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...everyone is supposed to be able to figure out that there is an invented character speaking.
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That's certainly one of the challenges I'm fighting with. If the poet uses a known set of characters, identified in the title (as Susan does with "Emilia to Desdemona"), the problem's licked. Known characters can also be introduced in epigraphs or in early text. Making it obvious that the setting is historical (Browning's usual method) is another sort of useful hint. Having the speaker be, say, female if the poet's male also helps.
But if the setting is contemporary, and the speaker is nobody in particular, and the same sex as the poet, then almost the only available hint that the speaker is not the poet is the situation of dialogue--something to indicate the presence of a second speaker whom we don't hear. Or at least that's the way it feels as I work! And that's why I'm hunting for additional ideas. I could just spell it all out in the title, but I'd like not to have to.
(I've certainly created made-up characters and un-self-aware speakers before--but, well, all of them were remarkably similar to myself.)