So how do you create a different voice for each point-of-view character?
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (affiliate link)
Barbara Kingsolver’s acclaimed The Poisonwood Bible features five POV characters: a mother and her four daughters. All are from the same family and geographic background, all are female, and most are around the same age.
With all these similarities in view, it would seem Kingsolver set herself an insurmountable task in making each character’s voice so unique it’s instantly recognizable from the others. She does do so, thanks in part to unique vocal tics. But this is only a tiny contributor to her success.
The secret of unique narrative voices lies foremost in the creation of unique characters.
Kingsolver presents five complete and in-depth personalities. Her characters’ voices live and breathe on the page because she took the time to get to know them herself and flesh them out. I would venture that, as a result, these characters decided for themselves how they would talk, and Kingsolver had only to let the words spill forth.
Had she approached these POVs differently—had she slapped on the vocal tics without investigating the characters themselves—both the characters’ voices and, indeed, the entire story would have suffered.
