Characters

"Here is the question for week #2!
Characters- how do you differentiate their voices? How do you choose their names? Do you find that you model a real person when creating a character?"

The answers to all these questions varies based on what I'm writing and where I'm coming from.

Sometimes they just come to me - voices, names, personality, etc. 

Often for my fiction writing I do some research to have the character's names have a deeper meaning; with an idea of the 'journey' the character is on through the story.

I have also modeled characters after real people. In my prose I have 2 characters named specifically after people I know (they wanted me to use their names in stories), however as I work with the characters the personality, and voice, become distinct. The play I produced at the 2007 Fringe was based on real people, names changed, and a couple of the characters were true to form.

Generally to help differentiate the voices of the characters I actually visualize them - whether they're based on real people, or not, they become more real to me in imagining them and understanding something of their life or back story. From there I try and bring their voices to the page.

For this play, Joe (Joseph) and Carl (Carlos) were the names from the start (as was Dr. Van der Hauk), though the characters did go through a flip in role. Maria had other names before deciding on her name. All of their voices come from my imagined presence of them. The other names in the play - Maria's classmates, etc, - had only the thought of balancing the alphabet through the play - with a little more thought on a few odd characters (Alyssa, Hugh, Blaine, and Mr. Fordom).