Building Your Writing Toolkit: Part 7.3 - Voice as Stain

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

Building Your Writing Toolkit: Part 7.2 - Voice as Stain

When you hear your professor speaking does it remind you of your father? When you hear your friend speaking do you think of a cousin? When your boss talks to you does it sound like your mom? Probably not – each of the people you know has unique cadences to their speech and a distinct diction that makes them sound unlike most of the other people you know. You have a unique pattern of speech yourself, one which those listening to you can hear and identify you by.

Writers, however, must be able to command a number of different patterns of speech that they can use realistically for their writing. The rhythm of a poet’s poem is different from the rhythm that same poet would use writing an in-class essay; the diction an essayist uses when speaking to his brother is probably very different than the word choices he would make in his writing.

All of us have different voices for different occasions. You don’t speak to a child the same way you speak to a police officer, and you don’t speak to a bartender the same way you speak to your boyfriend. You also have different written voices. You may sound different when you’re writing a poem than you do when you’re writing an essay, and different when you’re writing an essay than when you’re writing a short story. But regardless of what you’re writing you should still sound like you.

Professors often notice (and complain) that students don’t have a voice of their own in their essays. The reason that students abandon their own voice is because they’re striving to sound academic in their writing – they think that there is a single proper tone that they can strike that will instantly make their papers more academic, just as many students believe a five-paragraph structure is required for academic writing – both suppositions are incorrect and both lead to bland, uniform student work.

Similarly many writers strive for a poetic tone in their poetry and fiction, imagining that if they are able to use properly poetic words and sultry enough phrasing that their work will instantly be more artistic – you frequently hear people describing this kind of language as “flowery” and in my mind that’s not a compliment: remember that flowers are a plant’s genitals – I don’t want a bunch of flora-dongs assaulting me either physically or mentally.

Good writing is, always has been, and always will be about good content. Content is the core of good writing and everything else is, to an extent, window-dressing. But it’s up to a writer to decide whether their content is dressed up tastefully or trashily, and much of what makes a piece “trashy” is what makes it trite or cliché. Writers who are afraid to insert their own voice into their writing frequently fall back on “safe” voices – the kinds of voices that have been used in the genre forever – in other words they use cliché and lessen the value of their writing by making it into something that a reader has heard a million times before and is sick of before getting past the first few lines.

Here’s an example from my own writing: I’m currently creating a character called Dr. Denkmann. She is a psychologist in her late thirties. Here are four genre examples of I one could introduce this character if I was aiming for a certain voice.

“The doctor stood before her dark window, watching the rain pound the pavement below. She had curves that wouldn’t quit, legs that went ’til Tuseday, and a look on her face that said trouble was heading my way.”

“A delicate, russet curl had escaped from Dr. Denkmann’s tight bun. It caught the soft light from the window as she looked up at me, gently adding a dusky hue to the blush rising on her cheeks and casting intricate shadows on her slowly heaving breast.”

“The doctor turned sharply away from the window and brought up a new screen on her desk. The smooth, rigid planes of her face relayed to me that bad news was on its way and the glint in her eyes, like cold, distant stars, only confirmed that my day was about to get a lot worse.”

“Alicia pressed her hand to the window and turned her face to me with a trembling lip. I had only just realized that I loved her and I waited, nervous, for her to confirm the worst – cancer, killing our love when it was young enough to be precious and old enough to have completely changed me from an asshole bad boy into a gentle, caring man.”

So were you able to pick up on the tried, true, tired voice in each of those? (I’ll give you the last one – it was the tone of a Nicholas Sparks novel, Sparks being the only living author to have pioneered a voice in his writing alone that is simultaneously addictive to women and repulsive to anyone who doesn’t like reading sappy books about mended men and women with horrible diseases.) Even if you didn’t manage to pin down the voice without more hints, you’ll be able to get it for sure when I ask which of these is romance? Or which of these is Noir? Or Science Fiction? Now it’s obvious. Painfully and depressingly obvious. Why is it obvious? All of these descriptions have the same core elements: the doctor, the window, and an indication that the doctor is upset. Now try to pin down the genre in the description that I actually wrote:

“Dr. Denkmann moved with a jarring, forest animal grace. Her wide hips and narrow shoulders were a startling contrast to her slender legs, capped with narrow black heels that clacked like a deer’s hooves when she walked. I caught her silhouetted against the window’s dim gray light, her absurd frame supported on a dancer’s legs, before she turned and sat, staring at me with a frown so slight that it was almost obscured by her glasses.”

Can you find a clear genre in that? What if I told you that Dr. Denkmann was a character in a horror story? Or a psychological thriller? Or a science fiction, noir, or romance novel? Would it fit with your common conception of any of those things? Probably not, and that is why most genre novels are derided by literature classes – they are genres that so infect the stories within them that most authors lose their voice to the genre. And fuck that bullshit – you can put any voice you want into any kind of writing you want. Dr. Denkmann is a side character in a psychological thriller, by the way, but I hate writing in tingly, questioning voices – nervousness isn’t conducive to character building – so I try to keep my writing MY writing and genre expectations can die in a fire for all I care.

So how do you assert your voice in your writing, whatever it may be? Well, first you have to know what your voice is. I like adding humor and vulgarity to almost everything I write. I know that because I’ve written a lot of shitty, flowery poetry. Flowery isn’t my thing. I had to practice a lot to know what kind of voice sounds right for me when I’m writing. I wrote a lot of stodgy, academic-sounding essays before I figured out that you can work a clever turn of phrase, a dash of hyperbole, and occasional obscenity into an academic paper and still have it turn out well. I’ve tried (you wouldn’t believe how I’ve tried) to write simpering, simmering romances just so I could have something to try to sell to a publisher but I always get twenty pages in and feel like my brain has turned into a milk shake. You assert your voice by writing, writing a lot, and messing up a lot before you figure out what works for you. And once you’ve found it you do your damndest to never write in someone else’s voice again.

Figure out metaphors that are amusing to you, adjectives that you like and aren’t tired of hearing. Here’s an exercise: in 100 words or fewer describe a bathroom. Describe it in every genre that you can think of. Then give yourself a thousand words and set a scene in that bathroom, and use those thousand words describing it the way you want to. Do it over and over and over until you are happy with the result. Then look at the result and really examine it – what makes you happy about it? What sounds like you? Hand your scene to a friend (or a professor – someone who can actually be critical of you but who knows you pretty well) and ask them if it sounds like you. Then the next day try the same exercise with an animal instead of a bathroom. The next day try a car. The next day try a person. When you’ve worked on it long enough (and it does actually take a lot of work) you’ll have found the elements in your writing that add up to your unique voice. Befriend these elements. Cultivate them. Cuddle them and bring them flowers. Then use them as much as possible to distinguish your writing from the writing around you.

Sorry if that’s massively unhelpful, and sorry if you thought there was going to be a quick fix. There’s never a quick fix when it comes to writing well – you should know that by now.

That’s all for now, Folks. I’ve allowed myself to ramble a little too much, but I’ll be back next week with advice on creating voices for your characters. After that I think we’re moving on to dialogue, or perhaps tone. Tell me which of the two you would prefer in the comments and that’s what our next subject will be.

Thanks for reading, and stay Tasteful,

Cheers,

     - Alli

Building Your Writing Toolkit: Part 7 - Voice as Stain

Many writers don't know literary voice from their asshole. They write plots and poems just trying to get from Point A to Point B without thinking about how their work sounds inbetween inception and completion. This is reqlly quite sad because the authors through history who have been loved (and perhaps more importantly, remembered) have strong, complex, delicate literary voices. Scroll down the page. Look at what Jack has written this week, find Leena’s most recent post, check out Nick and Slick's musings, read Rainamoinen’s writings. Can you hear them? Can you hear the author here? It doesn't matter if you know these people: if you read three of any of their blogs you will start to hear a voice coming through - you'll begin to know who they are by what they say and how they say it. Jack sounds businesslike to me when he's writing a blog (please note that Jack is a man who will open our meetings by saying "Alright Motherfuckers, what are we doing today?"), but he sounds resignedly whimsical in his poems; someone who is tired of wonder but wonders nonetheless. Leena has a delightful wit, almost as sharp as the sadness frequently found in her writing – she is more consistent in different styles than Jack is, maintaining a very precise diction that balances artfully on the edge of juvenile joy and cutting maturity. Nick writes in questions, even when he writes in statements, asking with his poetry and prose “What is this world we’re in? Isn’t it grand? Isn’t it large and lovely? Aren’t you happy to see it?” – Nick’s writing is full of gentle cheer, warming his readers with its comfort and peace. Slick is a card – hard and churlish and jutting in direct, entendre riddled phrases and sly thrusts of jest. He writes like he wants you to think he fucks: each piece is a fun and sometimes-sloppy romp, to the point but never forgetting that reading is for pleasure. Rainamoinen is a budding rhetorician; he guides his readers neatly to the edge of a tall, stark cliff and happily drops them off, letting them land precisely where he intended. There is a charming contempt in his voice – he writes simply and elegantly, as if it doesn’t matter to him whether you read his work or not, but he’s well aware that you read it anyway. And if you’ve been reading this Writing Toolkit series for any length of time you’ve probably noticed that my voice is somewhat schizophrenic – to quote my own poetry (as any good schizophrenic should) “I’m a casual cynic who prays for optimists, but it’s hard for me to be one when I’m talking with my fists.” I want joy and wonder and sadness and comfort in my writing (humor too, if I can get it,) but I also want to make my point brutally, unmissably obvious (sometimes in the bitchiest way imaginable.) Now think of the Big Names – the writers we all know. How do you know you’re hearing Shakespeare? How can you identify Dickens at a glance? What is it about Emily Dickinson that shrieks out of her poems and declares “I AM EMILY!”? Some of it is style – Dickinson poems are pretty easy to visually identify and if you’re looking at Early Modern English iambic pentameter there’s very little chance that you’re reading anyone BUT Shakespeare. Dickens can be spotted by density alone. But what we read in the authors we love is voice – Shakespeare’s lazy attitude about proper word usage and correct grammar created a unique sound that caught the ears of audiences, creating mnemonics for concepts that other authors had explored but never defined. Dickens’ intense descriptions reshaped the way that novels were written. Dickinson’s disregard for accepted forms and heavy use of atypical rhyme sticks, disjointed, in our minds and helps us remember that it can matter when a bird comes down the path. It is the voice in an author’s writing that speaks to us – that’s why it’s called VOICE. We hear authors in our heads and so novels and poems become conversations, we know these writers as friends because we hear their warmth and sorrow and joy and love in the way they speak to us. Voice is the most important part of a writer’s repertoire because it is what makes an impression on readers. So write like you mean it, write like every paragraph and stanza is a speech, or wedding vows, or a eulogy, because everything you write IS a speech, wedding vows, and eulogy to your subject, your readers, and yourself. Good writing becomes permanent eventually, great writing is immediately indelible. I’ll be back in two weeks with more on voice and how to assert your voice in writing. After that we’ll be back with character voice and separating what your characters say from what you mean. Speak well, Cheers, - Alli

Letter To The Leaves: Poetry, The Final Frontier

My Fellow Contributors,

I have always been jealous of scientists. Mostly in part because they are in the business of exploration. They ask questions, form hypotheses, and create experiments. They push past boundaries and open our eyes to new possibilities. They can do this because there are clear limits to the physical world.

But are there such, in the universe of Poetry?

Where does the sidewalk end?

Where is the next frontier of Poetry and who will take us there?

(I feel as though when I write, I am only RE-discovering)

I guess what I am really asking is where is Poetry in our current times?

But as I write this I begin to understand that Poetry is not a place. It is only a vehicle. Poetry is the ship I sail to explore the seas of my soul. I begin to find comfort in this. Somehow this reassures me, that it is not Poetry that is undiscovered, but the voices.

There are voices of Poetry yet to be heard. It is the new voices of Poetry that we must search for. Because it is the voice of Poetry that animates the corpus.

Poetry is dead.

You. You alone have its saving breath.

On January 27th, 2012, at the Coffee Klatch, let us hear that voice.

Let us resurrect the dearly departed, and embrace the spoken word together as one.

As Always,

Undoubtedly Yours,
Bermuda