McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Chapter Perspectives and How to Start Them
Aminar:
I'm just going to say, I disagree. On a first readthrough maybe... But there are different viewpoints(It's just that all the women are angry and think men are stupid) He still characterizes them well and each of them has voice.
Voice is also something that is either innate to the writer or comes off artificially alot of the time. (Jordan had very artificial voice. I will admit to that. Siuan and her fish curses every third sentence. Nobody thinks about their job that much.) It's hard if not impossible to learn voice. Especially given that every writer has a voice as well.
meg_evonne:
Patrick O'Brian. Wow. Yessssss.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Aminar on October 17, 2012, 01:13:29 AM --- It's hard if not impossible to learn voice. Especially given that every writer has a voice as well.
--- End quote ---
I'm going to disagree with you there; I would say that it's essential to learn voice unless you don't care that all your characters are indistinguishable, and that it's a thing some writers get more easily than others but anyone can learn to some extent. (Though some voices are easier than others; myself, I can do a passable Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy narrator and a fairly solid Alexandre Dumas, for example.)
I'm inclined to think that the better a writer is, the less their own actual voice can be distinguished through their characters' and stories' individual voices.
Aminar:
And how does one learn voice? There is no way to do voice via a set structure short of using an accent. You can't formulize it. (I'm not saying it isn't something that can be improved on) but it isn't a teachable or learnable skill. It's too ephemeral for that. But you can write it none the less. Basically voice isn't a concious thing, not when done right. It's all in the readers head and no matter how good you may or may not be at differentiating by sentence length and thought pattern readers will ascribe a voice to a character. In my writng I've heard every which way. According to some every character is distinct and they can immediatley tell who's section it is. For my girlfriend the mystical glowing extradimensional lady and the summoner who's been on the run since he was 16 sound exactly the same(which is actually a good thing given the fact said female character learned verbal speech via the summoner's brain.)
So you can't quantify voice and it's all in the readers mind anyway. The only parts that can be taught, the aforementioned sentence pattern/word length things. Those aren't voice. They're tricks that make characters feel fake. Nobody thinks like that. Hell, writing like people think is impossible and would be unreadable because almost nobody thinks in full sentences and their thoughts spin off all over the place. But making them even more robotic by giving them patterns... It never comes off well.(Hence disliking fish thought patterns)
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Aminar on October 17, 2012, 03:43:37 PM ---And how does one learn voice? There is no way to do voice via a set structure short of using an accent. You can't formulize it. (I'm not saying it isn't something that can be improved on) but it isn't a teachable or learnable skill.
--- End quote ---
Of course it is. You learn voice by doing pastiche of voices you have read that have really worked for you. You learn it by picking your favourite album and writing each song out as a story. (This works better if your favourite album is by Leonard Cohen than by Orbital, granted.) You learn it by telling the same story in different modes; theme and variations.
--- Quote ---Basically voice isn't a concious thing, not when done right.
--- End quote ---
The better you get, the more you can consciously control.
--- Quote --- The only parts that can be taught, the aforementioned sentence pattern/word length things. Those aren't voice. They're tricks that make characters feel fake. Nobody thinks like that.
--- End quote ---
I will assert in all seriousness that I do, here.
--- Quote --- Hell, writing like people think is impossible and would be unreadable because almost nobody thinks in full sentences and their thoughts spin off all over the place.
--- End quote ---
You clearly know a very different set of human beings from the ones I do, then. Almost all the ones I do think in full sentences; many, including me, think in full paragraphs.
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