Author Voice VS Character Voice

Sometimes people write such awful, villainous characters and people ask: ‘Is the author secretly a horrible monster to be able to come up with this stuff?’ George RR Martin and Karin Slaughter come to mind on my own bookshelf.

Other times, authors try and tackle delicate, depressing, violent or otherwise disgusting topics and just end up coming across like they are in favour of it. Instead of readers being awed by the villain, they’re just disgusted with the author.

So today, I want to talk about the character’s voice, VS the author’s voice. In the hope that you can avoid this particularly treacherous pitfall.

There is, hopefully, a difference between the beliefs and ideals of your characters and yourself, as the author. If all your characters believe what you believe—including your villains—you would struggle to have any conflict and it would, overall, be a very boring story.

However, if you are trying to write a racist character, how do you do it well without coming across, as, well, racist?

I just read this line in a story:

‘They had two of the most gorgeous children you will ever meet; a blonde haired, blue eyed dream of a girl and her strikingly handsome ten-year-old brother.’

Its narrative, not dialogue. So, its information from the author to the reader. Has the author ever met ten year olds? Do they really think ‘strikingly handsome’ is applicable to a ten-year-old? I’m not sure about you, but it makes me deeply uncomfortable, as I suspect I have just read a story written by a paedophile.

Creepiness factor aside, this issue has come up before in my writing group, where material comes across as racist, sexist or otherwise offensive and the author becomes incensed, saying ‘It’s not me, it’s the character!’

However, there is a huge difference between information we are given by the author and the character’s point of view, thoughts and feelings. If you want to make a character racist, sexist or controversial in some way, you want to make damn sure you know the difference.

Let’s take the above example. How would I take the same information and make it not weirdly sexualising of a child? Easily. Take out the sexualising words.

EG: ‘They had two of the most adorable children you will ever meet; a blonde haired, blue eyed angel of a girl and her cutely freckled ten-year-old brother.’

Okay, that’s much more comfortable. But what if we wanted the reader to be uncomfortable? What if the POV character is a paedophile and we want to show that without sounding like a paedophile ourselves? We looked for a deeper POV.

EG: ‘He gripped the chain link fence, watching the children swing higher and higher in the playground. She was the most beautiful little girl he’d ever seen, with her lithe, pale legs and short pink skirt. As the swing, peaked he’d catch a glimpse of blue panties.’

I feel dirty writing that, but you get the idea. However, if I strip out the POV elements, it’s even worse:

EG: ‘She was the most beautiful little girl, with lithe, pale legs and a short pink skirt. As she swung on the swing, you could catch a glimpse of her blue panties.’

Hopefully, you see the difference. Generally speaking, deeper character POV is better anyway, as it fosters a deeper connection between the reader and the character. If you are writing a villain like this, the deeper POV will make the reader much more uncomfortable, which is the goal.

Let’s look at another example:

EG: ‘Unable to fight, the women were all in the basement, where they would be safe.’

This is sexist, because it is implying the women are in the basement because they are unable to fight. What you need to do, is show the women are in the basement because whoever is in charge believes they are unable to fight.

EG: ‘Amid protests, Captain Greggory sent the women and children to the basement, claiming they would be safe there.’

Everyone is going to make a mistake like this eventually. Even my sweetest, most tolerant friends, and my fiercest social justice friends, have tripped up and misworded something in an unflattering way. If someone says, ‘this is racist/sexist/offensive’, don’t argue and explain why it’s supposed to be. Check the attribution, assign it properly.

Remember, give someone ownership of your offensive beliefs, if you don’t, to the reader, they’re YOURS.

Characters: Heroes - Part Two

Character Series

Part 10: Heroes - Part 2

Finally, part two of the Heroes blog post, lets begin:

http://axl99.deviantart.com/art/Space-Mage-409550779

Relationships With Other Characters

You should use your profiles to map how different characters feel about each other too. Different dynamics between different characters are interesting. If everyone just likes or dislikes each other in the same way, characters lose their identity.

In my Lifesphere Inc series, each book is written from the perspective of a different protagonist and they all have very different feelings about each other! The first book is from Eli's POV and he is fiercely loyal to Squall, bored with Cain, threatened by Aquillis and suffers an intense dislike of Locke.

Book two is from Squall's perspective and she is also fiercely loyal to Eli--however she is also aware of his flaws and how they're holding them back as a team. Despite the fact Eli dislikes Locke, Squall and Locke are excellent friends. Likewise, Squall spends a lot of her time with Cain and enjoys his company. She's infatuated with Aquillis and not very comfortable around him.

I have to remember who's head I am in all the time. I can't let Eli's feelings for Locke show when I am writing Squall's point of view. I also can't let MY feelings for characters affect how they interact with one and other.

Failure & Empathy

A character who does everything easily and always succeeds is both unrealistic and very boring to read about. If you find yourself writing those characters, you are probably creating a kind of wish fulfilment for yourself—writing about the sort of person you wish you were, without taking reader’s interests into consideration.

Maybe you are worried your character won’t seem ‘cool’ or ‘impressive’ if he fails. When you fail, you feel ashamed or embarrassed and you imagine a reader will look on failing character with scorn. However the deciding factor in a reader feeling intense empathy or scorn for a character is not in their results, rather, their motivation for taking the action.

Let’s say we have a young boy and he attempts to steal money. He is caught and imprisoned.

How do you feel about that?

What if he was stealing the money because his mother was dying and he wanted to buy medicine. He’d never tried to steal before, but he had run out of people to ask for help. It was a desperate, last ditch effort and his failure will cost his mother her life. While he waits in the cell, he knows she is dying, alone.

How about if he stole the money because he wanted a new phone? His old phone is fine, but the dorky kid in his class got a better one for his birthday last week and he can’t stand a dork having better gear than him. Thankfully, his father will come and bail him out of the cell. He should be home by dinner.

As you can see, it’s not the actions or the failure that alters our opinion, it is the MOTIVATION. Failure can make a reader empathize a lot more, after all, we all fail at times. Its only human.

Darkest Moments

What is a darkest moment? The darkest moment is when your main character has failed, everything looks lost and it seems there is no way the book can have a happy conclusion. Emotionally, it is the lowest point of the novel. In most emotional arcs, it will happen between the middle and final third of the book, with everything afterwards focusing on the final rise to conclusion. It will also likely be your villains highest point--they believe they have won. Secondary characters may have their lowest point at other points in the story, however your protagonists lowest point should be the worst, the one the reader feels the most deeply.

How dark can you go? You should make your darkest moment as dark as you can, while still bringing the reader back with you to the conclusion. The more skill you have as a writer, the darker you can go. You want to push the reader to their emotional limits (within the context of the genre and target audience), but you also need to be able to bring them back up and have them where you want them for the final scene. If you can't bring them back up and leave them feeling satisfied, they won't put the book down eager to read your next work.

Your character's darkest moment may also be the point they make the wrong choice. They do the selfish thing and walk away from what matters. Again, how badly they fail may depend on how skilled you are at redeeming them. Though not all heroes have to turn their back and do something evil to make a darkest moment powerful.

The most important thing to remember is the darkest moment is a turning point. It's the first step in redemption.

The difference between a hero and a villain:

A hero may do the wrong thing, but he does it for the right reasons. Maybe in his darkest moment he does the wrong thing for the wrong reason—or the right thing for the wrong reason—however at the critical moment the hero makes the right decision. He grows, he sacrifices, and he is selfless.

The other difference between the hero and the villain is that the villain has more resources. If your hero is more powerful than your villain, he's not a hero. He's a bully. The hero has to be the underdog in some way.

If I steal candy from a baby it's not a great victory, I'm just an asshole.

NEXT WEEK, we look at villains and how to craft one that will have your readers squealing for more.

The previous parts of the character development blog series can be found here:

1. Characters: An Introduction

2. Characters: Creating A Profile

3. Characters: Motivation and Conflicts

4. Characters: Designing Characters

5. Characters: Gender and Gender Roles
6. Characters: Conflict, Conflict & More Conflict
7. Characters: Motivation & Stakes 

8. Characters: Conflict Escalation and Resolution

9. Characters: Heroes - Part 1

Characters: Conflict Escalation and Resolution

Character Series
Part 08: Conflict Escalation and Resolution 

Higher and Higher

Stakes and conflicts need to raise through your story. Whatever problem and stakes you start with, need to get worse and worse, more and more desperate. And you should have a good idea of how this is going to happen before you begin writing.

One of the ways it will rise is your character’s own emotional investment. It’s the core of romances, the stakes raise as the characters fall more and more in love with each other, their emotional investment rises. Likewise, if your hero is a gruff, uncaring, world-weary cowboy, he will undoubtedly meet someone weaker and more vulnerable that he will protect, grudgingly at first, but who will then become a driving motivation as the story progresses.

Another typical way for the stakes it rise is that on your characters first (then often second and even third) effort to solve their problems, they fail. A character who always effortlessly succeeds is boring. No one can empathise with a flawless character, because none of us are flawless. Seeing their failure, their reaction to it, the way they fight to keep going, or maybe give up for a time, allows us to see who they are. And the higher their highs and the lower their lows, the more of them we see.

A character who has no emotional investment, or who doesn’t react to things, internally or externally, is not interesting to a reader. However if a reader can feel with the character, empathise as completely as you can manage, then they will remember that story and want to share it with everyone else.

 

Conflict Resolution

You have to resolve all the conflicts in your story in a way that will satisfy the reader. That is not to say they have to be happy endings, or the ending that the reader wants, but they do have to be resolved. EG: Let’s say in the middle of the book, the main character has to abandon his  beloved dog on the roof of a house in flood waters. He promises to go back for her. She’s barking as he paddles away and he orders her to stay with tears rolling down her face.

At some point in the book, even if it is toward the very end, you have to resolve that conflict. Maybe the dog is rescued by someone else, maybe he goes back for it, maybe he sees fly over footage of the site and sees the dog is dead. However the reader needs to know what happened to it, one way or another.

Loose ends leave readers feeling uncomfortable. If people are uncomfortable, if they leave your book feeling unsatisfied, they won’t come back and read your next book. So if you are leaving things unresolved, only do so if you have a really good reason, if that is your intention that readers feel that way.

Ultimately, you want to resolve your novel in a way that leaves them with a strong emotion—you decide what that emotion is, as the writer, but you want it to be intense. You want it to have as much impact as you can possibly deliver. With happy endings, you may then end with a mellower scene, something short to show everything has calmed down, or that adventures are ongoing, or that everything is back to normal, but this palette cleanser can’t be too long. It’s a reassurance—don’t let it drag on so long that it weakens your final emotional impact.

 

NEXT WEEK - Part  9. Characters: Heroes.

The previous parts of the character development blog series can be found here:

1. Characters: An Introduction

2. Characters: Creating A Profile

3. Characters: Motivation and Conflicts

4. Characters: Designing Characters

5. Characters: Gender and Gender Roles

6. Characters: Conflict, Conflict & More Conflict

7. Characters: Motivation & Stakes