Tool 4: Revealing character through voice

- Writers, writing teachers, literary agents and publishers can often be found talking about voice. What is it? How do I get it? Publishing professionals are usually no help whatsoever on this hot topic. They can be found saying, I know when I see it it feels like a catch-22. You can only have voice if you have voice and you can't have voice unless you have it. Well, I like to talk about voice in any discussion of interiority because these two craft elements are quite similar to me. Voice is something that develops as you write a concept rather than a one and done skill that you conquer once and that's it. So is interiority, will you look at that. To me, the heart of voice and writing is how the writer is able to convey emotion using language. These are also considerations when we talk about adding interiority to the page. How are we rendering the characters emotion? When we figure out how to use emotion in writing voice is usually our vehicle for doing so for example, "Oh, let's get the stupid thing over with". And, "I can't believe it! This is going to be so rad." And, "Not in a million years. "Have you lost your ever-loving mind" Are all reactions a character can have to riding a jet ski. We'll dive deeper into revealing character through emotion in the next tool. But for now just know that voice is a powerful transmitter of what a character is feeling and experiencing as such you can use your character's voice to hone in on their interiority. Some writers and writing teachers will tell you you can't teach voice, but I disagree. You can absolutely teach voice. You just have to break it down into teachable components. So let's do that. Voice can be broken down into the following five components. Syntax, how long or short or complex are your sentences. Word Choice, does your character amble or slog or simply walk. Level of Description, is your writing sparse and simple or ornate and lyrical. Tone, is your a character dark and brooding or funny and sarcastic. Emotion from moment to moment. We're not the same people every single day. So our voice should change with the characters moods and whether they're in an active or a contemplative moment. Let's take a look at how each of these five voice components play out in some contemporary fiction examples. Here's an excellent example of how author E. Lockhart makes use of voice syntax in her why a mystery novel "We Were Liars". Notice the clipped short sentences, Cady uses the snappy syntax to convey her thought process about Gat an on and off love interest that our family disapproves of. She feels hurt. She speaks in bursts. It sounds defensive and bewildered because it is. Or take a look at how Liane Moriarty uses very specific word choice in the voice of "Big Little Lies" to reveal Madeline. One of her POV characters to the reader. In this novel we're thrust into the highly competitive social world of power mothers and Madeline is right at the center of it. We see her using over the top comical words like calamity to describe a problem at school and juxtaposing words like choke and awkward to show her character as someone who likes to try and make light of situations even serious ones. In this scene the new boy at school Jane's son Ziggy has just been accused of trying to choke Amabella. And yet Madeline is throwing around words like right hook in an almost joking way, which tells us a lot about her. Now let's look at a great example of how level of description in voice can reveal a character. This is from page 60 of "Manhattan Beach" by Jennifer Egan. In this example, we indulge in some beautiful description like the smoke she inhaled looked criminally delicious as if she'd found a way to eat the chocolate wind. In this novel the character Nell uses her seductive feminine wiles to get ahead in male dominated Manhattan. It's no surprise that the description in her voice is silky and alluring exactly matching who she is in the story. A prim and proper girl from the novels world may not get this luxe descriptive style, as we will see elsewhere. This sets up a contrast between now and for example, Rose a character who we will meet later. This level of description is also especially appropriate in a historical novel. And what about the voice component of tone? I love this example from page 115 and 116 of National Book Award winner "Sing, Unburied, Sing" by Jasmine Ward. The tone of this voice, particularly in this passage is very direct and unflinching as the narrator describes the hitting over and over again which mirrors the abuse being described. It invites the reader to witness and not look away but notice we're also seeing some effective use of syntax here as well. The clipped fragmented sentences give us an uneasy taut feeling to match the interiority of the narrator. For the final voice component emotion. Let's take a look at two examples taken from the same novel and the same character but in two very different emotional states. In this first passage from page 14 of "Nothing to See Here" by Kevin Wilson. Lillian is very angry, clearly notice how the emotion affects her voice. Now let's look at the same character on page 134. Lillian's emotional state has transformed. She's now worried but also a bit secretive, same character, different days, two completely different emotions and styles of writing to convey that to the reader. I urged you to pick up some of your favorite novels and skim through taking note of the voice the author uses, not just overall in the story but from moment to moment ask yourself what choices the author is making on each page and how it's revealing the character through voice. Studying how other authors use voice is the first step to mastering it. And if you want to improve on the skill of writing voice I can't recommend reading your own work aloud highly enough. Remember that storytelling was for many thousands of years, in oral tradition. Before we created written language, we sat around the campfire telling tales and running from woolly mammoth and stuff. But in our downtime, we used voice to create story. Yet something happens to writers sometimes when they take what's in their imaginations and commit it to paper, the voice dries out. We write how we think we're supposed to write. We pay more attention to using fancier words and bending ourselves into sentence pretzels because we believe that we have to create literature, whatever that means. Reading your work loud can really help you find your voice and bring your writing back to life. This is one exercise that I wish every writer would do but that very few students actually do. Maybe you'll be the one who benefits from it, who's to say. So as a bonus voice exercise I challenge you to do the following print out a piece of your writing. You can use the actual voice exercise that we're going to tackle in the next lecture or any piece of writing will do. Sit down in a place you don't usually work and start reading your work out loud. All you get is a pen in your hand but it's only for marking problem areas in the margin not rewriting on the spot. Don't let anything sway you from your task not even your spouse or roommate or cat looking at you funny. We often don't do this exercise because we feel self-conscious. We feel vulnerable and exposed especially if we're sharing space and our cohabitants haven't heard our projects before but when you read words on a screen you fall into the trap of reading them as you intend them to have been written rather than reading those words as they are. When you read your work aloud you are forced out of your head and you have to grapple with what's actually on the page. Better yet, have someone read your work back to you all of your voice issues, if you have any will be glaringly exposed immediately it may not feel good in the moment but you will shave years off of your voice development if you actually do this. Voice is one of those writing disciplines that you will be developing for the rest of your career. So as interiority, it's only natural that they fit together. Now it's time to practice writing voice and using it to reveal character. I think you'll enjoy this next exercise. I know I did when I tackled it. See you in the next lecture.