by Stephanie Morrill
Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the Ellie Sweet books (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website including the free novella, Throwing Stones.
As I talked about last Monday, if you’ve been hanging around the writing world for very long at all, you’ve likely heard about the importance of having a strong author voice.
But you’ve also probably heard about the idea of characters having their own unique voices, that you don’t want all your characters to sound the same. Especially if you’re writing your story in multiple points of view. Books like The Help by Kathryn Stockett and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver are praised for how each character has a unique sound. How even if the author didn’t say the character name at the start of each chapter, you would still know who it was because the character voice is so strong.
Creating strong and unique character voices is a quality of being a good writer. While it seems like character voice would steal from your author voice, somehow it doesn’t.
I bet you can even think of an author you love who you would say has a great voice, but who has also written several different books with strong character voices. Let’s use Jane Austen as an example. She has a unique author voice, and yet Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice sounds nothing like Emma Woodhouse from Emma.
As we talked about last week, your author voice is something you can influence and work to develop, but it’s also something that’s inside of you, rooted in your unique view of the world.
Character voice, however, is something you build completely from scratch. Here’s how you do it:
I’ll use two of the male characters from my Ellie Sweet books, Palmer and Chase, as an example. I’ll just pick a few items that influence their voice, and I think you’ll get a clear picture of how you can expand on this:
My agent had me do this with a manuscript of mine when my characters were reading a bit “scattered.” Ask yourself, “What is it that motivates this character through the story?”
A character like Palmer, who’s eager to make a splash in a new environment, is going to act and talk differently than a character like Chase. Chase, with his tough-as-nails reputation will act different than a character who wants everyone to like him. Make sense?
As talked about in this post, it can be really helpful to find a word that your character would use to describe themselves. The words I chose for my example characters are:
Palmer: “In control” If you pride yourself on being in control, how might that color the way you talk? You’ll be careful about what you reveal, won’t you? Palmer keeps conversations light and tries to always position himself so that he’s showing his good side.
Chase: “Bad news” Chase’s view of himself as bad news means he doesn’t mind saying things that might make Ellie uncomfortable or angry.
(Let’s ignore that neither of those descriptors are one word!)
Start by picking a question that’s a good springboard for rambling. The one that’s most effective for me is, “Tell me about your family.”
I’ve heard my mother was once beautiful, but a marriage to a cruel man left her looking old long before her time. I guess that’s why I’ve never really believed in marriage. All I’ve ever seen is how it destroys.
I’m often surprised by how long I can go on for. Pages and pages, especially if I’m nailing down the backstory of an antagonist.
I think the reason this works so well is that you’re getting deep in their head and figuring out why their bad choices make sense to them. Even if what you learn during the character journal process is never actually stated in the story, knowing it will help you create a consistent, logical character.