Bardothren
Muddling along somehow
- 8,645
- Posts
- 9
- Years
- Age 29
- In my room
- Seen Jan 3, 2020
Hello everyone, I'm back at it again. I thought about doing villains for this one, but then a thread popped up about it, and I ended up giving a lecture there. So, instead, I think I'll touch on perhaps the one aspect of writing I can't do jack **** with: Voice.
But before that, an update on my life. Not much happened. Posted a few chapters, did some stuff. Update over.
So... voice. First, let's define it. Voice is what your reader hears in their head when reading your work. The most bare-bones, generic voice available is the absence of it. Now granted, this isn't entirely true, as your own voice is going to carry into your work a bit, but for the most part, it's pretty common for the narration and the dialogue to have very little character to it.
So, the question is, how do you get that voice into your dialogue? You could try what Mark Twain did, and use spelling to reflect a dialect. This is the most extreme way, and you have to be very careful that your writing doesn't devolve into an illegible mess. It worked so well for Twain because he was intimately familiar with the dialect and was thus able to directly relay it onto the paper.
Failing that, the next possibility is word choice, and this I think is the best way to go about it. This is something you should always consider if you're an author. No six-year-old is ever going to use words like 'apropos', or 'exquisite', or even 'brilliant'. Conversely, no super-stiff, formal scientist will ever say 'dude', 'bro', or 'chill'. You can, of course, use word choice that contradicts a character's stereotype to create a more dynamic, interesting character: case in point, a chief scientist that uses stoner slang and plays vinyl records of the Beatles.
Another option is to use character descriptions to make the reader give them voice. Always assign gender early - it's a great way to establish voice, and if you do it too late, you'll confuse your reader half the time. Readers tend to assume that, if gender is not specified or implied, that the person speaking matches their gender. Now, if you're going for gender ambiguity, that's fine, but you have to be careful to define their voice some other way.
I'll wrap this up by explaining how voice can impact your story. Voice establishes mood and changes how the reader reads your story. If your story is full of swearing, violent language, and anger, the reader will feel suspense and caution, but if the same story's vulgar language and violence are replaced with light, airy dialogue and sunshine, the reader will bounce along with the words.
Alright then, on with the summary.
Spelling, word choice, and character description can all be used to create voice. The questions you have to ask yourselves are these:
What mood am I trying to establish?
What tone do I need to capture that mood?
What language best captures that tone?
And I think from now on, I'll wrap up these entries with important questions like those, because why not. Also, I'm open to comments about what I should address next. If you have a burning question and want to see my answer, feel free to slip me a VM or PM. Not only will I answer you right away, but I'll also expand on it in a blog entry. Okay then. Toodles. Oh! I'll also give voice a shot. I'll write a few iterations of a sentence and see if I can change the mood through word choice.
First, serious and foreboding:
Burning a baleful red streak through the night sky, the meteor, poised to bury mankind beneath sulfurous ash and oceans of blood, roared through the upper atmosphere.
Second, fun and uplifting:
A glittering red trail lit up the gentle night sky, and the children danced and made wishes as the comet came to kiss the planet.
Third, pensive and thoughtful:
The panicked men running through the streets thought of their own pain and loss, but none gave thought to the pain the meteor suffered as its crusty outer layer burned away in the upper atmosphere, nor of what damage it would suffer once it collided with our planet.
Alright, that's that. Maybe from now on I'll keep something more closely resembling a weekly schedule. :|
But before that, an update on my life. Not much happened. Posted a few chapters, did some stuff. Update over.
Voice
So... voice. First, let's define it. Voice is what your reader hears in their head when reading your work. The most bare-bones, generic voice available is the absence of it. Now granted, this isn't entirely true, as your own voice is going to carry into your work a bit, but for the most part, it's pretty common for the narration and the dialogue to have very little character to it.
So, the question is, how do you get that voice into your dialogue? You could try what Mark Twain did, and use spelling to reflect a dialect. This is the most extreme way, and you have to be very careful that your writing doesn't devolve into an illegible mess. It worked so well for Twain because he was intimately familiar with the dialect and was thus able to directly relay it onto the paper.
Failing that, the next possibility is word choice, and this I think is the best way to go about it. This is something you should always consider if you're an author. No six-year-old is ever going to use words like 'apropos', or 'exquisite', or even 'brilliant'. Conversely, no super-stiff, formal scientist will ever say 'dude', 'bro', or 'chill'. You can, of course, use word choice that contradicts a character's stereotype to create a more dynamic, interesting character: case in point, a chief scientist that uses stoner slang and plays vinyl records of the Beatles.
Another option is to use character descriptions to make the reader give them voice. Always assign gender early - it's a great way to establish voice, and if you do it too late, you'll confuse your reader half the time. Readers tend to assume that, if gender is not specified or implied, that the person speaking matches their gender. Now, if you're going for gender ambiguity, that's fine, but you have to be careful to define their voice some other way.
I'll wrap this up by explaining how voice can impact your story. Voice establishes mood and changes how the reader reads your story. If your story is full of swearing, violent language, and anger, the reader will feel suspense and caution, but if the same story's vulgar language and violence are replaced with light, airy dialogue and sunshine, the reader will bounce along with the words.
Alright then, on with the summary.
Summary
Spelling, word choice, and character description can all be used to create voice. The questions you have to ask yourselves are these:
What mood am I trying to establish?
What tone do I need to capture that mood?
What language best captures that tone?
And I think from now on, I'll wrap up these entries with important questions like those, because why not. Also, I'm open to comments about what I should address next. If you have a burning question and want to see my answer, feel free to slip me a VM or PM. Not only will I answer you right away, but I'll also expand on it in a blog entry. Okay then. Toodles. Oh! I'll also give voice a shot. I'll write a few iterations of a sentence and see if I can change the mood through word choice.
First, serious and foreboding:
Burning a baleful red streak through the night sky, the meteor, poised to bury mankind beneath sulfurous ash and oceans of blood, roared through the upper atmosphere.
Second, fun and uplifting:
A glittering red trail lit up the gentle night sky, and the children danced and made wishes as the comet came to kiss the planet.
Third, pensive and thoughtful:
The panicked men running through the streets thought of their own pain and loss, but none gave thought to the pain the meteor suffered as its crusty outer layer burned away in the upper atmosphere, nor of what damage it would suffer once it collided with our planet.
Alright, that's that. Maybe from now on I'll keep something more closely resembling a weekly schedule. :|
