A quick recap before we dig into the meat of this week’s
blog: in the last two week I’ve explained that different authors have different
voices that allow us to recognize them, that some genre voices are overdone and
that new writers need to learn their own voice and use it to distinguish their
writing; this week I’m giving some pointers on separating your narrative voice
from the voices of the characters you write.
Do you know how to write an asshole? There are lots of ways
to go about it. You can make them do horrible things. You can make them lie to
the characters around them. You can give your readers another character’s
opinion and explain that the asshole is an asshole. But there are problems with
all of these approaches – if you want a character to be an asshole with a heart
of gold you can’t exactly write them into performing dastardly deeds. If you
use another character to tell your audience that the character is an asshole
your audience may be disinclined to believe that character, or they may feel
like they’re being led too much. If your character lies frequently it’s easy to
see them as an asshole but hard to see them as anything else. So once you’ve
run through your options you’re kind of stuck: this character (we’ll call him
Dick Jones for convenience) isn’t a bad guy, he’s just kind of a prick –
someone who is hard to get along with but who is honest and good at what he
does. Pretty much your only choice is to make him sound like an asshole: you
have to learn to write in an asshole’s voice.
When you’ve pegged down your own voice it can be hard to
sink into a character’s voice. Some new writers are a little ham-handed with it
– they’ll write Dick like Draco Malfoy (always sneering and insulting people)
and Dick will become very one-dimensional. Some new writers will have so
carefully cultivated their wise, authorial voice that they’ll be incapable of
writing something that blatantly dickish, and Dick will come across as just a
normal guy. The trick is to fall somewhere in between these two extremes: Don’t
make Dick cruel, don’t make Dick wise – write Dick like you when you’re pissed
off at someone. If you’re angry with a co-worker for, let’s say, moving the
schedule around so that you have to work fewer hours, you wouldn’t call them a
motherfucking waste of space to their face (at least not in front of your
boss), but you probably wouldn’t just accept the situation and work your shifts
with him peacefully. You’d snark at him. You’d be sarcastic. You’d talk to him
less and maybe ignore his requests for help more. You’d probably tell an
embarrassing story about him to another co-worker and laugh (somewhat nastily)
before going back to work. That’s how you write a Dick – like you, if you were
an asshole. That’s how you write anything, really – drawing on your own
experience to fill in the blanks of the work you’re crafting.
You can’t rely on yourself for all of the kinds of
characters you’re hopefully going to write. You don’t want to use yourself as a
basis for someone committing genocide, for example, but you can probably write
a happy, depressed, cold, stupid, clever, bubbly, loyal, prickly, or loving
character pretty well because you’ve experienced what it is like to feel
prickly, depressed, stupid, and loving before. You are a broad-minded,
well-rounded human being who has experienced a wide spectrum of human emotions
and you’ve lived through situations where you felt like you were the victim,
the attacker, the mourner, the lover, the hero, the coward, or the bastard.
You have a lot to draw on when it comes to writing different
emotions and emotional states but, for once, I’m going to tell you that you
can’t think like a writer. Writers want to control everything, they want to
shape every interaction to perfection and make all of their creations shine in
the best light possible. To write well in character voices you’re going to have
to think like an actor.
Let’s set up a scenario as an exercise. Pretend you’re an
actor getting ready for an audition. Pretend that your character is (in this
situation we’ll call her Sally, a 17-year-old cheerleader) the part that you’re
auditioning for. The director wants you to play the character like “x”. “X” can
be anything.
“Alright, Sally,” the director calls out “you’ve just gotten
the news that your estranged mother died. You’re talking to your boyfriend
about it – you’ve got a one-minute monologue. Go.”
Now say that monologue. Out loud. Right now.
Did you do it? You didn’t. Maybe one or two of you did. But
for those of you who didn’t, why not? You know what 17-year-olds sound like.
You know what grieving people sound like. You know what confused people sound
like. You know what angry people sound like. You know what girls sound like
when they’re talking to their boyfriends. You know what Sally sounds like, and
more importantly you know what Sally sounds like to YOU. So go – say the
monologue.
I’m pretty sure you still didn’t.
Which is too bad – if you say something out loud you know
what sounds right. You also know what sounds very, very wrong.
Actors have a couple of advantages over writers (not many,
and access to a steady paycheck is not something either group has as an
advantage, but at least writers are taken somewhat seriously.) Actors aren’t
afraid of talking to themselves. Actors aren’t afraid of lying. Actors don’t
give two shits if anyone thinks they’re a genius or if no one remembers them a
hundred years from now. But most importantly actors are expected to be many
people – it’s the only skill they’re actually expected to demonstrate (other
than table service) on a day-to-day basis. Writers are supposed to be writers –
they worry that they might do something that doesn’t seem appropriate for a
writer, like laughing in public or occasionally experiencing daylight. This
crosses over into a writer’s writing and makes the problem of writing character
voices all the more difficult because if you’re afraid of being something other
than yourself you’ll have a very hard time sounding like someone else, even if
it’s just for a few minutes. So pretend you’re an actor. Get into character.
Out loud. Speak the lines you think your character should say so that you can
hear how they would sound to someone else. You may feel like your character’s
lines are cringe-worthy because you would never say them as yourself, but that
doesn’t matter when you’re acting – you’re Sally the cheerleader right now so
no one would think it odd for you to sob “I hadn’t s-seen her for years
bu-buh-but she was st-sti-still mu-muh-my Mommy!” in front of poor, concerned,
stupid, imaginary Tommy the quarterback.
So be an actor – you’ll write better for it – but be the
director too. When you start to sound too much like yourself, let the director
side of your brain yell “Cut! What is this shit? I thought you were supposed to
be in character,” then let your actor-side of the brain sooth its ego and get
back into character. And when you get tired of the Hollywood in your head take
a step back and re-read what’s come of this acting exercise – hopefully you’ll
impress yourself because hopefully getting into character will make your
characters have their own voices, distinct from your voice as an author but
compatible with the story you’re writing.
And if all else fails there’s the old writer’s standby to
help – research. Read the books you love and examine how the author builds her
voice in contrast to how she builds character voices. Read books that you think
are terrible and see what the authors are doing wrong. If you’re trying to
build a character with traits and a history outside of your experience read
books about that kind of character in history (for example, read about Papa Doc
and the Tonton Macoute if you want to write about crazy dictators or read about
Hitler if you’re writing about a genocidal maniac.) Reading is never worthless
when you’re trying to perfect your writing, as long as you’re reading the right
way – with a critical eye and an understanding of what makes works work.
See you next week, then. I’ll be back with one or two brief
entries about dialogue (with a possible pit-stop for monologue) and after that
we’re moving into the complicated world of tone.
Have fun, and say the fucking monologue already.
Cheers,
- Alli
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