Giving Voice to Your Characters

Last week a fellow writer early in her career asked me about voice. Could I explain it to her?

I told her that voice is the way you make your characters sound real, how you enable them to come alive instead of lying flat on the page. It is the way you differentiate your characters through what and how they think and talk. Not just their word choices but their cadence, whether they speak in full sentences most of the time, whether they trail off often or interrupt others a lot. Whether they use slang or curse words. Whether they use a lot of long or short sentences or if they have a nice mix. Whether, to boil it down, they have attitude. Whether, to bring us back to the beginning of this paragraph, they feel real.

The author asked if I could offer any examples. She learns better through examples. In case you do too, here are some from three of my recent stories.

From “Beauty and the Beyotch,” published in 2022 in issue 29 of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine: 

        I smoothed my shirt as I neared the lobby at lunchtime the next day, hoping it hadn't wrinkled. You're overthinking things. Kids don't care about stuff like that. I just wanted them to like me.

Can you tell that character, Joni, is a nervous teenager who often doesn't fit in? She is worrying about wrinkles, for Pete's sake. Her desperation oozes off the page.

Let's turn to the two other main characters in that story. Here's a bit of dialogue between Elaine, the first speaker, and Meryl.

        “A teapot? You expect me to be happy playing a teapot?”

        “Well—”

        “So you think that ho will steal the lead from me.”

Does Elaine come across as a bitch? Her attitude is snarky and entitled. She cuts Meryl off, not letting her answer the very question Elaine asked. She uses mean words about another girl, Joni. She may not be likeable, but Elaine certainly has attitude. She feels real.

From “Real Courage,” published in 2023 in issue 14 of Black Cat Mystery Magazine     

        Four years later, on a warm spring Saturday night my sophomore year of high school, I ended up down the block at Dereck’s house. He was throwing another rager. Kids were everywhere, smoking cigarettes and weed and other stuff I didn’t want to know about. Someone had smuggled in a keg, and someone else had made Jell-O shots. Music was pumping, and I was glad to be there. Glad to be out of my tomb of a house, where the lights were always dim and it was always quiet and my dad was always reading in his study. He’d retreated there after my mom died and pretty much hadn’t left. Books were his escape, he once said. I understood. But sometimes I needed to let loose.

That was Connor talking. He's a fifteen-year-old kid who fits in socially, who loves his dad and doesn't rag on him, but who also wants to live differently than his dad does. His dad would describe their house as peaceful. Connor calls it a tomb. He talks about his need to let loose. Imagine if Joni from “Beauty and the Beyotch” were at the this party. Okay, Joni would never go to that party, but imagine if she did. She would never think she needed to let loose. That idea wouldn't would cross her mind. Joni would be focused on what to say and who to talk to so she would fit in, and chances are, her awkwardness in what she said and how she said it would make her stand out as a girl who didn't fit in.

From “A Matter of Trust,” published earlier this year in the anthology Three Strikes--You're Dead!:

        You can do this. It’s not like I was incredibly out of shape. Just sported a little extra padding around the middle. Cycling shouldn’t be any problem.

That's Ethan. He promised his wife he would start riding his bicycle regularly to try to get his blood sugar under control. He's talking to himself, and I hope he comes across as a man who thinks highly of himself, a man in denial. 

So those are some examples of using voice--using attitude--to bring characters to life. You may not like attitude coming from your kids or coworkers or customers, but you want it in the characters in your fiction. That's not to say characters have to be snarky, but from reading what they say or think, the reader should be able to find some adjective to describe the character in question, be it neurotic or mean or narcissistic or chipper or some other descriptive term. Your characters should feel like real three-dimensional human beings, emphasis on the word real.

Before I go, I had a guest cover my column three weeks ago, so this is my first chance to share here that my story “Real Courage” has been named a finalist for the Macavity Award. To those of you who received ballots, I would be honored if you'd give it a read and consider voting for it if you like it. You can find it on my website. Just click here.

Towles in Hollywood

One of the oldest plot lines in the canon is the one about the old guy who comes back to triumph. From the days of the old war horse and the old samurai to the old gunslinger, the old spy and the old cop, the age and experience of a supposedly washed-up guy turns out to trump vain and overconfident youth in these stories.

Guy, that is, as in masculine. I am sure there are some mysteries where the surprisingly capable older character is female, but lets face it: the pattern for the older woman sleuth was set by Miss Marple, who appears to have been born complete with her spectacles, sweaters, and skepticism. 

The females in the plots under consideration tend to be young and beautiful with surprising tastes in May-December romances. While I am old enough to enjoy the triumph of age over youth, I feel a certain impatience with what are clearly fantasy plots based on masculine wishful thinking.

So it was with real pleasure that I discovered Eve in Hollywood, a short novel tucked into Amor Towles' new collection of stories, Table for Two. He's taken Eve Ross, a character from his 30's New York novel, The Rules of Civility, sent her to Hollywood at the height of the studio system, and landed her right in Raymond Chandler territory. It's a good move.

Eve is great: brave, intelligent and loyal. And like almost all Towles's characters, she is a charmer. Indeed, charm is almost the hallmark of this author, whose characters are almost uniformly entertaining, eloquent, and appealing. His particular talent has seldom been on such varied display as in Eve in Hollywood.

Besides Eve, we have Charlie, the widowed and retired cop who meets her on the train west. He's returning home from New Jersey when he chats with Eve, regaling this eager listener (how different from his chilly and bored daughter-in-law!) with tales from his professional past. They won't be wasted on this gal.

No sooner have we met Charlie, then we are introduced to another supposed has been, Prentice, a once important screen actor who, literally, ate himself out of stardom. Prentice still has an eye for pretty starlets, though, and, more importantly, a genuine and protective sympathy for actors on the lower rungs of the treacherous Hollywood ladder. 

He and Charlie are going to be our comeback guys but with a difference. No cliched feats of derring do from these two, and plenty of mistakes, wobbles, and mishaps, and plenty of help accepted from younger friends. No age-inappropriate romancing, either. These are realistic older guys, and their great moments are all the more satisfying for being almost entirely plausible. 

The book is unusual in structure as well as in theme, being organized in short chapters, each from a different point of view. We get Eve, Charlie, and Prentice, but also a wide range of other voices and characters, from Olivia (de Haviland, a real golden age actress) to an out of work still photographer, a big time studio lawyer, and the house detective at fancy Beverly Hills Hotel where Eve, Olivia, and Prentice are residents. 

This design requires tricky plotting to keep the action moving, and Eve in Hollywood is a real master class in structure as well as in differentiating characters' speech and outlooks. But far from being a novelty ornament, the organization of the novel is a fine complement to the plot, which relies less on individual heroics and super hero skills than on the cooperation and courage of folks of ability and good will.  

This novel began as a Penguin Books ebook and as a print edition, apparently published by Towles, himself, while one of the stories was an Audible original: signs that even best selling, big name authors are dabbling in new ways to reach audiences.

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Janice Law's The Falling Men, a novel with strong mystery elements, has been issued as an ebook on Amazon Kindle. Also on kindle: The Complete Madame Selina Stories.

The Man Who Met the Elf Queen, with two other fanciful short stories and 4 illustrations, is available from Apple Books at:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-man-who-met-the-elf-queen/id1072859654?ls=1&mt=11

The Dictator's Double, 3 short mysteries and 4 illustrations is available at: 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-dictators-double/id1607321864?ls=1&mt=11

More than One Way to Creatively Write

A few days ago on the 1st of July, Chris Knopf wrote about writing letters. The essay reminded me of my mother.

Historically, we know many male writers through their books and novels, but only a few women writers. We can, however, study a number of women of yesteryear through their correspondence. My mother, Hillis, followed in that tradition. She was an inveterate letter writer.

And she would write anyone, sometimes asking questions, often asserting a strong opinion. Occasionally a public figure received a note with a schoolteacher rebuke. I imagined the recipient gulping and mumbling, “Yes, ma’am.”

When I graduated high school, I received a congratulatory letter from the state’s governor. In one missive, Mom mentioned in passing I would be graduating, and somebody picked up on it.

She contributed trivia questions to a radio quiz show, and after a while, the show’s host began to reach out to her. On occasion when Mom visited the city, she’d chat with the show’s presenter prior to lunchtime.

Once after bidding him goodbye, Mom steered her kid (me) down the street where she came across a panhandler in front of a coffee shop. The man looked distressed. Mom said, “Let’s go inside and I’ll treat you to lunch.”

“I can’t,” said the derelict. “They won’t let me in.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Won’t they? We shall see about that.”

Uh-oh. My mother was barely five feet tall standing on a phonebook, but Dear God, she was fierce.

She took him by the elbow and ushered him inside. Immediately the staff said, “He has no money to pay. He has to leave.”

The cheeky waiter was fortunate Mom didn’t haul off and slap him in the kneecap. Mom pretended not to hear him.

“Young man, you will bring us salad, ham and turkey sandwiches, and coffee, thank you.”

Across the restaurant, spoons and forks hung in mid-air. Cups suspended before reaching the lip. All eyes turned on a server facing off against a munchkin who looked like she could devour him for lunch.

“But ma’am…” The waiter saw a steely flicker in Mom’s eyes that couldn’t be broached, a glint suggesting his continued good health might come into question. “Y-Yes ma’am. W-Will you be having dessert?”

Postal Cards versus Post Cards

As proficient as she was catching the ears of movers and shakers, Hillis was locally known for her postal cards. Postal cards and post cards are different. Postal cards refer to official US Postal Service cards, typically manilla-colored rectangles with no illustration other than guides for the address. They come pre-stamped, postage paid. Post cards, aka picture postcards, are common commercial cards, often a bit larger than postal cards. They require separately purchased postage.

One other thing– The Post Office offered for sale official USPS uncut ‘penny postal cards’. Firms could buy sheets of cards, print their message, promotion, or advertisement on the backs, and then cut them to size.

 

 

Project Manager

Mom didn’t so much have hobbies, but rather projects. Hobbies are done for sheer enjoyment, the journey not the destination. Projects have a goal, a destination.

Dad was well aware of Mom’s projects, so when he came across hundreds of sheets of postal cards to be discarded, he asked for them. The printing on the back was no longer accurate, but the postage on the cards was still valid.

Dad presented them to Mom and she was gleeful. Sheet by sheet, she laid them face down on her work table. She rolled adhesive over their backs, and then fitted sheets of white paper over the preprinted card backs, and finally, with a paper cutter snipped them to size. Mom now had many hundreds of official, paid postal cards or, as Dad might say, a week’s supply.

Then Came the Fun

Mom’s handwriting was compact and efficient, if not particularly feminine. She could pack three quarters of Shakespeare ’s Hamlet on the back of a newly minted card, flip it over and sideways, and fill the left half of the face of the card. It turns out as long as she left three inches on the right for an address, she could do whatever the hell she wanted with the rest of the card. Mother could do things with cards no one thought possible.

The local postmaster admitted he enjoyed reading Mom’s cards. Mom pretended offense. Although privately pleased, she gently reminded the man he shouldn’t read private mail.

The Queen of Cards

Mother made special cards for children in hospitals. Using her famous blue-black ink, she’d start lettering a message along the edge of a card, writing a note to the child in a spiral, requiring the victim, er, recipient to turn and turn the card to read the note.

Sometimes, she’d purchase stickers or clip tiny pictures from magazines to decorate her cards. Occasionally she’d integrate pictures into the message itself. She experimented with lemon-juice invisible ink, but her most innovative cards bore no written message at all.

A child who might be hospitalized for sometime might receive an envelope from Mom containing needle, thread, and a brief note, instructing the recipient to retain the needle and thread. Every few days thereafter, a postal card would arrive with no writing other than tiny numbers and dots in the message area. Yep, Mom’s get-well postal card was a connect-the-dots picture puzzle solved with needle and thread.

 

 

T’was a sad day many years later, when Mother used her last card. By then, I was an adult. (Stop sniggering!) By then, many around the country and especially our counties had benefitted from Mom’s postal cards. That last card marked the end of a writing legacy.