: How do I differentiate between the "voices" of my characters in a multi-character POV? I'm currently writing a novel with 3-4 character POVs in it - two male, two female. Each have different

It is critical that you use different FONTS for each person "unless not practical". Different font sizes are especially effective.

HEY CHARACTER 1, WHAT TIME IT IS?

oh hello 2 that is a secret

---

(0)

For your characters I would tabulate
GOALS,
SKILLS they're comfortable using,
FEARS and threats they perceive,
RESTRICTIONS and disadvantages such as health or ethnicity

When switching characters I'd start with some obvious 'bang' to jolt the reader out of their natural continuity. If you can lead up to it from the last scene or some earlier scene then that's great. For example earlier Fred was looking up at a tiny figure halfway up a cliff face... Now switch to that figure. These signposts are not corny. Remember most readers are not studying your book for an exam, so they need hand-holding.

---

(0)

Answering another question I got into a back and forth with regard to 'write what you know' vs 'research'. This is an area where 'write what you know' certainly wins out. The limit and breadth of your characters is governed by how many impressions you can do.

Note that I used 'back and forth' rather than 'debate' or 'argument' - stole that little gem from the White House press secretary. Voice and dialogue is something you need to learn by listening rather than reading. You can develop an ear by listening in the strangest of places. You want to learn the voice of an English professor? - Listen to UK cricket commentary. You want a well-educated African-American father . . . listen to an Obama speech.

And you shouldn't put the cart before the horse. My stories usually contain English white girls, US Valley girls, US Hispanic women, Bigoted right-wing men . . . because these are the voices I am good at. I don't have a demure Japanese character because I cannot do that voice.

---

(0)

Let me second what several people appear to have said because it bears repeating:

It's not the writing style that changes between characters and their particular POVs it's got to be your outlook, you have to be able to identify with the character who POV you are using in order to write them well.

There are a number of book series where the author can't or won't identify fully with their POV characters and they are notable for their flatness of affect; all the narrators sound the same even though one is a ten year old girl and the other an 80 year old man. Authors need a clear understanding of each of their characters to write successfully from their POV.

What differentiates characters on the page? Internal voice is a big one, you can tell people apart by what they say and how they say it out loud, the same is true for how people talk to themselves. This includes their personal attitudes coming through in what they say but should also encompass deliberate dialectic choices and also show their level of education and environment past and current.

A slightly more subtle thing is what I think of as "detail apprehension"; what kinds of things does character A notice versus character B and how do those things effect them? For example character A might notice the spray of blood on the wall of the apartment or the haze of gunsmoke in the lobby after a shootout and get tense; meanwhile character B notices the copper/iron smell of spilled blood before they see it and the cordite smoke wafting on the breeze as they approach the hotel, the first makes them queasy and glad it's not them while the second excites them with the promise of action.

---

(0)

The others have pretty much said everything that needs to be said. Unless you have sufficient capacity to empathise with others, you're gonna have a hard time. If you are finding it difficult to get into the head of others... yeah, it's gonna be difficult for you.

In order to give different POVs different voices, all you truly need in your skillset is the ability to think as another person thinks. Have you ever tried to understand the point of view of someone else even though it isn't your own? Or comforted a person grieving a relative that you personally don't know or care about?

That is the only skill you truly need, and most humans, being social animals, come pre-packaged with it. You need to hit the update patch at around six years old for your 'empathy' function to kick in, but it does with most humans.

---

(0)

Well, kind of a wide question, but you already got the hang of it:

the entire worldview, it changes from character to character

The whole point is having a clear idea of who your character are. As you mentioned, gender, upbringing, profession, culture, and personality are all factors that determine one character worldview and should, by all means, influence the PoV.

You can play this in a number of ways.
For example, you may have the PoV of a shy or introvert character. Maybe we already know that this character seldomly talks, and when he does he uses as few word as possible. But, by contrast, his PoV may be rich of vivid descriptions and images, meaning that this character keeps a very keen eye on the world around him and he's much more involved in things that he shows.

Another character may appear as happy, out-going and cheerful type.

When switching to this PoV, you could show how this character struggles to maintain his positive attitude even when he's feeling blue or pissed off. Maybe he struggles to smile to feel more accepted in his community. Maybe he's not so happy at all.

Those are just two examples, the point being that entering the PoV of a character allows you - as the writer - to show the readers how does character thinks and feels.

A character's profession and cultural background also greatly determines how a character describes the world. An engineer will use more scientific terms, an academic professor will sound more literate than most ... but also, hobbies come into play: a football fanatic will use football metaphors, and so on.

Also, characters - as humans - are essentially biased, and it shows. You can use the PoV of a character to show the reader its worldview ... even the unsavory parts of that. A character may be a neat freak, and will comment on the hygenic condition of everything he sees. A character may dislike long-haired men, and may comment negatively everytime he sees one.

Also, how does the writing style change?

That's a tricky point. As other are saying, you can't completely change your writing style to suit the PoV, and also, you want some kind of cohesion in your novel.

The writing style can change if you feel confident enough to do it (there are authors who write with multiple PoVs, switching from first person to third person when needed) but this is ultimately up to you.

In the end you need to write how you write best; if you decide that the entire book should be in first person, and that you don't like to use long, sophisticated sentences, you can still use different PoVs working inside those premises.

The golden rule, in the end, is: characterize your PoVs as you characterize your characters.

---

(0)

How do the people speaking around you, wherever you are, speak differently? How do your favorite authors give characters different voices?

Here are a few ways your characters might differ:

Different vocabularies
Different sentence lengths and complexities
Different speeds
Verbosity vs brevity
Some think before they speak, while others speak their immediate, unfiltered thoughts
Some use metaphors, some are more direct and clear
Some talk about higher issues, others about concrete details
Some are storytellers, others talk about ideas and hypotheticals

Those are just off the top of my head, before my morning caffeine.

---

(0)