Overthinking speech patterns, the life, the story

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 05:42:14 GMT

I've been writing a Dangan Ronpa fic that's mostly dialogue (or at least very dialogue-heavy), and that means it's sort of an exercise in speech patterns and character voice as well. Which is great, because I'm really into that kind of stuff, but also super incredibly hard.

I don't write a lot of Kirigiri types, so it's a bit of a stretch to get into her headspace, but she actually comes easier than Celes. Kirigiri's really precise, sort of not good at social interaction, and terse: not one to dilute her words with "sort of"s and "kind of"s and "I think"s. I don't think she'd use much slang, and her speaking style is semi-formal and removed.

Celes is much harder to write, because I tend to go for colloquial, slangy characters (Texas from Motorcity, Roxy from Homestuck) and sometimes I feel their voices blending into mine. I can get away with that with Roxy, who speaks with some of my slang and my speech patterns, but Celestia Ludenberg shouldn't sound like a girl straight out of SoCal Land.

So: This is what I'm going for when I'm writing Celes! Celes is sort of a haphazard thinker who makes a great deal of logical leaps.Where Kirigiri goes from x + 1 +1 = x +2, Celes goes from "public urination" to "BLACK PLAGUE". Her expressed thought process is more inferential and connotative than methodical: like, it makes sense in her head, but a huge chunk of the steps get left out. She baronesses sometimes (speaking like an anime baroness, all "you may" and "perhaps" and "thus") because she thinks it makes her sound cool, and like, has what my kindergarten teacher called "a great imagination". I think maybe her prose could go purple at times: she'd dip into metaphor and simile more than Kirigiri (who goes for detail). Maybe I'll do a thing where they describe the same guard, and Kirigiri notices the little details while Celes ruminates on his home life and constructs this whole little people-watchy story.

...Maybe I should stop writing about this fic and actually write it...

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acerbictomes

Overthinking speech patterns, the life, the story