A carefully concealed post about the craft of voice
I'm taking the poetry out of love one sad sentence at a time. :-) Yes, I have that goal. Because more often than not love is messy and nobody says the right thing at the most perfect moment. And even if they did, the other side of the couple would stare at them like they'd lost their mind. I mean who really goes around spouting pretty lines about love?
Okay, maybe I do, but I'm a writer and it's just something my brain is trained to do. But not everyone writes as much as I do and not everyone spends their days looking for poetry in everything. And even if I can come up with pretty phrases, it still sounds corny in my everyday life.
Love is messy. I said that already didn't I? Right. I'll give a little here. Maybe, just maybe, not all love is messy. However, for my current characters it is. Fairy tales are nice and all but what if we broke the mold? What if Prince Charming stops having a trained writer write for him?
Idealism versus realism, right? How about if my poetic heart made some sort of truce with my rational brain? Would we get something like this?
"It hadn’t mattered after all. He still brought every emotion she had to the surface of her skin. Then he took the sharpest blade he could find and slit her wide open. And there, on that butt-ugly carpet, it all fell out."
It's probably nothing so controversial as taking a stand against Prince Charming and his perfect little phrases so carefully thought out and written for him. It's probably just an example of voice and how we need to stick to it for the sake of our characters and the sake of our audience.
It doesn't matter how many books I've written or how much more I've learned, I still think learning how to find a different voice for each of your characters is one of the most important parts of writing. And I still think an author's writing style and a character's voice are two different things entirely.
Okay, maybe I do, but I'm a writer and it's just something my brain is trained to do. But not everyone writes as much as I do and not everyone spends their days looking for poetry in everything. And even if I can come up with pretty phrases, it still sounds corny in my everyday life.
Love is messy. I said that already didn't I? Right. I'll give a little here. Maybe, just maybe, not all love is messy. However, for my current characters it is. Fairy tales are nice and all but what if we broke the mold? What if Prince Charming stops having a trained writer write for him?
Idealism versus realism, right? How about if my poetic heart made some sort of truce with my rational brain? Would we get something like this?
"It hadn’t mattered after all. He still brought every emotion she had to the surface of her skin. Then he took the sharpest blade he could find and slit her wide open. And there, on that butt-ugly carpet, it all fell out."
It's probably nothing so controversial as taking a stand against Prince Charming and his perfect little phrases so carefully thought out and written for him. It's probably just an example of voice and how we need to stick to it for the sake of our characters and the sake of our audience.
It doesn't matter how many books I've written or how much more I've learned, I still think learning how to find a different voice for each of your characters is one of the most important parts of writing. And I still think an author's writing style and a character's voice are two different things entirely.