3D Characters-Voicing

Hey guys!  Today I would like to discuss voicing, and how you can help your characters to each find their own individual voices.
When you speak to your friends, you probably don't use the same phrases and terms as they do, do you?  I sure don't.  (To be honest, I think I'm the only person I know to use words like "groovy" and "radical").
So why are character voices so important?  Because without different voicing, it becomes all one blended, muddled voice that, should you clear it up a bit, turns out to just be your voice.  There's a type of music that is in Baroque music (Yeah, yeah, I know, "if it ain't baroque, don't fix it") called Polyphonic.  This music means there are several voices, enabling the music to feel more 3D, instead of just notes on a page.  Different voices for the characters are exactly the same.  All the same voice equals 2D writing, and different voices equals 3D.  It's actually amazing how much this is true.

Here's a tiny bit of what my character's different voices sound like, so you know what I mean:

Ember:  "Could you please find something else to do?"
Winter: "It'd be nice iffen ye could find something better to do."
J.P.: "I'd be mighty pleased if you would be findin' somethin' more productive to be doin'."

Now these characters really are extremes, which is handy for the sake of example, but a change in voicing could be as small as changing one word in a sentence, like asking "anything" instead of "something", but all the other words stay the same

So how do you find, and differentiate your character's voices?  There are several methods.
1. Journal your characters!  Write a journal entry from your character's perspective.  I found this method in James Scott Bell's book "The Art of War for Writers".  When I used this method in particular, I didn't find it entirely helpful, but it did allow me to dig a bit deeper into their personalities.
2. Role Play your characters.  I DID find this one helpful, though I didn't learn about it from any particular source, me and my friends were just trying it out.  It's very helpful because you learn how the characters interact with other people.  You can use any of your characters and squeeze them into any setting you think fit then watch them run.  Once I used three characters from three different projects.  Your characters can gradually find their own voice when they interact with others.  Let them speak their words.
3.  Just write their story!  I didn't quite find the three above's voices until I began actually writing their story.  They came out of their shells then, and really came into their own.  Now I can almost hear J.P. before I write what he says.  (Ember and Winter DO need work, still, but what are edits for, if not for fixing your mistakes?)

So what do you think?  Do you have different methods for finding your character's voice?  Have you tried any of the three I listed?  What did you think of them?  Let me know in the comments section!

Viola June HFA-DGN