Six dials that make one character sound unlike another
Pick one or two dials per character and move them a little. Moving all six at once produces a cartoon, and one you cannot sustain for a whole book.
| Dial | What you change | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Pitch | A few notes above or below your natural voice, never a full octave | A gruff captain sits lower; a nervous clerk a touch higher |
| Tempo | Speed of speech and length of pauses | A schemer speaks slowly and lets silences sit; a teenager rushes |
| Resonance | Where the sound seems to live: chest, mouth or nose | Chest for authority; a slightly nasal edge for a complainer |
| Texture | Breathy, gravelly, crisp or soft | A gravelly old soldier; a soft spoken healer |
| Attitude | The emotion the character falls back on | Amused, suspicious, weary or eager, line after line |
| Speech habits | Rhythm and word choice already in the text | Clipped sentences, formal vocabulary, a pet phrase |
Find the voice in the text before you open your mouth
The author has already given you most of the voice. Age, background and status set the starting point. How other characters describe someone (“her voice could strip paint”) is a direct instruction. Sentence length and vocabulary tell you tempo: a character who speaks in long, careful clauses is not a fast talker.
Read all of a major character’s dialogue in one sitting before you decide anything. A voice that suits their first scene may not survive their angriest one or their saddest, so test your choice against the emotional extremes of the book, not the opening.
Keep your narrator voice as the baseline, close to how you naturally speak. Character voices are variations around it, which is what lets you switch between them mid sentence and sustain them for ten hours.
Building one character voice, step by step
- 1
Choose a main dial
Decide the single biggest difference from your narrator voice, such as lower pitch or a slower tempo.
- 2
Add one supporting dial
Pick a second, smaller change that fits the personality, often attitude or texture.
- 3
Find the key line
Choose one line that sums the character up and record it. Play it back before every session in which they speak.
- 4
Write a character sheet
Note name, age, the two dials, the key line and the chapter where they first appear. Add a timestamp from your reference recording.
- 5
Test them against a scene partner
Read a conversation between this character and the one they talk to most. If you cannot tell them apart with your eyes closed, move a dial further.
Keeping character voices steady for a whole book
Drift is the main problem. A voice that starts as a slight rasp in chapter two can turn into a growl by chapter twenty, or slide back toward your own voice. Listeners notice. Playing the key line before each session is the simplest fix, and the character sheet catches a minor character who reappears after a long gap.
Record big scenes in one sitting. An argument between two main characters recorded across two days often sounds like two different arguments. Keep the scene together so energy and pitch match.
Protect your voice. Extreme pitch, heavy gravel and shouting tire the voice quickly. Stay within a comfortable range, warm up before recording, drink water and stop when you start to strain. Voices you can only produce for ten minutes do not belong in a ten hour book.
Names need the same discipline. Settle how each one is said before you start, using an audiobook pronunciation guide, so the voice and the name stay fixed together.
Opposite gender, children and older characters without caricature
Voicing women as a male narrator. Avoid falsetto. Lift the pitch only slightly, soften how words begin, and lean on rhythm and attitude: a woman’s voice in fiction is defined far more by who she is than by how high she speaks. Voicing men as a female narrator works the same way in reverse: a little lower, more chest, a steadier tempo and fewer rising endings.
Children sound young through energy and simplicity, not squeaks. A brighter tone, quicker pace and wide eyed attitude carry it. Very young children often speak in short bursts and stress odd words.
Older characters come across through tempo and breath: more pauses, slightly longer vowels, a voice that takes its time. A constant shake quickly becomes a parody; save it for moments of emotion or frailty.
Accents: when to use them and when to leave them out
Use an accent when the story makes origin matter: a foreigner in a closed village, a character hiding where they come from, a cast drawn from several countries. A light touch is enough, usually a few vowel changes and the rhythm of the region. Listeners fill in the rest.
Leave it out when you cannot sustain it or when it risks becoming a stereotype. A wobbly accent pulls listeners out of the story faster than no accent at all. If everyone in the book shares a regional accent, the narrator can stay neutral and let one or two characters carry the color. When an accent is central to the book, consider casting a voice from that region rather than imitating it.
One line, read by three different characters
The line is “We should go back.” Each character changes only one or two dials, plus the direction an AI voice would need.
| Character | Dials to move | Direction to try with an AI voice |
|---|---|---|
| Ship’s captain, 50s | Lower pitch, slow tempo, flat attitude | [flat, final, not up for discussion] |
| Stowaway, 14 | Faster tempo, brighter tone, scared attitude | [rushed, scared, trying to sound brave] |
| Old scholar | Slow tempo, soft texture, amused attitude | [thoughtful, a little amused] |
More directions and the inline sound tags are listed on the AI voice emotion tags page.
How to do character voices with an AI cast
With AI narration, the dials become casting decisions. Instead of shifting your own pitch and texture, you pick a voice that already has the age, weight and tone you want, then use a bracketed direction such as [wry] or [barely holding back tears] to set the attitude of a particular line.
Upload a chapter to the AI audiobook generator and every speaking character is detected from the dialogue tags and given a voice of their own, matched on gender where the text makes it clear. Up to 10 named characters get separate voices and minor speakers share an “Other voices” role. Swap any voice you would cast differently, make sure the two characters who talk most sound the furthest apart, and reuse the cast for every book in a series. The multi voice audiobook page shows the casting in more detail, and full cast vs single narrator helps you decide whether a cast suits your book.
Same cast in every book