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 upbringings, different cultural backgrounds, different professions, different motivators and driving factors - in short, how the characters think, the entire worldview, it changes from chapter to chapter.
So how do I change my writing to reflect the character voice, when it is just my voice as the writer, bleeding through all of them?
Also, how does the writing style change? Between male and female POVs, between different professions? Do male tend to use more stilted sentences than female characters? How does the voice change in, say, a warrior, as compared to a mathematician or a linguist?
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1 answer
Well, kind of a wide question, but you already got the hang of it:
the entire worldview, it changes from character to character
The whole point is having a clear idea of who your character are. As you mentioned, gender, upbringing, profession, culture, and personality are all factors that determine one character worldview and should, by all means, influence the PoV.
You can play this in a number of ways. For example, you may have the PoV of a shy or introvert character. Maybe we already know that this character seldomly talks, and when he does he uses as few word as possible. But, by contrast, his PoV may be rich of vivid descriptions and images, meaning that this character keeps a very keen eye on the world around him and he's much more involved in things that he shows.
Another character may appear as happy, out-going and cheerful type.
When switching to this PoV, you could show how this character struggles to maintain his positive attitude even when he's feeling blue or pissed off. Maybe he struggles to smile to feel more accepted in his community. Maybe he's not so happy at all.
Those are just two examples, the point being that entering the PoV of a character allows you - as the writer - to show the readers how does character thinks and feels.
A character's profession and cultural background also greatly determines how a character describes the world. An engineer will use more scientific terms, an academic professor will sound more literate than most ... but also, hobbies come into play: a football fanatic will use football metaphors, and so on.
Also, characters - as humans - are essentially biased, and it shows. You can use the PoV of a character to show the reader its worldview ... even the unsavory parts of that. A character may be a neat freak, and will comment on the hygenic condition of everything he sees. A character may dislike long-haired men, and may comment negatively everytime he sees one.
Also, how does the writing style change?
That's a tricky point. As other are saying, you can't completely change your writing style to suit the PoV, and also, you want some kind of cohesion in your novel.
The writing style can change if you feel confident enough to do it (there are authors who write with multiple PoVs, switching from first person to third person when needed) but this is ultimately up to you.
In the end you need to write how you write best; if you decide that the entire book should be in first person, and that you don't like to use long, sophisticated sentences, you can still use different PoVs working inside those premises.
The golden rule, in the end, is: characterize your PoVs as you characterize your characters.
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