WRITING TIPS: GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS UNIQUE VOICES

There are a lot of ‘cheats’ to giving your character a unique voice. Word choice is everything, but it’s also very important to make your characters sound different so that the reader never has any doubt which one is speaking.

There are accents, although they don’t always look great on a written page, but there are certain ways someone from different parts of the UK will sound. Just as someone from New Jersey doesn’t sound like someone from South Carolina.

“Y’all know what I mean?“

But if your setting means every character has a similiar accent, you’ll want to use a different set of cheats.

Attitude is the easiest.

If someone is chipper and excited, they’ll ramble and shout.

“But you know exactly what I mean, don’t you? I mean it’s so obvious!”

But maybe they are direct, concise.

“Understand?”

There are subtle ways too, the create a specific cadence. Some people refuse to use contractions because of either pretension or a desire to be clearly heard.

“Do you not understand what I mean?”

There are other character ticks you can add. Perhaps your speaker never uses personal pronouns.

“You understand, don’t you?”

Or they use too many personal pronouns.

“I want you to understand me. Let me know if you don’t.”

Or maybe they talk like Starfire from TEEN TITANS GO!

“Do you the understand what it is that I am the saying?”

Give your readers an easy way to differentiate and you’ll save some finger energy not having to add a million speaker tags.

Want more writing tips? Check back every LAST Wednesday of every MONTH . . .

WORDING: START vs. GO

In reading UNDERSTANDING COMICS by SCOTT MCCLOUD, there’s a moment where he points out that a character facing the left of the panel presents a stop to the action because we read left to right. If the character is facing right, our eyes keep the movement going to the next panel.

If I said that wrong or it’s confusing, go check out his long-heralded study on the comic book medium. It’ll change your life. It reveals not only the workings of comics but of our minds.

So, with that idea in mind, if the way a character is looking can inform us of movement, so can words based on the sound.

START, because of the hard T sound at the end doesn’t move for me. The word START stops.

GO, on the other hand has the open mouth O sound that a singer could draw out. It doesn’t just stop it moves.

Maybe that’s why we don’t say ‘Ready. Set. Start!’

FREE SHORT STORY: A JAR OF FORTUNES

Dear Potential Reader,

I’d like to share with you my horror short story A JAR OF FORTUNES, in which a husband is curious about receiving a fortune from an old lady’s pickle jar.

CLICK HERE TO READ

I intend to post one free short story every month. Check back every First Friday of the Month for a Free-to-read short story.

A JAR OF FORTUNES is an old one, having first been published over a decade ago. It’s one of those quick reads, almost flash fiction, that I was trying to perfect to make sure I kept a reader’s attention. But I’ve always loved the idea being affected by something we don’t believe in, as if disbelief is some kind of protection against the supernatural–the opposite of something like A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET in which an entity’s power is derived from victims believing in his existence.

Hope you enjoy.

All the best,

DAN JIRE

WRITING TIPS: REHERSAL

Sometimes I have the gist of a story. But that’s not enough to dive into writing just yet.

I’ve found that writing the summary of the idea over and over again helps.

Start with a few sentences of your story.

Character has to battle demons. Character finds out he’s actually a demon. Ends with a really cool action scene.

Then come back and write it with more interesting details

Bob is a demon slayer, it’s not his only job, so he’s constantly trying to hide that he’s a demon slayer. But things get worse when he finds out he’s actually a demon and has been serving the wrong master, they battle over a giant lava pit.

Then add more details.

And then more.

Rinse and repeat.

Keep expanding. Add more characters and the scenes you know will take place.

Practicing your storyline helps. You’ll notice the natural flow, and whether or not it is likely to stay interesting throughout of if you’ve scheduled a ‘lull’ in the plot.

I do all of this before eventually creating my plot outline, and the best part about rehearsing is you’ll end up knowing your story inside and out. When I’ve rehearsed enough, I can write without any pause as to what comes next. There are still things to discover though. Characters have a way of taking over . . . but that’s another topic.

Want more writing tips? Check back every last Wednesday of every month for a new tip.

WORDING: CANNOT

Do or do not, there is no CANNOT.

I don’t like the word CANNOT. Not because of its connotations of being unable to do something/anything/whatever. I just don’t like the look of the word.

I’ve always been more of a CAN’T kind of guy.

CAN’T is the contraction of CANNOT. It’s supposed to be informal, but maybe I just didn’t grow up all hoity toity. CANNOT has always looked like a rotten carrot to me.

I tend to use CANNOT when I have an angry character, someone being stern.

YOU CANNOT HAVE DESERT. HAVE A ROTTEN CARROT INSTEAD.

vs.

I’M SORRY YOU CAN’T HAVE DESSERT BECAUSE OF YOUR TOOTH ACHE.

But there are times where you should use CAN NOT, with the space between. It’s when it comes before a phrase that begins with NOT.

YOU CAN NOT ONLY HAVE DESSERT, BUT A BIG HUG, TOO.

(Sometimes you need a big hug).