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Finally realized why my dialogue all sounded the same after 3 years of prompts
I kept writing every character in my own voice and only clued in when a beta reader asked why my villain and my grandma's gardener talked identically. Started reading my old pieces aloud and cringed at how flat the swaps were. Anyone else have that moment where a single reader's comment broke a bad habit?
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kim.wren24d agoTop Commenter
Your villain and your grandma's gardener talked identically" is actually the funniest way to find that out. I had basically the same thing happen last month. I gave a friend two chapters and they asked if my tough detective and my soft spoken librarian were supposed to be twins. Read it out loud that night and yeah, they both used the same sarcastic comebacks and said "look" way too much. It's wild how your own voice just bleeds into every character without you noticing. Took one dumb sentence from a reader to make me see it too.
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