Developing a distinct character voice?

[FifthView]

>First person is hard though. How does my reader find out information if my character can't witness it?

Read more detective novels! Chandler and Hammett and Cain, of course, but more modern ones as well. First person is very common for that genre.

Robin Hobb has this habit of making Fitz obsessive, highly focused on one thing, so details mentioned by other characters in dialogue get overlooked. He's heard those things, but not really noticed them–he's storming ahead focusing on something else–whereas the reader has noticed them. Details in the environment may be noticed, but he doesn't really think about them, so he doesn't put 2 and 2 together. She goes a little overboard on this however; one begins to grow irritated by his stupidity.

 

[Chessie]

I found this in one of my Kindle books last night and thought it was perfect to share here in case it would be helpful:


Narrative distance is basically how close we are to the characters. To put this another way, it’s a measure of how different the reader’s perspective is from the character’s perspective. At a far narrative distance, we’re outside of the characters, observing them. Stories written in far narrative distance include fewer character thoughts and almost no internal visceral reactions. When the narrator does share internalizations by the characters, they’re given using filtering words. At a close narrative distance, we’re inside the characters, experiencing the world through their eyes and perspective, as if we were them. It includes more internal dialogue (character thoughts) and more internal, visceral reactions, and we want to show more than tell and avoid filtering words when writing with close narrative distance.

The question of narrative distance is also at the heart of understanding the difference between character voice and author voice. The farther our narrative distance, the more authorial voice we use. The closer the narrative distance, the more character voice we use. (The exception to this, of course, is when we’ve created a narrator character for our omniscient book, like we see in The Book Thief.) --Marcy Kennedy, Point Of View In Fiction (Busy Writers Guide)

 

[FifthView]

Thanks, Chesterama.

I've been trying to think of the various ways that 3rd limited-intimate closes the distance and how those can and might be applied to 3rd omniscient. So for instance free indirect discourse, which I think is rather common in 3rd limited-intimate, could be used when writing omni. Direct character thoughts like those used in Dune. I've pointed out a couple times that Rowling seems to use an omni narrator in the first chapter of the first book of HP that mimics character voices (like a ventriloquist) for the narrative voice. These are simply ways to close the distance.

All of this does really return us to the initial topic of the thread, because we need to understand how to make distinct character voices, how to deliver/utilize those voices to close the distance, outside dialogue. If we want that closeness, not that it's absolutely necessary.

Edit: Also, however....when it comes to having a strong impression of an omni storyteller, I realized last night that sometimes the intimacy/closeness is to that narrator rather than to the characters. There are times when I feel like I'm a co-conspirator with a storyteller, spying on the world together with that narrator.

 

[Chessie]

Fifthview, my understanding is that HP is written in omniscient. The tricky part of all this is that it's not always easy to tell if narrative is close or distant, especially when we're wrapped up in a story. The clues are in the words. And yes, intimacy in omniscient is to the narrator.

I recommend that book. She gives thorough explanations on POV and mistakes writers make in mixing them up (like I do with omni and 3rd limited). This conversation has been a huge eye-opener for me, and now I understand a lot of the mistakes I make in my narrative. Simple things, really, but this is why these discussions are so important. They help us grow and improve our skills.

 

[JaniceKersh]

I usually try to think the whole character through in the beginning: what personality will they have? What traits do they possess? And from that I start building the voice. What phrases may they use? How do they use them?

 

[Malik]

HP was written almost entirely in tight third, from Harry's POV. Rowling likely invented the Invisibility Cloak and the pensieve as gimmicks to get around this; they enable Harry to see things for himself that otherwise she'd have to narrate or info-dump.

And yes, literary deconstructionism is a bullet between the eyes of the fun of reading.

 

[Chessie]

HP was written almost entirely in tight third, from Harry's POV.

I've read that it was written in omni but maybe that person is wrong. Idk. Never read it myself.

 

[FifthView]

My understanding is that Rowling occasionally used omniscient but most of it was limited. The weird thing is that I read them but didn't think much about it at the time, so I'd have to go back and check to see exactly where the boundaries are. The first chapter of the first book is obviously omniscient, although for a short section of it she dips into a more limited approach with Harry's uncle.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

The vast majority of the chapters are in limited third, but the first chapter of the first book is in third omni, and the first chapters of the sixth and seventh books also leave Harry's POV to show events happening to other characters, in an objective POV. At the beginning of each book the POV is looser (as she introduces Harry) but mostly it's in tight third.