Character & voice
Jan. 9th, 2009 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyJustine has a lovely post (I mistyped "lively," which is also apropos) on characterization. Mostly I want to say, What she said! particularly with regards to the part about no two writers being the same. If you're starting, try everything. If it doesn't work, you don't have to do it again.
I once bailed on a characterization workshop![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deliasherman was doing at WisCon because the first exercise was something along the lines of "pretend to be your character and let the person sitting next to you interview you." Seriously, I got up and fled the room as if Delia had said, "We're about to release the mutant zombie polar bears, and oh by the way they haven't been fed since noon on Tuesday." With the racing heart and the panic.
That technique obviously does not work for me--at least in part due to long-standing Fourth Wall Issues, as in, Please do not fuck with the fourth wall. I need it. and in part due to equally long-standing First Day Of Class Icebreaker Issues--but that doesn't mean it's a bad technique, any more than my complete and utter FAIL in the face of it means I'm a bad writer.
But I also thought I might chime in on the question about voice:
Because that is a salient feature of my work, and it is something I work hard on (see for evidence this post about the evolution of Mildmay's voice). And it's also a question that's damnably hard to answer. Because I do not, in general, "hear" my characters in my head, but at the same time, I do.
Yes, clear as mud, Mole, thanks.
Let's try that again. My characters do not talk to me. (Possibly as part of those Fourth Wall Issues, I am highly suspicious of and actually kind of squicked by any rubric for talking about writing that either believes or pretends to believe that the characters have independent existences and/or autonomy. Unless you follow all the way to the logical conclusion à la The Dark Half or "Secret Window, Secret Garden," in which case you have a whole new crop of problems, and I only hope you survive them.) I do sometimes get a line of prose in my head that seems to have floated up full-formed from the underconscious, like the answers in a Magic-8 Ball, and those can often be attributed to a specific voice. But that's not the same thing, either. (Although even I succumb to the short hand of saying things like, "Booth gave me an opening sentence today.") So I don't hear them in the way I hear actual voices.
But at the same time, I do have to hear them. A lot of how prose works for me is rhythm. Each character's voice has (or should have, anyway) a distinctive rhythm; I struggled a lot with Mehitabel in The Mirador and Kay in Corambis, trying to find their rhythms. A sentence should sound different, depending on which character says it, even if you don't have the dramatic differences imposed by a class-based dialect like Mildmay's. There's also differences in what information a character will choose to convey, what aspects of a situation he or she notices. For instance:
It snowed last night, rather a lot, and in a bit I'm going to have to go out and shovel. If I were writing about it in Felix's voice, I might remark on how strange it makes the topography of the neighborhood, but mostly I'd be bitching about how much work it is, and how cold and wet, and why don't we make enough money to hire someone to do it? (Also, notice that sentence isn't in Felix's voice, because Felix wouldn't use the word "bitch".) If I were writing about it in Mildmay's voice, I'd definitely talk about how weird it makes everything look, but I'd also tell you about a story I heard once about a guy who got lost in a blizzard and was rescued by a polar bear who was really an explorer under an enchantment and how they got the enchantment broken. I probably wouldn't mention the work part of it at all, unless I'm noticing that Felix forgot to say thank you. Again. And if I'm writing in Booth's voice, I describe the harsh sound the shovel makes against the sidewalk and count with painful, meticulous honesty, how many times I fall into the snow. (In my own voice? I bitch about how out of shape I am and notice the paths the feralistas have made in the snow.)
So that's how it works for me. It's part word choice and part rhythm (Mildmay's sentences are shorter and choppier than Felix's or Booth's, and while Felix is fond of rhetoric, his sentences are never as convoluted and Victorian as Booth's are) and part which details you emphasize. The important thing, I think, is that it has to matter whose eyes we're seeing through: the reasons that it matters are where you'll find the voice.
I once bailed on a characterization workshop
deliasherman was doing at WisCon because the first exercise was something along the lines of "pretend to be your character and let the person sitting next to you interview you." Seriously, I got up and fled the room as if Delia had said, "We're about to release the mutant zombie polar bears, and oh by the way they haven't been fed since noon on Tuesday." With the racing heart and the panic. That technique obviously does not work for me--at least in part due to long-standing Fourth Wall Issues, as in, Please do not fuck with the fourth wall. I need it. and in part due to equally long-standing First Day Of Class Icebreaker Issues--but that doesn't mean it's a bad technique, any more than my complete and utter FAIL in the face of it means I'm a bad writer.
But I also thought I might chime in on the question about voice:
I was wondering whether there is anything in particular you do when developing the voice of your character (ie. the way they speak)? Is there anything you do to try and keep this as consistent as possible throughout the story?
Because that is a salient feature of my work, and it is something I work hard on (see for evidence this post about the evolution of Mildmay's voice). And it's also a question that's damnably hard to answer. Because I do not, in general, "hear" my characters in my head, but at the same time, I do.
Yes, clear as mud, Mole, thanks.
Let's try that again. My characters do not talk to me. (Possibly as part of those Fourth Wall Issues, I am highly suspicious of and actually kind of squicked by any rubric for talking about writing that either believes or pretends to believe that the characters have independent existences and/or autonomy. Unless you follow all the way to the logical conclusion à la The Dark Half or "Secret Window, Secret Garden," in which case you have a whole new crop of problems, and I only hope you survive them.) I do sometimes get a line of prose in my head that seems to have floated up full-formed from the underconscious, like the answers in a Magic-8 Ball, and those can often be attributed to a specific voice. But that's not the same thing, either. (Although even I succumb to the short hand of saying things like, "Booth gave me an opening sentence today.") So I don't hear them in the way I hear actual voices.
But at the same time, I do have to hear them. A lot of how prose works for me is rhythm. Each character's voice has (or should have, anyway) a distinctive rhythm; I struggled a lot with Mehitabel in The Mirador and Kay in Corambis, trying to find their rhythms. A sentence should sound different, depending on which character says it, even if you don't have the dramatic differences imposed by a class-based dialect like Mildmay's. There's also differences in what information a character will choose to convey, what aspects of a situation he or she notices. For instance:
It snowed last night, rather a lot, and in a bit I'm going to have to go out and shovel. If I were writing about it in Felix's voice, I might remark on how strange it makes the topography of the neighborhood, but mostly I'd be bitching about how much work it is, and how cold and wet, and why don't we make enough money to hire someone to do it? (Also, notice that sentence isn't in Felix's voice, because Felix wouldn't use the word "bitch".) If I were writing about it in Mildmay's voice, I'd definitely talk about how weird it makes everything look, but I'd also tell you about a story I heard once about a guy who got lost in a blizzard and was rescued by a polar bear who was really an explorer under an enchantment and how they got the enchantment broken. I probably wouldn't mention the work part of it at all, unless I'm noticing that Felix forgot to say thank you. Again. And if I'm writing in Booth's voice, I describe the harsh sound the shovel makes against the sidewalk and count with painful, meticulous honesty, how many times I fall into the snow. (In my own voice? I bitch about how out of shape I am and notice the paths the feralistas have made in the snow.)
So that's how it works for me. It's part word choice and part rhythm (Mildmay's sentences are shorter and choppier than Felix's or Booth's, and while Felix is fond of rhetoric, his sentences are never as convoluted and Victorian as Booth's are) and part which details you emphasize. The important thing, I think, is that it has to matter whose eyes we're seeing through: the reasons that it matters are where you'll find the voice.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 08:10 pm (UTC)Also I'd love to read that story of Mildmay's - I completely love him to bits.
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Date: 2009-01-10 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 08:52 pm (UTC)::should stop spamming LJs and do some work::
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Date: 2009-01-10 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 09:23 pm (UTC)Pt. 3: Your model feels like a scary scary trap to me, and I would hate to think that some of the people I am quite comfortable writing--Whiskey, William Villette, Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi-Jones, et. al., were in any way aspects of my personality. Rather, I prefer to alienate them, and think of them as modeled personalities. (But then, I prefer, generally, to write people who are very different from me.)
But then, I've been learning cognitive adaptation since I was six years old, more or less, and I am very aware that the me I am is a constructed personality. I suspect that my model works best if one is already intensely alienated, intellectualized, and self-aware.
On the other hand, I accept that your model works for you, and it's a good model for you.
I would never wish you to think that just because I'm pretty sure that if *I* tried it it would lead to flat and flawed characters with no hidden depths, I think it doesn't work for *you.* Obviously it does, and very well.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 09:25 pm (UTC)And if you think my process is crazy and stupid and broken and squicky, it's kind of hard not to be hurt by that.
(And it seemed from the phrasing of your original posts that you *did* think less of writers who work that way. Which is why I was sad and confused. You have since clarified.)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 09:50 pm (UTC)What I was being flip and dismissive about were the people who Mary Sue creativity, wherein the subtext of "my characters are real people and talk to me" is "I am so Special! And my writing involves no craft! And therefore I do not have anything to learn!" I apologize for not making that distinction clear and will try to be careful in future about the cans of worms I open in parenthetical statements.
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Date: 2009-01-10 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-11 02:30 am (UTC)One book the words just come to match ~scenes~ that play out in my head, not characters' voices or personalities. I'm not sure how it ended up that way, but there it is.
In my other book, my main character is a definite presence. Writer block is not a problem-getting sleep is. My main character is in modern urban fantasy scape, but she makes it known when its time to write more of her story. She doesn't say anything, but once I see her in my head the words come. I suppose she could be more obvious about it; she could come armed with a spear and poke it in my direction.
Hmmm...that did sound sort of split personality-esque didn't it? O.o
Oh, and I'd have run away from such an interview to, if only because I wouldn't have the slightest thing to say. As for the actual voice on the page...I've never really had to work hard on that, different tones for different characters have always come pretty easy for me. I suspect this fact is due to having an ear for pitch-I'm one of the few people you know who, when singing along with the song on the radio, actually sings perfect pitch and key the whole length.
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Date: 2009-01-11 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-11 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 07:03 pm (UTC)I have become quite defensive about "hearing" my characters talk in my head and about my characters insisting on doing or refusing to do X or to behave in X way, because my not-a-writer spouse -- a very, very rational person in most ways -- so clearly regards this as crazy talk. Of course I hear them; of course I know what their voices sound like, and what sorts of vocabulary they use, and whether or not they can carry a tune, just as I need to know whether they're self-conscious about being very tall or have a habit of talking to themselves or are secretly sorry they didn't listen to their mothers. (And -- I'm not sure whether this will make me sound less crazy or more crazy -- when I read other people's books I generally hear the voices of their characters in my head, too, and quite a number of them feel thoroughly real to me.) I can't, and have never been able to, see people or places or things in my head, but I can hear 'em like nobody's business.
Of course I invented them, but that doesn't mean I retain control of them forever. I don't just let them write themselves (or, if this does happen, let them go merrily along unedited -- that way lie reams and reams of unnecessary infodump), but neither can I make them do things that it is not in their nature to do. Sometimes I just get irretrievably stuck until my back-brain throws up a different direction for things to go; other times I can write it, but can't make it not suck, and end up throwing it away.
Sure, it's shorthand, or a metaphor, but that is what it feels like to me. Or, to put it another way, I know they're not real, but I'm not always sure they know it.
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Date: 2009-01-12 07:11 pm (UTC)It might be an interesting thing to watch, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't do it. I am much, much better at writing than I am at talking (and I'm still very much in the apprenticeship phase of being a writer, so you can imagine what the above statement implies about my skill at public speaking).
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Date: 2009-01-12 09:32 pm (UTC)I frequently write with a friend. Sometimes she'll make a suggestion about the plot, and I know the idea doesn't work with the character's nature, and it is as if I hear them protesting that they would never do that. Of course it's shorthand, but it's very helpful to me. The more real they are in my mind, the more real I hope they come across in the writing.
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Date: 2009-01-13 09:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 08:05 pm (UTC)Thanks :)
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Date: 2009-01-13 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 01:34 am (UTC)I love your icon! I make that joke all the time and no one ever gets it until I say it out loud. I think I will steal it now; is there someone whom I should credit for making it?