Your Character's Voice

Many authors have trouble separating their own writing voices from those of their characters. This often happens, I think, when writers don't have a clear picture of each character: not just what they look like, but their mannerisms, likes and dislikes, motivations and--of course--what they sound like.

At the more mundane level, a writer can give a character a pet phrase or a dialect or the kind of jargon typical of people in a certain profession or hobby. In The Sun Singer, my protagonist Robert Adams often uses the phrase "For Pete's sake," while the fiery young woman named Cinnabar frequently says, "Holy bear puke."

That's a start, though Robert and Cinnabar can hardly use those phrases in every sentence. A character's voice is more complex than a few pet phrases and idoms.

Some people move their hands a lot while talking. Some look your straight in the eye. Others lean in close or look at the ceiling or sky when trying to think of something or scratch their heads or fiddle with their hair or check their watches every few minutes or grin or squint or look around constantly to see who else might be listening.

Characters are Three Dimensional

Getting past, phrases, posture, and mannerisms, requires that the writer knows his characters very well and then is able to step out of the way while they speak. Cinnabar, for example, is gruff, suspicious, defensive, pragmatic and protective of her mother. How might somebody like that talk in certain situations?

Once you have a clear picture of your character and his/her motivations, attitudes, and history, the next step is allowing all that information to fade into the woodwork and to become instinctual for you while that character is talking. We do much of what we do on automatic pilot, so to speak. We don't think about how to shift gears in our car while driving, or how to balance ourselves on a bike while riding, or where the letters are on a keyboard while we're typing. Likewise, when we're allowing a character to speak, if we know them well, we don't have to keep looking at a list of their traits, mannerisms, and goals. We simply write.

Male Protagonists

So far, my protagonists have all been men. I felt confident as I got to know Robert Adams, Jock Stewart and David Ward, that I could step out of the way sufficiently to let not only their authentic voices come through, but everything else about them that makes them who they are.

While considering Sarabande, the sequel to The Sun Singer, I began to worry whether I would be able to write from a female point of view for an entire novel rather than simply shifting into it momentarily for Cinnabar in The Sun Singer, Siobhan in Garden of Heaven, and Monique in Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire. When I write in third person restricted, there's more than the character's thoughts and voice to consider. It's everything: all the other characters, the settings and the action as they come to the reader are filtered through the protagonist's eyes.


Perhaps you approach point of view differently. Even so, if you tend to write for female protagonists or male protagonists, then how would you suddenly switch gears for book-length fiction?  If you're a man writing about men or a woman writing about women, you have a built-in edge. That "edge" disappears for me when I think about 50,000 or 100,000 words flowing through Sarabande's consciousness.

I know her well, for she has been there from the first draft of The Sun Singer many years ago. She was well defined in my mind when I wrote The Sun Singer and her motivations and hopes as she begins her lunar journey in Sarabande are clear to me now. Yet, I have worried about writing completely from a feminine perspective for an entire novel.

NaNoWriMo

I'm tired of worrying about it. I hope that in signing up for National Novel Writing Month, my goal of reaching 50,000 words by November 30 will make impossible to sit around wondering whether Sarabande's voice is coming through or not. The rush to simply write will force me out of the way, Time will tell.

--Malcolm