One potentially powerful and useful tool to have in your toolbox is the ability to write in a certain vernacular that makes your characters memorable. Stylistic voicing has been successfully used by some great authors. Let’s take a look at those, and why they were successful.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

One of the most memorable characters I can think of is Holden Caulfield. The Catcher in the Rye is a staple for coming-of-age readers. It’s my favorite book, in fact. Why? Why did this book resonate with me so much? No, it’s not because I’m

a sociopath, as many critical readers think of Holden. I loved the book because it was real.

We understand that this is the first time Holden has ever truly spoken his mind, consequences be damned. And we get a front row seat! His raw vernacular often includes calling people “phonies” and using “goddamn” as a consistent adjective. This usage of stylistic voicing achieved a certain authenticity. Whether Holden was right or wrong about the other characters being phonies, we never question for a minute that Holden is completely convinced that they are.

Room by Emma Donoghue

The book Room is told by a 5-year-old boy, Jack, whose main education is the television. Why? Because he is a captive, along with his mother, locked in a shed for years. Jack’s stylistic voicing is so convincing, so well constructed, that the reader is completely enveloped into Jack’s world, where he has only known the Room. He has never been outside. He hasn’t received any sort of education, apart from the one his mother tries to give him, which makes his sentence construction short and plain. He only describes what he sees, not knowing exactly what certain things mean. But you, the reader, know exactly what it means. And it makes your stomach churn and your heart ache.

You may want to pick up Room to see an excellent example of emotional transport with a stylistic narrative voice. It should also be noted that some readers simply could not get past the stylistic voicing. That is one of the risks you take when choosing a stylistic narration, but the rewards can be BIG. Room won Emma Donoghue over ten prestigious awards for her effort and risk.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Perhaps the most well-known example of using stylistic voice is Huck Finn. It was, in fact, the very first novel published to use American vernacular, or more specifically, regional dialect (an example:“Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to git well agin.”). Huck is described as a pariah, son of the town drunk, and the other children wish they dared to be like him. That’s one hellova introduction. If Samuel Clemens decided to write The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in third person, I venture to say everyone would hate Huck. A bratty little kid, running around causing havoc. What Twain did so brilliantly was deciding to tell the story from Huck’s perspective, showing us the charm and charisma Huck has to offer, so we can’t help but love the little shit. Using stylistic voicing, Twain made us relate to an otherwise potentially annoying character.

You may have noticed that I chose all first-person novels, as well as young narrators. Can you think of any examples of stylistic voice using adults, told in third person? Was it as effective as a first-person stylistic voice?

If you’re on the edge about whether or not to write a character’s unique voicing, take heart. Mark Twain had never seen it before, but did it anyway. Emma Donoghue received some unkind reviews of Room because of her style choice, and probably cries about it in front of her wall full of awards. Just kidding. She doesn’t. And Holden Caulfield wouldn’t be one of the most notorious voices in literature if Salinger hadn’t let him. Tell your character’s story in the most authentic way possible, even if that includes letting him or her speak for him/herself.

Write a Short Story? I’d Rather Floss a Chicken’s Teeth!

January 6, 2015

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn Craft & Skills Genres Storyline No Comments

Write a short story? I’d rather floss a chicken’s teeth! That’d be much easier.

I found myself facing that problem after writing six novels. I couldn’t wrap my head around a shorter piece of work. Everything I tried I sounded like an outline for a novel.

Books on outlining didn’t help. Workshops provided little insight. Critique groups, well, I could help someone to better tell their story, heck, I’d even edited an acclaimed anthology, but I couldn’t tell one myself.

How could I overcome this block?

The problem was, I needed a break from novel writing and I really wanted to know what eluded me about this form. I followed this four step process and I learned how to write a short story:

1) Read short stories, not novels. By reading short stories I learned what forms and genres I really liked and disliked. There’s no point in trying to write in a genre or with a style that doesn’t speak to you.

2) Choose a genre which speaks to you. For example, I love some literary style authors and I love science fiction stories. Literary style I can read but I can’t figure out the voice. With science fiction I understand the voice and the genre, but I’m not as adept as I’d like to be with the science. Hence, I don’t have the confidence to write it. How did I learn this about myself? Check out point number three …

3) Retell the stories that interest you. Be aware of style, plot, character and tropes common to the genre. That’s how I figured out if I had the desire, the passion to write certain stories. When I retold a story, I paid close attention to the plot and how it unfolded. I had to be aware of the tropes. Most importantly, I had to feel the voice and I had to feel the passion for the genre. Once you’ve discovered what stories energize and excite you, the final step is easy.

4) Now, write an original story in the genre and voice that excites you.

That’s it. It’s that easy.

Should you publish or submit a retold story? That’s another matter. Issues of public domain arise and rightly so. Some stories I deleted because my intent was only to learn from them. Others, even if there are no public domain issues, may be published in the future but with full disclosure as to the source of inspiration.

Where did I finally find my voice? With fables and fairy tales and people’s stories of old. I love it. The most curious thing I learned was that it wasn’t about setting for me for I’ve set my stories in worlds of fantasy, science fiction, and yes, there’s even a literary one or two! My real journey was to find my story telling voice.

The cheat of the matter was this: later on, I recognized that my writing voice had always been with me. I had heard it, felt it even and I had tried to squeeze it into forms and stories that didn’t suit it. That was the heart of the problem. That is the heart of this journey – to hear the voice within you and to find the form that fits it.

The Upside to Being Messy and Unfocussed

January 6, 2015

Evan Braun

Character Evan Braun Rewriting Storyline No Comments

RubiksCube For the most part, I’m a gardener. And proud of it! If you’ve spent any amount of time in the writing community, you probably know what this means: I explore my story as I go along, finding my way to the ending through a process of trial and error rather than moving through the book strictly according to a preordained outline. I don’t eschew outlining entirely; I do keep fairly detailed outlines of the two or three chapters ahead of wherever I happen to be in the story on a given day. Working this way gives me confidence in the story’s immediate future, but beyond that I admit it can get a little murky. I only have a general idea of how I want the story to resolve while I’m in the midst of it (usually it’s a solid, workable idea, but nonetheless I only work out the details very generally).

This doesn’t mean the endings aren’t well-earned or carefully orchestrated. In fact, I feel that working this way forces me to spend a lot of time considering how satisfying various plot and character developments will be when push comes to shove. If any particular idea isn’t panning out, I don’t have qualms about jettisoning it in favour of an alternate approach. In my experience, this allows my books to get better, stronger, tighter as I work through them, solving them in the same way one might tackle a Rubik’s Cube. (Full disclosure: I’ve never managed to solve a Rubik’s Cube, so I guess that’s a bad example.)

So what does this have to do with character? Everything.

When you don’t have an airtight outline guiding you through the storytelling weeds, you have to create potential in your characters. In the earlier stages of writing a novel, it’s profitable to spin dozens of little threads that may or may not pay off in the long run. You don’t have to tie them all together. Once your story is worked out, you can trim the book down to focus only on the threads that coalesce. At the beginning, though, the key to creating great, story-propelling characters is to pinball them off other characters and events to see what sticks. In my experience, this leads to a host of options which can be exploited down the road.

This can feel messy and unfocussed while in progress, but a lot of the detritus doesn’t make it into the final cut. I end up writing a number of early scenes that don’t see the light of day, because they don’t lead anywhere interesting. But I often won’t know if particular character combinations work until I attempt them. So Margaret clashes with Fred, and Fred makes a pass at Steve, and Steve can speak with the ghost of a long-dead alien consciousness from Europa, and the long-dead alien consciousness from Europa… The point is, none of these may be central to the premise of my story—at least to begin with—but the few threads that really click create enormous depth and interconnectivity to my characterizations in the long-term. And several of them likely will become central to the premise by the time I type “The End.”

Knowing what will come together and what won’t is a mysterious, unscientific alchemy I have yet to master—and maybe I never will. But in the meantime, I’m going to keep the gardening the hell out of my characters and sees what sprouts up. Sometimes it’s this. Other times? Not so much.

Petting the Dog in Space

January 4, 2015

fictorians

Character Dave Heyman Guest Posts Narrative Voice 2 Comments

A guest post by DAVID HEYMAN.

2014 for me was a year of education. As I made the decision to move my writing out of the realm of hobby and move towards publication, I immersed myself in every book, course and workshop I could find.

An immediate focus for me was on my characters, as I felt that my initial takes on characters tended to be a bit drab, especially on the protagonists. I wanted my readers to like my characters, to care about them and root for them. One lesson I heard articulated often was something David Farland referred to in his workshop as “petting the dog.” In effect, show your character being nice to someone and people will naturally start to invest in their trials and goals themselves. People like nice people.

I began to look for examples of this in media, and once I knew to look for it I found it pretty easy to spot. While it was often fairly obvious in television shows, movies and novels, my favorite example of it was not in the realm of fiction at all. It was, instead, in the Twitter feeds of the two ESA probes investigating the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

The investigation of the comet was fairly well captured by the standard media. If you followed the approach and landing on the television news or via news websites, you were given an accounting that was factual, if a bit dry. If you followed the ESA Twitter feed however, you were given an emotional epic. Through the use of nothing more than 140 characters at a time, the ESA wove a story that made its readers care.

The ESA started by anthromorphizing the probes, allowing them to speak on their feeds in the first person. I felt this was a good first step, and one that plays on human nature. As people we seem to be drawn to this model easily, as we go about our lives ascribing emotions and whole personalities to our cars, our favorite shoes and so on. By making the probes speak for themselves, they started to become characters.

Making something a character is not that hard in the perfunctory sense. The trick I have been studying is how to make them likable, and in this I feel the ESA engineers gave a clinic, as these two probes quickly became characters I was invested in. The trick was not in simply letting them speak, but rather what made me care about Philae and Rosetta is that they clearly cared about each other.

Consider the following message orbiter Rosetta sent lander Philae, just after the small probe had separated from the larger lander:

@ESA_Rosetta: Also now back in contact with @philae2014! Good to hear you again buddy 🙂

The probe responds back:

@Philae2014: Nice to talk to you again, @ESA_Rosetta!

The two went back and forth like this, with Philae sending Rosetta pictures of itself and promising postcards from the comet’s surface. They would comment and compliment each other as they went about the work of the landing. When Philae finally completed its historic landing, it was with Rosetta cheering it on by re-tweeting the probe’s landing announcement:

@ESA_Rosetta: Well done my friend! RT @Philae2014: Touchdown! My new address: 67P!

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned for the mission. For a time, the ESA scientists could not locate Philae’s position on the comet. During this period the two probes exchanged humorous messages about the situation, like actual humans would, both trying to keep each other calm in the crisis:

@Philae2014: I’m in the shadow of a cliff on #67P. Where exactly? That’s what my team is in the process of finding out!

@ESA_Rosetta: @Philae2014 you’re in a shadow? How am I supposed to spot you there?! Our teams working hard to find you 🙂

In time it was determined that Philae had bounced on landing, and was now located in an area with much more shadow than expected. Due to this, the solar batteries would not receive the expected charge and soon communications with the probe would be lost.

By this time, my wife and I were fully invested readers. Philae and Rosetta were no longer pieces of machinery, they were now characters we had grown to care about. Through the skillful use of 140 characters at a time, the ESA engineers had made these two matter to us on an emotional level. The writer in me was curious to see how they would handle this new dire situation Philae was in.

I was proud to see they recognized the path the story needed to take. If Philae was going to die, he was going to die a hero. His last tweets were brave, talking about the work he would do until the end:

@Philae2014: I will use all my remaining energy to “communicate” between @ESA_Rosetta and myself with @ConsertRosetta

@Philae2014: @ESA_Rosetta I’m feeling a bit tired, did you get all my data? I might take a nap…

This culminated with a final exchange, where you can almost see Rosetta kneeling by Philae’s bed, telling his young charge that it will be all right:

@ESA_Rosetta: S’ok Philae, I’ve got it from here for now. Rest well…

@Philae_2014: My #lifeonacomet has just begun @ESA_Rosetta. I’ll tell you more about my new home, comet #67P soon… zzzzz

My wife and I held back a few tears while reading this. I kept checking Philae’s Twitter feed for several days, but no new updates were forthcoming. Its batteries drained and its mission complete, Philae was at rest.

Long after the comet mission faded from the news, I continued to think about how emotionally invested I had become. I knew very little about the mission before the landing grew close, and I while I had followed similar missions like the Mars landing with great interest, that is all it had been. Interest.

Philae and Rosetta made me feel. That is a powerful reaction, the very goal of my writing, and I suspect a lot of the investment I grew to have in the mission was from how these two characters cared about each other. As I move forward in my own writing, the lessons I learned here will be ones I hope to emulate.

Guest Writer Bio:

David Heyman writes short sci-fi and fantasy and is working on a novel. He works as a director for a networking company.