character voice

Character voice is incredibly important to a story.

Just finished reading the second in a set of loosely connected books(the heroine of first gets to be on the other end of the phone in this book).
Anyway, this author who has given me many "Keeper" books sometimes gives in to that dreaded character voice problem.

This author loves using phrases such as Holey-kamoley. I don't object to this in principle. However when the hero & heroine both use it, then it ends up making them "sound" alike. This often jars me, especially when the the two are "opposites" in personality and often in geographic origins. So for instance, if the phrase first comes from a person of midwestern background, then I'm surprised to also find it shooting out of the mouth of a southerner.

Even, today, with the abundance of "global" communication, there are regional differences in speech and slang. There is also the gender divide; certain words rarely come out of men's mouths and vice versa.

Other authors have these problems too but don't have quite the gift of writing to make me excuse/pass it by quite the way the above does.

One has all her characters talk at breakneck speed, using the same speech mannerisms and "slang words". This on top of some really bad writing makes me wonder how she has not only been published once, but has over 100 stories out there in print.

Another author loves to use military slang terms taking time to explain their origin. ie: Rugrats--um okay, learning the so-called etymology of this word(if she's correct-I've never double checked her) is fine ONCE but not in each succeeding book as well. Besides the term has been in general use long enough that no explanation is needed. Another example is where she has one character say to the other something like: "Where are our MRE's--Meals ready to eat." As they both are in the military they both know what an MRE is and would NEVER CALL them "Meals ready to eat" to each other.

Speech and slang usage is individualistic and I like to see characters reflect that.