Your Character Sounds Different With Their Mother. Let Them.

“I disagree.”

That is what Meera types to her friend.

In the meeting, she says, “Could we look at the figures again?”

Her objection has not changed. Her manager can decide what work she gets next. Her friend cannot.

A character’s voice becomes more convincing when the writer notices these differences. Vocabulary matters, but so does permission: who can interrupt, who must explain, who expects to be believed.

In an interview about Taipei Story, R. F. Kuang discusses language proficiency, embarrassment, and the expectations placed on heritage speakers. She describes the tension between being presumed to know a language and having to learn it through mistakes. These are useful questions for writers building multilingual characters. Read the interview on Literary Hub.

The craft exercise here extends that discussion. It asks what a speaker changes when the listener changes.

Start with the relationship

Give a character one piece of information to deliver:

“I need to borrow money.”

Now decide whom they are asking.

To a sibling:
> “Can you cover me until Friday?”

To a parent:
> “The rent went up. I’ve paid most of it.”

To a colleague:
> “Would you be comfortable lending me something? You can say no.”

These versions disclose different amounts. One assumes familiarity. Another gives a justification before making the request. The third tries to protect the listener from an obligation.

They also create different opportunities for conflict. The parent might ask why they were not told earlier. The sibling might mention the last unpaid loan. The colleague might agree, then become awkward at work.

The wording should affect what happens next.

Let fluency be specific

When writing multilingual characters, decide what they can do in each language.

A character might discuss work confidently but struggle to describe an argument with their partner. Another might understand family conversations yet hesitate when replying. Someone may know the technical term and lack the ordinary word.

Those distinctions give you more to work with than a general label such as “fluent” or “not fluent.”

Imagine a student who can explain an engineering problem in English. At home, she tries to explain why she wants to change courses. She knows every relevant academic term. She cannot find a sentence her father will hear as anything other than giving up.

The difficulty belongs to the relationship as well as the language.

Keep the limits consistent. If she searches for a particular word in one scene, establish why it comes easily later: practice, preparation, a different subject, or a listener who helps.

Make misunderstandings consequential

A misunderstanding needs something to change.

Consider this invented exchange:
> “Send it whenever you can.”

The employee hears permission to wait. The manager expects it before the afternoon meeting.

The next scene can show the employee arriving without the document. Now the writer has a choice to make. Does the employee apologise, challenge the instruction, or quietly accept blame?

Each response tells us something different.

You can use the same approach with an unfamiliar expression, an indirect refusal, or a joke that fails. Give the listener an interpretation. Then let that interpretation alter an action.

Avoid assigning a personality to an accent

An accent alone cannot establish intelligence, honesty, confidence, or comic value.

Give the character a purpose in the conversation. Perhaps they want to finish quickly. Perhaps they are testing what the other person knows. Perhaps they understand the insult perfectly and choose not to acknowledge it.

Where pronunciation matters, use enough detail to explain the misunderstanding. Repeated phonetic spelling can make a conversation difficult to read and turn attention away from what the speaker is trying to accomplish.

For dialogue in a language you do not know well, ask a proficient speaker to check the wording and social context. A grammatically correct sentence can still be unsuitable for that relationship.

Try this revision

Choose a line from your draft that asks for something.

Write it three times:
1. To someone the character trusts.
2. To someone who can refuse them.
3. To someone they want to impress.

Keep the request unchanged. Adjust the explanation, the omissions, and how directly the character asks.

Then write the listener’s answer.

Put the version that produces a consequential response back into your scene.