We hear about this a lot as writers…ie, making sure our character’s voice is accurate for the type of person we are portraying. Sometimes we don’t see it in our own work, but our critique partners will…thank goodness!

As a reader, one thing that will pull me out of a story is if the character doesn’t stay true to his or her…well, character. And this is true of other forms of entertainment as well, such as TV or movies. Here’s an example from a recent Battlestar Galactica episode called HERO.

In this episode, Col. Tigh was talking to Admiral Adama about a past event where one of their men (nicknamed Bulldog) was shot down during a secret ops mission when his ship strayed past the enemy Cylon line. Admiral Adama was the one who gave the tough order to shoot Bulldog down. I wish I could find the actual dialogue to explain this better, but in this scene, Adama (who obviously felt major guilt) was hemming and hawing about the past event and how it was his responsibility to protect the mission above all else, and, in turn, the humans back on their planet from a potential Cylon attack (if the Cylons discovered that Admiral Adama and his team had gone over the “treaty” line in space on purpose).

In this scene, Col Tigh says to Adama, “You’re equivocating.”

I guess this particular dialogue doesn’t sound like a problem until you consider the background of Col Tigh’s character, his mental/physical state at the time and the setting of the scene.

When we write dialogue, our goal is to make it as realistic as possible. That means using short sentences, concise words, interruptions, trail offs, etc to relay the tone of the conversation.

In this scene I’m referring to, Col. Tigh was, as he has been for the last several episodes, boozed up. I don’t know about you, but when I’m drinking the last thing I do is spout off really big words. Lots of words, yes, but long, intelligent words, nope. The brain capacity just isn’t there at that point. Also, I don’t remember ever hearing Col. Tigh use bigger words in other scenes. If anything, he has a terser, the-less-said-the-better way of talking. This wording just sounded so out of character for him. Not to mention the fact that bigger words like these are usually reserved for giving speeches, writing articles or during some kind of official debate. The last place you would expect to hear some less-often-heard word is during a tense, back and forth conversation.

I guess I would’ve expected Tigh to just say: “You’re full of shit, Bill.”

Then again, maybe it was just me.

For those reading this post how do you feel about characters acting out of ‘character’ in a movie or a book?