Creating Powerful and Memorable Characters: Using Voice

One of my favorite methods
of creating characters is the use of voice--how a particular character speaks or
thinks.  Before I begin writing, I try to
hear the character in my head. If I'm lucky, I'll come up with a memorable
sentence right away (even if ultimately that doesn't appear in the beginning of
the book). Then I ask myself, what makes this voice different from the other
voices in the book? That helps me understand the character more deeply,
with his or her motivations. Then I ask why. Why does this character speak/think
like this? What might have happened in his or her life that has caused this
voice? And that gives me backstory.

For instance, my novel
Sister of My Heart has two narrators, Sudha and Anju, who are cousins and best
friends. It was important for me to distinguish them  clearly, as much of the irony in the novel
rises from how differently each young woman interprets and reacts to the events that occur in
their joint-family household. These are the opening sentences I came up with:

Sudha: "They say in
the old tales that the first night after a child is born, the Bidhata Purush
comes down to earth himself to decide what its fortune is to be. . . . That is
why they leave sweetmeats by the cradle. Silver-leafed sandesh, dark pantuas
floating in golden syrup, jilipis orange as the heart of a fire, glazed with
honey-sugar. If the child is especially lucky, in the morning it will all be
gone."

Anju's is: "Some days in my
life, I hate everyone." (She follows this with a catalogue of who she hates and
why--basically everyone except Sudha, whom she considers sister of her heart).

These first sentences set
me on the course of portraying Sudha as slightly dreamy and a believer in
tradition and destiny, and Anju as a rebellious and headstrong iconoclast.

Here are a couple of other
writers who are consummate creators of voice, each in a different way.

Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City: "You are not
the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.
But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar
although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a
shaved head."

Tagore, Home and the World: "Mother, today there
comes back to my mind the vermillion mark at the parting of your hair, the sari
which you used to wear with its wide red border, and your wonderful eyes, full
of depth and peace."

You might also want to look
up Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried," Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son, Sandra Cisneros, The
House on Mango Streeet,  Bharati
Mukherjee, Desperate Daughters, and
just about anything by George Saunders.

Voice can be addictive. And
it can have its downfalls. More about that in another post!