Voice

How do you make a character’s voice distinct? The not very helpful answer to this question which I often give is that a character’s voice is distinct when a new reader can sit down and identify that character’s lines of dialogue without needing dialogue tags. This isn’t very helpful, because it does not say how we get to that point of recognition. Of course, when we’re listening to people speak, its relatively easy for us to pick out speakers without looking at them. However, we have access to many more facts when we’re listening, like vocal pitch, vocal inflection, and tone quality. The key to creating a recognizable voice is finding audible keys which can then be written down.

Perhaps the most recognizable vocal tag is dialect. This is a crutch, which I’ve seen plenty of authors use to make a character more “memorable.” I advise people to use dialect for good reasons, namely to demonstrate particular facts about a character, but I’ll discuss this particular point more in depth later. For the moment, let’s examine a few ways we can make a character’s voice recognizable without changing the way their language looks. What we are really more interested in is how it sounds to the reader.

Style

Style is an elusive topic, mostly because there isn’t really a good way to define it, or good ways to develop it. Put simply, a writer’s style is just the way she writes. But that doesn’t really tell us much. In fact, I think style can be broken down a little more, into two broad categories.

The first category is content. Some authors are just famous or well known because of what they write about. In this category I would place authors such as Kurt Vonnegut and J.R.R Tolkien. I mention this first because often it is underappreciated. However, many authors are known more for what they write about that how the write, and this isn’t something which can be tossed by the way side. I will be covering this side of style in more detail as I continue discussing different genres of writing.

The second category is voice. There are many writers who are famous for their voice, and two that come to mind right now are James Joyce and Ernest Hemmingway, though their voices, in some ways, couldn’t be more different. This is often the category which most people think of when they think of style, and for the most part, this is what I will discuss when I talk about style.

There is no easy way to find a voice. That said, there are two tools that can help refine a voice, and improve it. The first is to practice literary devices. Often, famous voices are famous because of how they use imagery, foreshadowing, magical realism, and the like, and so understanding how those devices work is crucial for developing a voice of your own.

The second tool is the pastiche, a literary exercise which I believe is incredibly helpful, but which few writers use. The essential objective is to take an excerpt written by an author whose voice you enjoy, and try to mimic it as best you can. This often takes three steps. First, you must select a passage and do a close reading of it, identifying what aspects make the author’s voice notable. Second, try to recreate the writer’s style in a story of your own. Finally, go back and compare the two, figure out what you liked about that style and what you didn’t, and then try to incorporate the things you enjoyed into your own writing.

 

Exercise: Every once in a while, I will give my opinion on a famous style in a post, and provide a passage for a pastiche exercise. For now, try writing a pastiche in the style of your favorite author, following the process I outlined above.