POV/Voice problem

It may be bad, but it's not unusual for a first draft. As you get to know your characters better, you may develop their voices more.

One idea that might work for you is to make notes about each character, including favourite expressions, words they commonly misuse, whether they use long or short sentences, basic or expansive vocabulary. Then you can use those notes to edit their dialogue in the second draft.

Hapax Legomenon said:

The dialogue is not the problem, it's the actual prose. The story itself is not very dialogue heavy, actually.

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Oh, I see. My bad! Still, the same applies to narrative. Find distinctions between the voices and apply them in revision.

Hapax Legomenon said:

Are there books out there where the narrator is the same throughout despite different POVs? Or is it just always considered bad writing?

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There are books with omniscient narrators that have a consistent voice throughout, but which dip into the POVs of different characters. Terry Pratchett is the master of this--you might want to give him a try.

But if you're not writing in omniscient, but rather in limited third, you will give your reader a better experience if they can tell just from the narrative whose POV the book is currently in.

I get exactly what you mean by the prose. I'm also writing a book with 4 POVs and I'm careful to keep their perspectives distinct. For example, one character is keen to use figurative language, while another is very direct in his expressions. When you write multiple POVs, you want to be certain to relate the chapter from your character's POV, rather than from your POV as an author.

However, I'm also writing this book in 1st person, where I think it's more important to keep these distinctions clear. I think you might be alright in 3rd person, because you're not directly relating your characters' perspectives.

If you're determined to work on here, these are some of the things I think about for my own characters:

- How do they express things? Are they more figurative or more literal?

- Do they pay careful attention to details or do they look at the big picture in situations? E.g. some of my characters will point out aspects of their setting, while others will ignore it completely because it doesn't occur to them to do so.

- How do these characters perceive the people around them? If one character loves Amelia but another character hates her, they would likely use different terms to describe her.

- Overall (the "big picture" question): how do this character's experiences affect their perception of the world? For example, some of my characters are more educated than others, so they can perceive the world in a more informed manner.

- I think a lot of the points Buffy brought up are also good. Not just for dialogue, but for how the rest of the chapter is written too. However, this is likely more important in 1st person, where each chapter is written in an individual character's voice. I'm not sure how important it is in 3rd person aside from dialogue.

TL;DR: I don't think it's that important in third person to differentiate POV, but I could be wrong about that. If I am, these are some of the techniques I use to differentiate POVs in my 1st person novel.

I definitely found the lack of such differentiation a problem in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. He'd frequently start a chapter with 'He' rather than the character name and as the prose was all alike I'd often have read several paragraphs before I knew which 'he' was involved. Then I had to read back.

Hapax Legomenon said:

It's more like rather there's just one narrator that is hopping to a different shoulder every chapter and reporting different thoughts rather than actually being inside different people's heads at different times. The entirety of it is written in 3rd person at this point.

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I believe you can work this to your advantage, depending on what you want to achieve. If (as has been brought out) you're going for a more omniscient POV, then what you've got can be beneficial. However, if you want to get inside each of the character's heads and have them all feel distinct, then it could be a problem.

What I would suggest is to spend some time writing as each of the characters (keeping a journal, or writing diary entries) just to get inside their heads and understand how they see the world, because even though, as you said, it's the prose that you're concerned with, knowing how your characters think can influence the prose.

There are also subtler ways to create distinct voices for characters even with 3rd person POV. If, for example, you're writing about a character who is analytical, you might point out small details using exact figures (the room was 36.5 feet across), or perhaps keep your sentences tighter.

Depending on the character's mood and emotional state, you could also vary the metaphors and imagery you use. It may also help to establish motifs for each character, or some symbolism or running metaphors that you can continue to use when writing about them specifically, which can help establish something distinct and familiar about them.

I would say it's much more important to make sure the dialogue is differentiated than the narration. If all the narration sounds the same I tend to assume it is in an omni third POV which just likes being close to the characters for whatever reason, and while this will make the characters seem a bit distant, I don't think it'll be massively detrimental.

So your characters lack a distinctive 'voice'.
They all sound alike.
They all speak in long complex sentences.

You've taken the first giant step in writing character voice by recognizing that you aren't writing it.

Character voice is a complex business.
Let me just suggest a starting-off approach,
which is not talking about 'writing technique' as such.

Go to Netflix and pick out a couple movies or TV shows you like to watch.
Choose three or four distinctive characters who don't sound alike.

Let's say --
Sherlock -- Benedict Cumberbatch.
Murder She Wrote -- Angela Lansbury
Big Trouble in Little China -- both Kurt Russell and Victor Wong

Now you got four very different voices to study. Fast forward till you get to some dialog by the character you're studying. Listen to three or four minute segments. Play them over a couple of times.

Look at
the speed with which they speak,
do they use 'intellectual' long words or blunt short ones?
idiosyncratic words? slang? dialect?
are these complex sentences or simple sentences?
how long are the sentences? Go ahead. Count the words.
complete sentences of sentence fragments?
are there many modifiers or few modifiers for the nouns and adjectives,
what words do they use to fill in pauses in their speech,
do they reply directly to other speakers, or go off talking about something unresponsive?
how long is their uninterrupted dialog?
do they interrupt others?
do they pause before they reply? Do they sometimes pause? Why?
do they change the way the speak depending on who they're talking to?

In these movies you got many hundred words of dialog you can play over and over again. You can compare one voice with another and think about what makes them different.

The next step is to write some dialog these characters could reasonably put in their mouths.

Hapax Legomenon said:

Is this bad?

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Well, it could potentially make the characters seem as though they're all the same person, just with different skin and hair. So probably you'll want to differentiate between them more.

What's stopping you from getting inside their heads and really writing from their viewpoint?

Hapax Legomenon said:

I mean there are differences. Yasu, for example, seems to be thinking a mile a minute, constantly weaving around all the possibilities he's been presented with. Daryush seems more bitter and really a bit paranoid. He pays a lot of attention to his surroundings. Jocosa seems more friendly and less serious in her thoughts, possibly even flippant. Laleh is very angry at the world and uses strange metaphors and I'd guess hers is the most different.

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In that case, their word choices are probably different, and should extend to the surrounding narrative. Basically, try writing it as if that character wrote it, rather than you writing it.

I see nothing wrong with maintaining a distinct authorial style that doesn't change regardless of character POV. It's worked for Elmore Leonard and many others.

guttersquid said:

I see nothing wrong with maintaining a distinct authorial style that doesn't change regardless of character POV. It's worked for Elmore Leonard and many others.

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Nothing wrong with this if it's what the op is shooting for. But presumably, he/she is aiming for something deeper and more in the voice of the pov characters, or they wouldn't be concerned about the issue in their own writing.

The personality of the characters may emerge as you continue to write about them. Little things, like which curse words the person uses, or the kinds of things they notice when they walk into a room or look at a person, can bring your narrative to life.

Here's a great article about word choice and the deepening of pov.

http://talktoyouniverse.blogspot.com/2011/11/checklist-for-deep-pov-in-1st-or-3rd.html

http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10311

If each POV is third person, you'd expect to have one consistent narrator. If each POV narrates part of the story, then you'd expect to have four distinct voices. That's the basic difference between first and third persons--a mediator or filter between the character and the reader. Imagine a guy in a tavern telling you something that happened to four of his friends. That's third person. Now imagine those four friends telling the story to you directly. That's first person.

Hapax Legomenon said:

Well, I was asking if it was bad. If it's not inherently bad, then it's not...

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That's what I thought you were asking. Hence my response:

guttersquid said:

I see nothing wrong with maintaining a distinct authorial style that doesn't change regardless of character POV. It's worked for Elmore Leonard and many others.

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Russell Secord said:

If each POV is third person, you'd expect to have one consistent narrator. If each POV narrates part of the story, then you'd expect to have four distinct voices. That's the basic difference between first and third persons--a mediator or filter between the character and the reader. Imagine a guy in a tavern telling you something that happened to four of his friends. That's third person. Now imagine those four friends telling the story to you directly. That's first person.

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Not necessarily. You're skipping over limited third pov. This is where the narrator is using third person pronouns to refer to the focal character, and may switch between different pov characters, but they're more than just reporting and interpreting something in their own words and voice. Some styles of limited third are indeed closer to omni in that they have a clear and distinct narrative voice that trumps their characters', but there's also a much deeper version where the narrator is indeed imbuing the narrative with the voice and personality of the pov character.

As with anything else, these techniques exist on a continuum. There's no right and wrong approach, so long as you don't confuse the reader. It's a matter of what the writer wants to accomplish.

Hapax Legomenon said:

Well, I was asking if it was bad. If it's not inherently bad, then it's not...

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A common enough concern. It is a bit disheartening how many craft books and writing sources on the web gloss something like this over and confidently state that "this is how it's done," and actually ignore the range of approaches writers can take within each of the "standard" pov categories.