PPWC: Carol Berg on Voice

During this year's Pike's Peak Writer's Conference, Carol Berg taught her view of Voice in writing. Not the writer's voice, mind you, which involves how an author tells the story. That would be another day-long lecture altogether. No, she talked about the character's voice within the story. How do they speak? How do they process thoughts and emotions in a way that sets them apart from other characters?

Let me clarify for those that don't know about Carol. She has written more than ten fantasy novels, and recently won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and the Colorado Book Award for Popular Fiction. So when she spoke, all the writers in the room listened, and hard.

First off, a character's voice is defined by two things.

1. Form

2. Content

Form is the patterns and rhythms of the voice, while content is defined by the word choice and what the character actually says or thinks. Content most often is seen through a character's specific dialogue or the way a scene is described through their eyes.

A character's voice can convey a lot of information. It can tell the reader the time frame of the story, a character's age, social status, educational levels and religious perspective. It can reveal the place, culture, mythology and story background.

The one thing writers have to be careful of is having point-of-view characters who end up being emotionless cameras. This is something I tend to struggle with in my writing. Because I am the writer who has developed this character from the ground up, I usually have their emotional and thinking processes worked out in my own mind. However, in first drafts I usually fail to convey those things on the page, and characters end up less than three-dimensional. I have to go back through and reveal why they made those decisions, or how they felt about a particular situation or another character.

Carol made one statement that particularly stuck with me: "Voice doesn't define a character. It reveals them."

For me, I find that it takes a chapter or two before I discover a character's voice which then continues through the rest of the story. I then have to go back and tweak the first chapters so the voice is cohesive throughout. When you are working to get into the groove of a particular character and they way they think and speak, here are some questions to ask yourself:

1. What does your character notice first when they enter a scene?

2. What do they feel about what they see?

3. How do they describe things?

The answers to these questions reveal your character's worldview and priorities. A detective who enters a dinner party will notice different things than a band member playing up on stage at the same party. They will feel differently about the people enjoying the party, and may use vastly different words and metaphors to describe what they see. This sets them apart in numerous ways and helps them come across as distinct individuals in the story.

PPWC 2010 - a review

The Pike's Peak Writer's Conference 2010 has drawn to a close, and I've come away with a mix of emotions that always seems to accompany conferences. Excited at all the contacts I made with agents and editors as well as new friends and their cool projects. A little sad at having to return to reality, but determined to absorb what I learned through the workshops and panels to both my revisions and work-in-progress.

The sessions covered an array of topics, from character depth to developing tension to infusing a story with comedy. Editors and agents revealed what they are currently keen on and what industry trends people should keep an eye out for. There was a particularly fascinating panel run Sunday morning by Scott Hoffman, Kathleen Gilligan and Kristin Nelson about how much chaos eBooks and eReaders have stirred up in author-publisher-retailer relationships.

I got to sit down for a solid hour and have a great conversation with Carol Berg, a best-selling fantasy author. Friday night, I snagged a spot at the dinner table with agent Donald Maass and independent editor Lisa Rector, while Saturday's lunch gave me the chance to chat with Betsy Mitchell, senior editor of Del Rey. Lots of fun conversations, stories shared about authors and past conferences. Some novels pitched, some pages requested. Great keynote speakers including Kelley Armstrong and Jodi Thomas.

What I loved most about the conference was the atmosphere of encouragement. Everyone was there to support everyone else, even while we pitched our individual stories and tried to make those networking connections. Lots of laughter alongside commiseration when chapters perhaps got hard critiques. PPWC is a conference I can see myself attending often in the years to come, just for the relationships that get started there and the fun everyone has together.

I've got notes from a number of sessions, including ones on how to analyze your pacing, adding tension to each page, and finding your voice. I'll try to get these notes posted on the blog over the next few days. But for now, I'm going to be resting a bit before giving the ol' manuscript a bit of spit and polish before sending it on the rounds.

Sorry for the dust...

Blogger.com has been migrating blogs to various FTP servers or custom domain names. At the moment, I am still tweaking a few issues with page updates and images on this blog's new page. The new address is jrvogt.blogspot.com, and it should link properly from all other pages on my main site. However, the blog page itself needs some fine-tuning before it updates and views properly. Thanks for your patience...

Reviews and author interviews over on my Examiner.com page this week.