I want to write a fanfic but everyone's voices sound the same when I write them, and Homestuck's strong dialogue is a defining trait. I know these characters, I know when they sound right and when they don't, but I can't get the style down myself.
Does anyone have guides for writing specific characters? Like a guide for John or Rose or something. I know they exist for roleplayers and/or fic writers, I've seen the ones on homestuck.net but other than the pages that are literally every line of dialogue a character's ever said, they're kinda bare-bones.
there's no guide that an attentive reread of the source couldn't do better. with character guides, you have this filter in front of the source. you're not getting the character in question, you're getting the character as filtered through the guide author. a lot of guides also come from a time before homestuck was complete, often before act 6, which recontextualizes characters pretty heavily. but if you go to the source directly, you'll come away stronger, without that secondary filter in the way.
that said, i think character voicing specifically is pretty low on the priority tier list. using the proper words and phrases isn't as important as making sure you understand how they fit into the bigger picture. once you have that down, i personally find that the right words to make the character voice work just kind of appear. if you know that jake's obtuse verbosity is really more of a defense mechanism against having difficult or unpleasant conversations, the specific words don't matter as much. syntax changes like capitalization and punctuation and typing quirks do a lot of the heavy lifting from there.
SHAPED OR MOLDED FORMS appear to have been formed from a plastic material through directly applied force.
ABSTRACT FORMS are of uncertain origin.
