I’ve never been a cop. I’ve also never been an old man, or a plague doctor, or an alien being, or a nuclear physicist.
But as a screenwriter, it’s very likely I’ll one day write some or all of these kinds of characters, ones that are totally outside my experience or even my reality. How can I possibly make these characters sound real?
John Matthew Fox, who runs Bookfox, a resource for fiction writers, recently shared advice that translates well to screenwriting. His video breaks down eight specific techniques for capturing authentic character voices when you’re writing someone completely different from yourself.
Before jumping into solutions, Fox warns against common traps. Don’t lean on stereotypical speech patterns for different ethnicities. Don’t dump in period slang you may have heard somewhere, but don’t know the meaning of. And don’t assume throwing in Gen Z slang makes a teenage character convincing. (Oof. That is a huge one. Especially since your references are likely to be five years behind the zeitgeist, anyway.)
Check out his video.
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Generate Your Character’s Metaphors and Similes
Fox says you need to think about your character’s sensory world and the comparisons they’d naturally make.
A Gen Alpha character might use brain-rot phrases like “aura farming” or “skibidi.” (But again, I’d really caution against using words you don’t know the meaning of, especially when they’re nonsensical. I hear the kids are even already moving past “6 7.”)
Fox suggests imagining what a character’s surroundings would be for their time period and setting. Farmers are not going to talk the same way Wall Street bankers do. Someone from the past would not use the same language as today’s corporate workers, so they wouldn’t be talking about “bandwidth” or “circling back.”
Find five metaphors or similes your specific character would use, drawing from their actual lived experience rather than yours. If you can somehow put yourself in their setting (spend a lot of time on TikTok, or travel for research), that can be beneficial to your process.
Identify What They Never Say Directly
Everyone uses euphemisms to talk around certain topics. And we love subtext around here. Fox points out that these avoidance patterns reveal character and background.
A Southern character might say “bless your heart” instead of calling someone an idiot. Victorian middle-class characters wouldn’t say that someone was depressed. They would say “got the morbs.”
Fox suggests identifying categories your character won’t discuss directly, for whatever reason. This could be things like bodily functions, sexuality, or authority figures. Then figure out what euphemisms they’d use instead.
Active Versus Passive
This one’s important, Fox says. Does your character take responsibility in their speech, or do they deflect it?
Active speech involves subject-verb construction. “I volunteer!” shouts Katniss.
Passive speech involves something being done to someone by someone else. It avoids responsibility for an event.
So, someone avoiding responsibility might say “the deadline was missed” instead of “I missed the deadline.” Fox uses Eeyore as an example of passive speech (“my tail has been lost again” rather than “I lost my tail”). The character positions himself as someone things happen to. Out of their control.
A politician might use this strategically: “Mistakes were made.” Not, “I made mistakes.”
Or maybe a character takes responsibility, changing their speech, when it matters most.
Check out our detailed guide on active versus passive voice in screenwriting.
Barbie Credit: Warner Bros.
Find the Disfluencies
Fox explains that disfluencies are the small ways people mess up when speaking. Everyone has them, and they function as unique things that set your speech apart.
It could be filler words. Fox points out that Cassie in Euphoria puts “like” into almost every sentence. It could be a speech impediment.
Maybe your character can never finish a difficult sentence. Maybe they always mispronounce certain words. Maybe they have another verbal tic.
You’ve probably heard that a goal with dialogue should be that you should be able to cover the character names and still know who is speaking. This can be one major way to help each voice stand out.
List What Your Character Says Most Often
This ties in closely with the preceding point. Fox recommends choosing a single word or phrase your character uses repeatedly. This could be a catchphrase like Joey’s “How you doing?” in Friends, or a verbal tic like Jay Gatsby’s constant “old sport.” I was listening to F1 commentary last night, and one of the Sky Sports broadcasters kept saying, “To be honest. To be honest.” I noticed immediately.
The goal is to give your character a verbal identity that sets them apart from others. Pepper this word or phrase through your character’s dialogue to create consistency.
Check out our resource for more on crafting distinctive character voices through dialogue.
Find Your Character’s Syntax
Syntax refers to word order in sentences, and Fox calls this the trickiest but most essential technique for capturing voice.
He uses Christopher from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time as an example. The autistic character speaks in very ordered, precise, logical sentences with minimal emotion.
One character who breaks traditional syntax is Yoda from Star Wars, and he has one of the most unique voices in all of cinema. “Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?” is totally different from saying, “Do you judge me by my size?”
Fox suggests specific syntactic choices for different characters. Maybe yours asks lots of questions, or speaks primarily in short sentences. Maybe they use a lot of purple, flowery descriptions to make their sentences longer. Or maybe they’re a little mixed up, like Yoda.
Downton Abbey Credit: Focus Features
Their Social Position Should Influence Speech
Fox points out that social hierarchy affects how people speak. Someone who grew up in an oppressive environment and wasn’t allowed to express themselves to those in charge would likely be hesitant, timid, and afraid of being wrong.
Someone who grew up validated and heard would have no trouble being assertive and confident. Maybe they come from wealth or power.
Downton Abbey provides a good example of this. The aristocratic Crawleys speak in Received Pronunciation with formal vocabulary, while the servants mostly have coarser Yorkshire accents. The aristocrats speak French to signal their education and breeding. Upper servants like Carson adopt more formal speech patterns than lower servants. And among the servants, there’s linguistic code-switching. Carson speaks one way to Lord Grantham and another way to the kitchen staff.
This connects directly to character development and understanding how a character’s background shapes not just what they want, but how they express themselves.
Adjusting for Time Periods
Fox cautions against replicating historical speech. Just like with slang, you might not have a full understanding of how that speech works, and it can lead to jarring mistakes.
Remember, the world you’re creating is your own. It doesn’t have to be perfectly historically accurate. Tell a fun story, and the audience will suspend their disbelief.
Some writers can get away with total historical accuracy, like Robert Eggers in The Witch or The Lighthouse or Nosferatu, and do it well due to all the research involved. (It will still likely put off some audiences who don’t want to “work” to understand characters, so be aware of that, too.)
Fox says you can use words like “lordship” and “ruffians” without making dialogue incomprehensible to modern audiences, but you don’t need to go much farther than that. For future-set stories, you don’t need to create radically different speech patterns; just get creative with specific terms, like “frak” in Battlestar Galactica.
The key is making your character understandable while giving them speech patterns that feel authentic to their world. Find some period-appropriate terms and work them in when it makes sense. If it doesn’t make sense, don’t use it. When we explore dialogue techniques, we want to reveal character without feeling forced or on-the-nose.
You can watch Fox’s full video on writing character voice for more examples and details on each technique.