Ask An Author: Voice.

Welcome to our $3 reward level, where people ask me questions, mostly about the business, craft, and process of writing, and I answer them as best I can.  This is actually our November Q&A, so we'll have another for December in reasonably short order.  Reasons this is a good idea:

* I am an internationally published author
* I release an average of four books a year
* I have won multiple major awards
* I actually make my living doing this

Reasons this is a terrible idea:

* Have you met me
* Like, ever
* I should not give advice to anyone

Now it's time to ask me literally anything, and watch as I flail around in an attempt to provide a coherent answer.  Please feel free to discuss in the comments, and to submit new questions either here or by emailing me through my website contact form.  As a reminder, this reward tier only works if we have questions: please, please feel free to share yours.  If you want to ask anonymously, just send your question in via my website, and say that you'd like me to leave your name off when I answer.  If you do not ask me to redact your name, it will be included, if only because it's fun to see your name in print sometimes.

This month's question comes from Nadja, who asks: "How do you keep the different voices of your characters straight when writing and does it take time to find that voice when you’re beginning a new piece? I’m thinking of the long running series like October Daye and InCryptid. Is there ever bleed over and you maybe have to rewrite because something is coming through in someone else’s voice?"

Okay, so we're going for voice this month.  That'll be fun!  And on we go, into the great wild wet...

So my normal answer to questions of this type tends to be pretty facile: I don't confuse the TV shows I watch for one another, so why would I confuse my universes, or the characters within, for one another?  And this answer is an honest one!  I try not to lie, especially in a consistent, predictable manner; it just encourages people to try to catch me out, which results in everyone being annoyed, especially me.  It's just that the reality is a bit more complex.

Because it's true: different characters have different voices (and that's even before you get into the question of POV and tense and all those other fun literary tricks).  Toby does not and should not sound like Velveteen, or like Verity.  They're different people.  And part of how I keep them straight is through controlled disassociation.  I put myself into the position of needing to write the book and plunge gleefully into the chaos, and then basically pretend this is the character I have to play for a massive LARP or other RP experience.  I've been doing that for a long time.  I'm pretty good at knowing whether a word is right for a character, and adjusting as necessary.

If I feel like a character voice is "slipping," I like to step back and free-write for a little while, following the character as they do something really mundane that's never going to make it into a book.  Knowing how Toby grocery shops really helps to ground me in who she is as a person, which helps me choose the right words to use for her when she's "talking."  The more I free-write, the more consistent a character will become, until they're pretty locked-in.  It's a self-indulgent technique, but one that I do highly recommend.

Editing and revision will also play a huge part in things.  My first pass through, I'm not following voice as much as I'm following plot: I need the draft to exist so that I can make it suck less, and that's all that matters.  I start at the first bell, and I go until the bout is called by the referee.  And then, when I go back to start doing the "suck less" process, I adjust to fit voice.  I also have beta readers (my beloved Machete Squad) who get involved at this stage, and they call out when someone's voice is slipping, which tells me where I need to focus.

Watching television and reading--or writing--fanfic are also great voice development techniques.  If you've ever watched an episode of a show you love and thought that a character sounded wrong, that was your interpretation of their voice running into someone else's.  That doesn't mean you were incorrect!  Just that their read on the voice didn't quite match up.  It's good to follow character voices as they pass through multiple authors, because it tells you which aspects really make the character who they are, and which are just filler.

Really, a huge amount of this is about practice.  Practice, play, and trust your instincts.  No one knows the people who live in your head as well as you do.  No one ever truly will.

So that's that.  Like all of us, I'm stressed and sad and cabin fever-y from COVID, but please, please, ask me questions for December!  I don't want to have to start taking questions from Elsie, it would not end well!  Remember that I'll take questions about anything, and that if it can be answered with "yes" or "no," it's not a great question for this format; also if it's something I can't flog for paragraphs, like "how often do you brush your cats."  If you're tired of this reward and want to suggest a replacement, drop those here too.

Meanwhile, if you want your question to be kept for future use, emailing is better than commenting, if only so I've got a long term copy in my inbox.  But I do see all the questions, and try to remember to copy and keep the really interesting ones.