: Re: 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

@Kevin153

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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.

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