Advice for distinguishing two narrator's voices

Orion101

Hello, looking for some advice on making the two narrator's more distinct in a story I have written.

I've used a frame narrative, with narrator 1 opening and quickly passing to narrator 2, who tells the bulk of the story before passing back to narrator 1.

Both characters are around the same age, similarly educated, and both have suffered grievious losses and are somewhat unstable. They also share a lot of the same environment. The first narrator is largely the worse off, so I'm considering using more words with negative connotations in his section. Not sure how necessary it is to make the two vastly different, as the first narrator has a relatively short involvement.

Any suggestions?

dawvee

From your description, I'm having difficulty seeing why there need to be two distinct narrators to begin with. If the characters are similar enough so as to be largely indistinguishable, wouldn't it make more sense to stick with a single narrator?

Edited to add: The main grounds you have left to differentiate them (having eliminated age, education and background) is personality. You could give one of them a black sense of humour maybe, make him/her a bit cavalier about the details of the story, while the other is earnestly serious and obsessive about accuracy, something like that. Just find an interesting contrast in personality traits that come across when someone is telling a story, and play those up.

pickarooney

The main thing to do is to invest fully in creating the characters in your head, to the point where you know yourself exactly what each of them would say in a given situation. The distinction should then translate to the page. No matter what their backgrounds, any two people will have a diverging world view and this can be seen in all mannerof things, from the length of the sentences they use to their attitudes towards old people.

davyjose

Yeah, you have to give the reader credit (see Truisms in the stickies). If you stick rigidly with each characters personality, the reader should be able to distinguish.

I assume they'll have differing views on events (or else, as Dawvee said, it's probably pointless having two narrators).

I was toying with the idea of doing what you are, but writing between 1st and 3rd person, but I think that might be muddled and gimmicky. Your other option would be to write it all in 3rd person, which should easily distinguish between the two, I reckon.

Orion101

Thanks for all suggestions, much appreciated!

The breaks between the narrators are pretty clear, as one is reading the journal of another. My fear was more that to a critical reader, both might seem to think/write in a very similar style. I'm going to work on another story for a few weeks and come back with a fresh set of eyes.

af_thefragile

I'm working on a novel with 4 different narratives. Its like the chapters keeping jumping between the narratives so a bit like watching a movie, you get to follow the story from 4 different point of views.

The key thing in my story is that all the narrators are very different. I've spent a lot of time developing the characters and their personality traits and every character is unique. So you keep getting to see the same events through different perspectives. As mentioned above, it is very important to shape out your characters before you get to any sort of writing. The characters need to be different from one another. If there's no contrast between the characters then there's no point in having the different narratives.

The characters don't need to have contrasting personality. They could just be in contrasting situations of life. Like one is rich other is poor, one is successful, other is struggling to make ends meal. Or the characters can be in the same situation but have different personalities like one's very positive and enthusiastic about everything while other is more cynical and pessimistic.

It all depends on how well you build your characters and how much personality you give to them. The more defined the characters are, the more distinct their voices will become. So very important to develop your characters first, completely from head to toe before you assign any voice to them.

Also very important to first figure out why you want to have different narratives. Is it because you just wanna do something different or is it because having you can't put across the story with just one person narrating it as effectively...
If you're just wanting to do something different without having a clear idea of why you're doing it the certain way, its not really gonna work out properly. You might as well have one person narrating the whole story. You need to be able to know why you wanna work in this format before getting to writing anything. I always have one goal/theme/concept while working at a story. Without this you're wandering blindly. What is the purpose of having two narrative? Why can't you just do with one? You need answer these questions before you get to writing as the answers to these questions will guide you through your work.

.Moosejam

Have one of them speak in a thick accent - Hey mon ...

EileenG

.Moosejam wrote: »

Have one of them speak in a thick accent - Hey mon ...

Don't. That gets very annoying very quickly. The odd word of dialect is fine, but lots of "mon" and "canna" etc get boring fast.

Your narrators should all have their own distinct voices, phrases, vocabulary and swear words. Not to mention, the way other characters relate to them will be a giveaway.