"I can't hear you..."

Voice! What is your voice? Have you even developed a voice in your writing yet? I'm not sure I have. I don't think I've quite hit on what makes my writing "mine".

  On top of trying to find my own voice, I'm also trying to find a voice for my characters. In my current project, I have some distinct voices and personality for two of my characters, and I have one character who is so flat that all of their dialog reads no differently to the prose around it. I'm thinking of taking them out of the story entirely. This would mean completely rewriting the book!

  So, how do I find my voice when I'm also supposed to animate all these other voices?

"Can you hear me now?"

  The Writers' Digest suggest that voice is "not only a unique way of putting words together, but a unique sensibility, a distinctive way of looking at the world, an outlook that enriches an author’s oeuvre", suggesting that the voice is as much about your take on a situation as the language you use. No wonder so many voices (including characters) make writing difficult? 


  To write and take all the characters' voices into account requires looking at a scene or idea from many perspectives:

• Your own: what the scene means to you

• Your protagonist: how they are likely to view and react to that scene

• Your antagonist: as above

• Your supporting cast: how are they responding to the events as they unfold

  So I need a personality disorder to really write. I need to be able to be multiple people, all at once. I can handle that.

  I want to be a writer, not a BBC announcer.

  I'm also embarrassed to be finding this hard to do. I play roleplaying games (and have done for longer than my parents would like) and I often DM games. I find it relatively easy to come up with characterisation, ticks and purposes for my NPCs. Some end up with complicated back stories, many of which the characters will likely never see. What is it about the roleplaying experience that allows me to quickly generate such a personality on-the-fly at a gaming table, but given time and effort, I can't transfer that to my writing? Why do all my characters sound the same?
  So, my plan is to hack it. I have my characters, basically, and I need to give them a perspective that I can use in my writing. For that, I need to go back into the book and pull them out of it. I can give them depth, history, and basic motivations for who they are. With these tools I can maybe write them better.


  All of this for one scene. Some of it you can skip, if the antagonist isn't going to be there, or if the focus needs to be away from the supporting cast, so the protagonist can shine, but primarily you will have to consider every scene from at least two perspectives.