Some thoughts on character voices

Here are some ideas.

First, yeah, it'll feel a bit silly at first. Actually, a lot silly. But character voices are also incrediby fun. The give a lot of... character... to your... uh... character. So I think they're worth giving it a go.

I'm going to give credit here. This is the video that made it all click for me. This video gives non-mutually-exclusive characteristics to your voices that you can combine in lots of different ways. Here's the video. Like and subscribe, if you want.

There are a few aspects of voice character that are basically essential. I'm going to be honest here, and say that these didn't make a lot of sense to me at first. But once I started playing with them (and it is important to remember that it does count as playing), I started to get the idea.

Here are the three basic characteristics of your voice. You can interpret these words however you want. Play with them a little and like me, you will get the idea after a while. These are opposite ends of several spectrums.

Light vs. Strong
Direct vs. Indirect
Sudden vs. Sustained

Already you should be able to see a few examples. Christopher Walken is Light + Direct + Sudden. Jeremy Irons is Stong + Direct + Sustained. Sybil Trelawney is Light + Indirect + Sustained. The demon Sweet from Once More With Feeling (Buffy the Vampire Slayer S6 E7) is Light + Direct + Sustained. I hope you get the idea.

You can combine these characteristics to make a distinctive voice for your character, or if you're a DM, your NPCs. And here's where it starts to get crazy.

There are more characteristics you can play with. Here are a few:

• Nasal vs. Throat
• Breathy vs. Dry
• Old vs. Young
• Slow vs. Fast

There are more. See the video.

Using these characteristics, you can mix and match to get a character voice that is unique and distinctive. I have two characters in my current game - a High Elf Diviner named Ereshan, and a Gnome Knowledge Domain Cleric named Jugbait (pronounced "YOOG-bat"). They tend to speak in synergy, ending each other's sentences. I thought it would be fun to roleplay this out, so I practiced switching between two distinct voices mid-sentence. Ereshan is Light, Direct, Sustained, Breathy. Jugbait is Strong, Direct, Sudden, Fast. I have chosen Direct for both, because I think that provides a link between the two, but otherwise they are quite distinct.

Once I had decided on this, I went to a page of random quotations and started practicing. I started by reading quotes in just one voice, but eventually started switching between the two mid-sentence.

Um, anyway, I don't have a great conclusion to this post, so yeah. Bye. I'll probably work on this more later to finish it properly because I hate bad endings.