Finding a 'Voice'

[dreamhunter]

Just heard some worrying news about your 'Ammers then, Boney. Seems that their situation got so deperate that time that someone ... Mike Dean or something like that, his name was ... had to resort to some desperate measures to shore up their dire situation.

Like forcing your good friend Frank Lampard to take his penalty not once, but three, yes three, times. Well, you know our Lamps, he simply put it away, buried it without any doubt, each and every time.

Then he said to Mikey, "Cheers mate! For being so generous, giving me two practice hits!"

 

[Boneman]

Actually, my Team (that I supported from age 9-33) is Brighton and Hove Albion, as they were my local team, grew up just outside Brighton. It's second chance who's the 'ammers fan...

There must be two Frank Lampards - one who plays for Chelsea and one who plays for England...

Hope you had a great christmas!

 

[dreamhunter]

Well, it's the same one Frank. The one playing for England is the earthly Avatar. The one doing the job regularly for Chelsea is the real God of War.

Apparently, the Avatar has still some way to go, but he's still hanging on in there. He can only get better and better, I tell you. Just watch him. He's a new Bobby Charlton in the works.

Merry Christmas to you too.

 

[ctg]

Boneman, about the voice. Like Mr Bear says, there's a difference between the narration, and character narration. First one is you doing the narration by using a strong narrator voice. Take for example Sir Pratchett, when you read his novels you start to notice how strong his voice is. But there's something as there always is; he knows exactly on how to bleed into the close third person perspective.

The character narration comes most easily through the first person perspective. You go all the way down to the perspective and use only his words, his thoughts to do the narration. In that way, your own narrative voice hides behind the mask of the character. But you can easily do that in third person by peering close in and using thoughts and observations to drive the narrative.

Does that help you to understand on how to nail the 'voice'?

 

[Marky Lazer]

Okay... now where did you see it last, Boneman?

 

[Boneman]

Funnily enough Marky, I saw it when I wrote a piece for fun, and the two characters were a six year old girl, and her father - he's a punner worthy of Ursa and she's a believing innocent, who won't stop asking questions... But that voice won't fit my major opus, which is a more 'serious' piece with murder, mystery and mayhem.

What do you get if you eat too many Christmas decorations? Tinslellitus...

ctg: this is what I'm after, and it's trying to think in the 1st person perspective that seems to be helping. I'm completely re-writing a chapter soon, and doubtless my writing group will tell me if the strepsils are working, and I'm getting a voice.

Dreamhunter: are you old enough to remember Peter Osgood, Chopper Harris, Charlie Cooke, Ian Hutchison, and the others who knew how to play foorball with passion? That's what seems to be lacking in Mr Lampard - possibly he is technically a wizard, but he's just too clinical for my liking, and has to rely on others far too much - but then again, p'raps that's just the way football has gone, nowadays?

 

[dreamhunter]

But you need the right balance, Bones. Between passion and technical wizardry. And then, only when you can afford it.

Because passion, per se, can only help you to win the occassional odd game. An FA Cup game or a League Cup match, perhaps. But, over the long haul, you need guys with technical wizardry to carry you through. To create play, to make space, to put the ball in, regularly, in as well as out of situations that sometimes occur only once or twice over the course of 90 minutes.

If you put yourself in the shoes of a football manager, then you'd appreciate someone like Lamps a bit more.

P.S. I was lucky to catch guys like Allan Clarke, Peter Lorimer etc. towards their last days in their prime, during the Golden Age of Leeds. There was another guy, can't remember his name now, he was like a ghost, drifting in from out of nowhere, then popping up suddenly around the box for a killer volley or header.

Some of my mates even called me 'Allan Clarke' on the field, because I liked to mimic his elegant, graceful way. But as I grew more mature, MU's Bryan Robson became my idol. Bryan didn't have the silky artistry of Glenn Hoddle, his contemporary as a midfielder, but I thought Robbo's style was more appropriate for me, in terms of character, composure, temperament, physique etc. But I could never match him in terms of stamina, though. Awesome, wasn't he?

 

[Window Bar]

A good voice would seem to depend upon a good ear. Everyone has an accent, everyone has a customary vernacular. Actually, the most difficult voice to hear accurately is one's own.

 

[dreamhunter]

So now I'm doing more of this, and I'm really enjoying it. I'll even try writing in the 2nd person... maybe.

But I would recommend this to anyone stuck in a scene, because it makes you see so much more clearly if you really look through your character's eyes, and then shift to writing from his pov.

Bones, about this 'voice' thing. Since I'm more into HF, that's the stuff I tend to read more.

There's this David Gemmel, author of the Troy trilogy. You can see his name in the Authors' list. Let me get this right, but I thought that David kept flitting, rather regularly, between the 'voice' of the main narrator, i.e. David himself, and the POV 'voices' of his multitude of characters, e.g. Agamemnon, Priam, Odysseus, Hector, Aeneas, Achilles etc. etc.

And I like David's storytelling style. He even presented his Odysseus as a pathological tale spinner. Someone who would cook up the most audacious tales about titans, monsters, gods and goddesses out of the most ordinary events or situations that came his way.

Now I've just realised it, that David's Odysseus was really partly David himself, the compulsive story teller.

My point is that, basically, I found multiple 'voices' as the most engaging way to tell a story, at least for me as a reader.