Character Voice

---
name: character-voice
description: Define and preserve a character's dialogue voice through worldview, goals, status, vocabulary, rhythm, syntax, humor, avoidance patterns, relationships, and situational variation without reducing voice to catchphrases.
---
# Character Voice

Use when creating or maintaining dialogue for a recurring character.

## Procedure
1. Define the character's worldview, current goals, social background, role, education or expertise, temperament, and what they want others to believe about them.
2. Identify recurring vocabulary, sentence length, rhythm, directness, metaphor, humor, profanity, formality, and topics they avoid or over-explain.
3. Define how voice changes with audience, status difference, trust, fear, anger, intimacy, deception, exhaustion, or professional context.
4. Capture a few positive examples and anti-examples that demonstrate principles rather than exact reusable lines.
5. Distinguish character knowledge from author knowledge so dialogue does not reveal information they could not possess.
6. Check subtext: what the character wants from the exchange may differ from the literal words.
7. Review new dialogue against neighboring characters so voices remain distinguishable without exaggerated verbal gimmicks.
8. Update the voice notes when story events plausibly change the character's confidence, relationships, beliefs, or speech.

## Decision rules
- Voice is a pattern of choices, not a repeated catchphrase.
- Characters can speak differently in different relationships while remaining recognizable.
- Avoid dialect caricature or stereotype as shorthand for identity.
- Knowledge and emotional state constrain what the character can plausibly say.

## Quality gate
The voice is usable when new lines can be recognized by their worldview and speech choices without a name tag, situational variation remains plausible, character knowledge is respected, and distinctiveness comes from character rather than a repetitive verbal tic.