, dwarves etc.) that you want. The more you work your characters the easier it'll be for the reader to imagine them (and for you to write).
Maybe you got dark elves that live in gigantic caves and tunnels they built. Some go outside but only at night. Because they live under the earth they are not only dirty as hell but their voice is filled with 'dust or something' which makes it sound like someone who smoked a whole cigarette for the first time.

Its by making those little changes like that all over your book, working on innovating the setting of the story, that it'll look different, and someone would like to buy it in a book store.
Think about it

 

Couple of things.

1. Is your husband a publisher or agent or something? Does he speak for the world? I'm not trying to be an asshole, but it's an opinion and the way you said it - well - I kinda feel like you're treating it as a fact. (Not saying you shouldn't value his opinion - just that you should remember that it's an opinion.)

2. The bolded part above tells me that maybe you're not explaining what you're trying to do very well? So, maybe it's not that it's "cheesy and pandering", but rather that your explanation is lacking. I think you should do what you want to do and then see how it plays out in execution. It may do exactly what you want it to (or it may not, but you won't know unless you try it).

3. @Odile_Blud said it pretty well, and I second it.

 

This is what I have been trying to explain to people around me, and trying to get feed back on. But like I said I'm getting the that's pandering or offensive. I might as well just hold up my middle finger and tell them tough shit I'm doing it. That's what I wanted to do from an environmental evolutionary stand point.

This is also what I want to go for is stand out from the cookie cutter fantasy. I'm working on redefining my arid regions right now on one planet. I'm excited because I always wanted to incorporate two sides of a coin out there the obscene decadence and the honorable hard working people.

My husband used to write for several different papers over the course of his life, he's blown out political naughty on the news and he's worked with his cousin who is also a reporter. He also used to write for certain websites online that were popular in the 90's and 2000's. He's had to edit his own work when doing certain projects and such. So I tend to trust my husband on certain things as well. Especially since I'm trying to go for the opposite of what today seems to be with the political climate of taking an agenda. just looking for pure entertainment fun, something someone can check out with and ignore the real world for a bit and not be reminded of it.

Sounds good I'll just try it and see how it goes. I'm finding it hard to explain things on here, a lot because I'm not sure what information to share or not.

 

I understand, but there's a rather huge difference between writing fiction and journalism. He's seeing things from the perspective of the real world, and you're creating a world. It's not the same thing, so just keep that in mind.

I hope it works out for you. When asking questions you should be sharing whatever is pertinent to the question at hand. I think, and again, I'm not trying to be an asshole (so please don't think I am), maybe don't worry so much about whether or not everyone approves. Just write what's in your head, and later, when you get to betas, then you can worry about what everyone else in the world thinks.

 

People usually sound different from one another not because of race or colour, but because of language. If they all speak the same language from birth, they're all going to sound pretty much the same, no matter what colour they are. If the colours are segregated from one another for a LONG time or their native languages came from another culture that spoke a different language, then there might be some differences, if the races remain mostly separate from one another. But raise three children of three different races (colours) together in the same family, they will all sound the same.

I'd say work with language origin and segregation of races. You can have some fun with this when you go onto YouTube and start listening to people who speak other languages and begin to note what makes them sound different. Also listen to non-native English speakers speaking English. They will all have 'accents,' and they will also often have different speech patterns as well. Some will speak slowly, others more quickly, etc.

Work with this kind of thing to develop your own world and the way cultures have developed, and you should have no trouble.

 

I think people put too much emphasis on the physical and not enough on the character. In Reginald Hill's Born Guilty, the detective is a black man. Something I didn't know until he mentions it early in the book. But the character himself was so interesting and entertaining that it was very easy to make the change in my mind without a bump. His overbearing aunt becomes even funnier when the image of a nagging white aunt is replaced with that of one of those over-loving black women who want nothing but the best for their relatives, no matter what the relative wants, pops into your head. The little nuances of different cultures are what we see without being told, the suggestion of the writer creates a stronger image in the reader's head then the direct description of an "ethnic" behavior.