Who is Speaking Please? by Åsa Maria Bradley

A few years ago, a critique partner told me that she had problems distinguishing between my characters. I had worked hard to create a unique quirk for each of them. My hero often cursed and my heroine had a certain way of flipping her hair. When I asked for clarification, my dear CP said, “They all have a bit of a potty mouth, at times a little too much.” She pointed to a page where she’d circled each swear word. Two male and one female were speaking, none of them uttered a sentence that didn’t contain the word “fu**.” If I hadn’t included a dialogue tag here and there, it would have read as one long manic rant.

I revised and proudly showed my CP the new version. Now, only the hero’s sidekick dropped the f-bomb. The hero instead used “shit,” while the heroine preferred milder profanities such as “crap.” My poor CP’s facial twitches made me snatch the pages out of her hand and return home to rewrite them again.

As writers, we know that it’s not only what our characters say that is important, but also how they say it. The challenge is to make sure that each character has a unique way of speaking, moving, and thinking.

When I started writing, I thought that voice-driven fiction only took place in first person POV. Then I paid more attention to how my favorite authors stayed completely in character, not only through dialogue, but also during narratives.

One of my favorite characters is Stella Hardesty in Sophie Littlefield’s A BAD DAY FOR SORRY. Here’s a narrative passage:

“Stella had drained the Johnnie. She hadn’t really intended to, but some nights were like that. Some nights were for thinkin’ and drinkin’, when it seemed like you couldn’t do one without the other.

Stella rarely drank in the days before Ollie died. She’d figured that someone in the house ought to stay sober, and Ollie frequently wasn’t up to the job.”

Stella is a fifty-year-old woman who was beaten by her alcoholic husband and ended up killing him when she’d had enough. She now helps other women deal with their abusive men. A job that keeps her so busy, she rarely has time to run her sewing shop.

You’d think a theme like this would make Littlefield’s book a tragic story. Instead, it’s rich with humor and quirky characters that make you laugh out loud. Told entirely from Stella’s POV, in third person, her sarcastic witty voice colors the story in ways that make it impossible not to see the funny side of things.

Another favorite character is sassy Sabine, Queen of Illusions, from Kresley Cole’s KISS OF A DEMON KING. Sabine knows how important appearances are and prefers wearing audacious costumes with tons of bling. Here’s a scene from when she first makes contact with Rydstrom Woede, the demon king she’s forced to seduce.

“She’d thought it wouldn’t hurt to appear virtuous, which she assumed a good demon king would prefer.

“He had better like her shuddersome new look. Except for her ring, not a single ounce of gold adorned her body. No makeup, either. She’d left her hair unplaited, curling almost to her waist—without a headdress. And it felt wrong.”

By making Sabine describe what she’s wearing, and not wearing, we know not only what she looks like but how different this is compared to her normal look. We also get a feel for her personality by the vocabulary Ms. Cole chose.

These days, I try to make my characters stand out by more than just their preference of curse words. I give them different ways of speaking by playing with vocabulary and tone of voice. They often have a particular quirk, or pet peeve, or something in their background colors their perception of people, places, and things. After I’ve gotten to know my characters, I go back through my manuscript and tighten sections where I’m in particular character’s POV and make his or her voice stand out better.

Here are some of my favorite exercises, I hope they help you flush out your characters’ uniqueness as well.

1) Have your characters describe a childhood event. It could be a road trip they took with their parents, a traumatic event, or something that happened at school. Then rewrite that scene as if they were a child, using their younger voice as the narrator.

2) Imagine an event in the past that made your character very sad, angry, happy, or scared. Have the character describe the event while thinking about what unique words or phrases describes how personal this even was to that particularly character.

3) Pretend that you are writing a scene for a movie. In other words, you can’t describe what your characters are feeling or thinking. Instead, you have to rely only on gestures to get their emotions across. What unique movements or quirks would your characters have?

Do you have a favorite way of getting to know your character’s voice?  Please share with us.

Thank you so much for having me on the blog today. I love this group and can’t believe how supportive all members are, not only on the blog and the loops, but also when I met several of you at nationals in Anaheim.

Bio:  Åsa Maria Bradley new paranormal series features Vikings and Valkyries and their struggle to keep the world safe from Ragnarök—the god’s final battle. She’s originally from Sweden, where Norse mythology and history is ever present in archeological finds and buildings around the village where she grew up. Her articles have appeared in several magazines and she had an essay included in FEMALE NOMAD AND FRIENDS: TALES OF BREAKING FREE AND BREAKING BREAD AROUND THE WORLD (Three River Press 2010). She lives in Washington State with her British husband and a used dog of indeterminate breed. Visit her at AsaMariaBradley.com.

Empower Your Writing with Word Choice by Theresa Meyers

Every author has a voice. It’s what editors, agents and more importantly readers, are attracted to in their favorite fiction authors. As authors our words are the building blocks for not only our fiction but also how our books are perceived by readers on the shelves.

What exactly do I mean?

Words have power, weight and emotional context. They can make us feel or think different things on a subconscious level. Think about it. When you are describing clouds moving across the sky, you could say the clouds slipped across the moon, or you could say the clouds drifted across the moon or you could say the clouds scudded across the moon. Only one word changes each time but the emotional context and weight of the scene changes dramatically. Slipped has an almost otherworld quality to it. Drifted is dreamlike, and the character might be questioning the validity of the situation. Scudded is much darker and ominous, hinting at danger lurking in the shadows. One word can make all the difference.

And this isn’t just the case with verbs. It’s in our descriptions too. We feel different about the colors chartreuse, emerald and sage, even though they are all different ways to describe shades of green. By using deep character point of view we can pick out words that resonate with our characters to create fresh descriptions. A Navy Seal and a preschool teacher are not going to have the same reaction when they get their hand slammed in a car door. Likewise they will picture, describe, think and see things through the lens of their own experiences. For my paranormal Hunter in my Steampunk who’s been raised in the western frontier, he looks at things from a hunting point of view.

As the dark beast entered the edge of the yellow oil lamp light, Colt could make out the massive shoulders and ridge of raised black hair along the hellhound's back. More importantly, he could see the grizzly bear-sized mouth full of bared glistening dagger-like teeth just beneath the scarlet eyes, which flickered with the glow of red hot coals in a camp fire. The thing was the size of a buffalo, black as night and as angry as a pissed off mama bear. It stalked them slowly and deliberately laying down one massive paw in front of the other, dark curving nails clacking against the rock floor as it made a beeline in their direction. 

As a bonus the word choices you make because of the way your character views the world as a result of their backstory is another subtle way of introducing that backstory to your readers without beating them over the head with it. From this example you get a very clear feeling of what this man may have experienced in their past. It’s obvious he’s obviously stalked prey, he’s seen a grizzly bear and a buffalo, and spent time around a camp fire.

Word placement can make a difference too. Where you place a key word can either flatten you prose or enhance it. By placing the most powerful words at the end of your sentences and paragraphs, you’re giving your writing a power punch that lasts with readers.

Why put it at the end? Human psychology is wired so whatever is last is remembered most.

Take this sentence:

The hand-scrawled page from Diego’s safety-deposit box was right over her heart, burning a hole in her shirt pocket.

The hand-scrawled page from Diego’s safety-deposit box was burning a hole in her shirt pocket right over her heart.

As a word is pocket or heart more powerful? The sentence still conveys the same information, but it does it with more punch when the most powerful word in the sentence is at the end. Alternatively I could have chosen to put the word burn at the end of the sentence, but I chose heart because of the context of the scene where she’s not trusting her heart to another Hunter. Since her heart is what is truly at risk, it becomes the most powerful word in the sentence to emphasize.

Even when it comes to marketing ourselves as writers, word choice is critical. It shows in how our cover blurbs are written on the backs of our books. It shows in the taglines you see as part of an author’s branding on their website. Choosing words that are powerful, convey the specific meaning and that have the right emotional weight, are important when influencing people to buy our books.

There’s a reason Edward Bulwer-Lytton originally put the now famous line “The pen is mightier than the sword” in his play. It’s true. Words have power.

Author bio:

A former book publicist, an American Title II finalist, and now a full-time writer, Theresa has seen multiple facets of the industry on her path to becoming a multi-published romance author. She currently writes paranormal romances for Harlequin Nocturne, steampunk romances for Kensington and urban fantasy and contemporary romances for Entangled Publishing.

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