Thoughts About Voices

[joandarck.livejournal.com]

Please assume IMHOs sprinkled liberally throughout, okay?


So, I'm here to talk about character voices, or specifically, dialogue. As a fanfic reader, voices are very important to me. Life is short and I don't want to just read a decent story: I want to feel that it's definitely about characters from the show. Getting dialogue to sound right isn't the most important thing; you could have an excellent story where the characters never speak at all. But I do think it's vital not to get it wrong.

A story that gets the dialogue wrong breaks the spell for me faster than anything. No matter how excellently written it is or how well it pushes my buttons, it's all over if a British character sounds obviously American or a Tolkein elf starts shouting "F–-k me, Gimli, f--k me!" (Real. Life. Example. Don't make me come back there and give you the URL.)

Of course, there are ( lots of ways to get it right. )