I sat down this morning, requisite cup of coffee in hand, to take a close look at a short story I'd written a few months back. It's one of those stories, the ones that you know have a good character and good plot arc, but there's something a bit off that you can't quite put your finger on. This particular piece has been workshopped twice, to a bevvy of wonderful comments, but the slight problem lingers, which irks me.
A close inspection now, after having shelved it for a few months, revealed a small, but significant problem: the main character's voice wasn't appropriate in the dialogue. She's in her early sixties, children grown and gone, a housewife (how I hate that term, but that's a story for another day) with little confidence in herself and her abilities, grew up in the late 50s, and is a consummate worrywart.
She doesn't say much, 28 words out of 727, and only two lines of dialogue, which was part of the problem. Those two lines were significant, which had been my intention, but I hadn't looked closely enough at exactly what she was actually saying in those two lines. And therein lay the problem. She'd lost a bit of her lack of confidence (and for no apparent reason), her words displaying a surety about herself that she shouldn't have possessed (a surety I only caught when I went through and read the dialogue, and nothing else, aloud). A few minor changes, along with the addition of a bit more nonverbal communication on her part, and I'm pretty sure the problem's solved.
Congruency and consistency across and within characters is important, so make sure, when editing, that your character's dialogue (and "voice") match the character you've constructed. Also, because dialogue is meant to be spoken, it's a good idea to read it aloud. If your character doesn't quite sound "in character," it's likely that they aren't.
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