Do Your Characters Sound Real?

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I love being transported into the fictional world an author has created for me.

Don't you? Too often, though, my reverie is interrupted by a jarringly unrealistic bit of dialogue from one of the characters.

In the bestselling novel The Lost Bookshop, (which had some charm but I felt was overrated), the character of Opaline complained about women being "silenced." Opaline had risen in a man's world by becoming a successful bookseller and rare book dealer, but she was born in 1920, and I'd bet the current market value of my Los Angeles home that she would never have used this 21st century phrase to express the real bias against women authors.

She also referred to "constraints against her gender," when in her day she would have said "constraints against her sex." Opaline was the most interesting and fully developed character in this novel, so it was a shame the author imposed futuristic language on her. You almost expected her to pop open her iPhone and check her social media feeds.

This problem is common in historical fiction, including where characters who lived in previous generations refer to "people of color" when they would have said "black" or "negro." Neither were considered slurs at that time. What's the point of forcing current terms on characters who would never have used them?

Some authors try too hard to show they "get" a character's ethnic profile. I just finished a novel based in pre-World War II England, centered on the love affair between a young Jewish man, David, and a young Catholic woman, Kate. Their affair plays out against the backdrop of the impending war, David's knowledge that his parents would never accept a gentile daughter-in-law, and Kate's own fierce sense of independence. But the author had David and his mother both slinging Jewish lingo around in embarrassing and unrealistic ways, landing heavier than an oily potato kugel. Tossing in Jewish words or references such as "boychik," or "I hear you're in the shmatte business" seemed like she was just throwing conversational darts, none of them realistic.

Build your characters from the inside out, and let them talk as they would naturally have spoken, given their culture, personality, and era. Don't talk through them from your vantage point. And by all means, run those manuscripts by people who really do know the culture and the time when your characters lived, breathed, hoped, and dreamed.