There are so many different things that go into writing a novel. You need to have a killer plot, or at least one that hooks people (since people have said there are only anywhere from 3-9 original plots in the universe). You need to make your characters relatable and realistic. You need all these things. So, sometimes as a writer you need to do uncomfortable things in order to polish your craft.Just last night I was writing a scene with a sizable chunk of dialogue between two of my characters, one of which happened to be loosely based on someone that I knew several years back and am no longer friends with. Now, I’ve read my fair share of writing articles on character authenticity and whatever, so I knew by this point that your characters absolutely cannot all sound the same. However, once I was about three fourths finished with the scene, I realized that both of these characters were speaking with the same voice, and I immediately stopped and tried to figure out what I could do to make them sound more like distinct people.
For me, this is one of the hardest aspects of writing. As the writer, there is a great temptation to make all of your characters sound like you, using the same vocal and written mannerisms, but, no. So, not only do you need to write and direct all of your own scenes, you also have to be the actors as well. Lucky for me, I remembered that I must have some old conversations between myself and this person the character was based on.
Thus, I went searching through all of my electronic archives trying to find some sort of exchange between the two of us. Email? No. Never responded to 80% of those. Paper? No. Never wrote anything between the two of us. Text? Could have been, but cell phones were just the darnedest in 2010 and conveniently started deleting your inbox once it reached 150 messages, and don’t even think about being able to save messages to your SD card or backup to the cloud. It was 20-freaking-10 after all.
But, alas, not all hope was lost. I finally found something. Where? Google. Chat. Yup.
Now, I’m not nearly old enough to have been in any AOL chatrooms or anything, but in 2010 Google Chat and Google Talk were THE messengers for me and my friends. It was insane. I remember staying up until (and bear with me) 10:00pm, yes that’s 22:00pm military time, to talk to my friends who I would see at school the next day. It was a grand time in life.
At any rate, I started flipping back through all the different threads and finally started to find some starting in late 2010. Wonderful. Did I mention that Google also has this fantastic thing that tells you exactly how many lines were in your conversation? Crazy, right.
So I start reading these old conversations between me and this guy, and oh my goodness, are they awkward and painful to read. Look at little 2010 me, using every internet shortcut possible and razing every vowel from every word, not to mention that I realized that we talked about literally nothing. There was absolutely no substance to what we talked about. It was actually really sad to read them and realize that we spent 784 lines talking about nothing relevant or important at all. Oh, did I mention that I initiated all of these conversations (still a current pet peeve).
After an hour or so of sifting through old Google chats, what did I come out with? Honestly, not much. Truth be told, my friend often didn’t respond with enough text to actually analyze for speech patterns, but I suppose that tells more than if there had been something to look at. He was a very boyish boy. In reality, all it did was console me in knowing I’ve made much better friend choices since 2010 and reaffirm what I’d learned in writing articles about male and female speech patterns. Women and girls on average use at least three times more words in a given day then men and boys, or in the case of these conversations, it was more like a 5:1 ratio, but I’m not very typical. So, lesson of the day, remember that your male characters will typically express themselves in fewer verbal and written words than your female characters, pending exceptions.
Do you guys do anything out of the ordinary to help write your characters? Let me know in the comments below. I always love engaging with other bloggers :]]
StoryCloset 
I’m currently writing my first-ever book…it’s a memoir though but I need to work on developing the characters more. I’ll try looking at old emails..it might help especially when writing about high school
I think it will! In my opinion, memoirs are almost harder than fiction, because instead of trying to create a new character, you have to try and accurately portray a real person.
I’d definitely try and look for any kind of older correspondence between you and the people you’re trying to write about. If anything, it’ll help you remember the past and the emotions you were feeling at the time, which is also helpful. Good luck on your memoir!