: Re: How can one not let their voice show through in all the characters? I was critiquing a friend's novel and I noticed that all the characters seem to have the voice of my friend. Speech fillers,

The other answers are good but they strike me as abstract. Maybe I'm a philistine, but I like my advice concrete and practical.

Different people naturally use different:

Vocabulary
Sentence length
Sentence structure (think balance of simple and complex sentences)
Register (which is a mix of things, but roughly 'level of formality')
Patterns of thought (More direct or roundabout? More emotional or practical?)
Approach (Blunt or diplomatic? Complainer or problem-solver? Loner or relationship-builder?)

When people talk about voice, that's what they're talking about. If you want distinct voices, pull apart your dialogue and reconstruct it with one eye on the above.

Hope that helps.

(Semi-flippant PS: this method of making your writing better might feel less like magic and more like work. I would argue that this is not a coincidence.)

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: Re: How can one not let their voice show through in all the characters? I was critiquing a friend's novel and I noticed that all the characters seem to have the voice of my friend. Speech fillers,

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