| name | character-voice |
| description | Define and preserve a character's dialogue voice through worldview, goals, status, vocabulary, rhythm, syntax, humor, avoidance patterns, relationships, and situational variation without reducing voice to catchphrases. |
Character Voice
Use when creating or maintaining dialogue for a recurring character.
Procedure
- Define the character's worldview, current goals, social background, role, education or expertise, temperament, and what they want others to believe about them.
- Identify recurring vocabulary, sentence length, rhythm, directness, metaphor, humor, profanity, formality, and topics they avoid or over-explain.
- Define how voice changes with audience, status difference, trust, fear, anger, intimacy, deception, exhaustion, or professional context.
- Capture a few positive examples and anti-examples that demonstrate principles rather than exact reusable lines.
- Distinguish character knowledge from author knowledge so dialogue does not reveal information they could not possess.
- Check subtext: what the character wants from the exchange may differ from the literal words.
- Review new dialogue against neighboring characters so voices remain distinguishable without exaggerated verbal gimmicks.
- Update the voice notes when story events plausibly change the character's confidence, relationships, beliefs, or speech.
Decision rules
- Voice is a pattern of choices, not a repeated catchphrase.
- Characters can speak differently in different relationships while remaining recognizable.
- Avoid dialect caricature or stereotype as shorthand for identity.
- Knowledge and emotional state constrain what the character can plausibly say.
Quality gate
The voice is usable when new lines can be recognized by their worldview and speech choices without a name tag, situational variation remains plausible, character knowledge is respected, and distinctiveness comes from character rather than a repetitive verbal tic.
