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Journal / 03 — Characters & Dialogue / Polyphonic Character Voicing: Mikhail Bakhtin's Heteroglossia
03 — Characters & Dialogue • 9 min read

Polyphonic Character Voicing: Mikhail Bakhtin's Heteroglossia

Preventing 'Authorial Ventriloquism' by assigning distinct sociolects, syntactic habits, and philosophical vocabularies.

Scriptorium Editorial Board
Scriptorium Editorial Board
September 2, 2026

Bakhtin's Heteroglossia in the Novel

A novel fails when all characters sound like the educated author. Master novelists construct a polyphonic dialogue space where differing class registers, professional jargon, and generational idioms clash.

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Scriptorium Editorial Board
Literary Craft & Research Fellows

Scriptorium Editorial Board

A collective of developmental editors, narrative theorists, and computational linguists dedicated to advancing the craft of long-form fiction.

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