Yikici’s Character & Voice Experiment

If you already know what’s going on, skip to “My Entry.” Otherwise, read on!

This piece is part of a game devised by Voice Week writer Yikici. Yikici had a theory that if you gave two writers the same character sketch and told them to write some dialogue for that character–without letting either writer see what the other had written–that their pieces would still be similar; the voice of the character would shine through.

She tested this by providing setting, background, and situation, then having her participating writers create two characters, and write a 200-300 word dialogue between them. Each writer would then send the character sketches to another participant, who would write another dialogue based on the same characters. She graciously invited me to join in on the last round–and I didn’t even have to write character sketches!

Yikici gave us this:

Setting:  A small quiet village approx 200 miles from the nearest city adorned with thatched cottages and surrounded by vast empty fields.  Not much happens here, except for their festival –the festival of colour, this happens once a year; tourists and families from afar visit, no one misses this event.  This is the highlight of the year for the villagersthey prepare for this the whole year.

The Dialogue Prompts:

  • No children live in the village.
  • A child hides in a barn and stays after the festivities.
  • Your character(s) interacts with the child.
  • The child has a secret.
  • Add a surprise of your own -in keeping with your character(s) profile.

I got character sketches from veteran InMonster Billie Jo. Click here to see the character sketches and the dialogue she wrote.

Yikici will be posting her thoughts, contrasts, and comparisons over the next couple of weeks. Catch up, keep up and offer your own opinions on her blog.

My Entry:

“Need any help?”

Hank looked up from packing up his unsold wooden animals to see the redheaded festival organiser bouncing on her heels.

“Haven’t you been here since dawn? You should go home. Get some rest.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly sleep for the next twelve hours, at least. I just get so excited about the festival. And being in charge this year, it’s even worse!” she laughed. “What do you call that?”

“An Iberian Lynx.”

“Beautiful. How do you think it went?”

“What?”

“The festival of course. Was it as magical as ever?”

Hank sighed. “What flower is this that greets the morn, its hues from Heaven so freshly born? With burning star and flaming band it kindles all the sunset land.

She gaped at him. “Did you write that?”

“It’s Oliver Wendell Holmes.”

“Oh. Your name is…Hank, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Lucy Hale.”

“Honored to make your acquaintance, Miss Hale.”

“So it went well then? The festival?”

“Beautifully.”

She smiled—she had a beautiful smile—and insisted on helping him carry the packed crates to his wagon in the barn. He was just turning to retrieve his horse when Lucy grabbed his arm.

What’s that?

Hank followed her gaze to a shadowed hole, from whence came a rustling noise.

“Probably just a rat…” he said, but just then, a much larger shape emerged.

It was a little boy.

The boy froze, as surprised to see them as they were to see him.

Is…” Lucy whispered, “Is that…?

“It’s a child,” Hank supplied. Lucy had probably never seen one.

The boy dashed for the door, but Hank was quicker, getting a hold of both the boy’s arms.

“Hey, now,” he said gently. “I won’t hurt you.”

Lucy knelt and inspected the boy’s face and fingers with wonder. “He’s so small!”

“Children generally are, yes. Where did you come from?” he asked the boy.

The boy glared at him and held his mouth shut.

“What are we going to do? Should we turn him in?”

“We can’t. Don’t you know what they’ll do to him?”

“But it isn’t his fault. Surely someone can make them see reason. My father—”

“No one can make them see reason.”

“But surely—”

“Believe me. I know.”

Voice Week 2011: Tuesday

 

The plot thickens all over the blogosphere with Day Two of Voice Week! It’s fascinating watching everyone’s different interpretations of their characters, and of the project itself. I am so impressed with the talent out there, I could just kiss my computer screen. In case any of y’all missed it, read some quick notes on late postings and pingbacks here.

Here’s my second piece (under 100 this time):

My mamma ain’t much of one. Don’t read us stories, don’t make us dinner, don’t get us dressed in the morning. Heck, she don’t even get herself dressed in the morning. Just wears the same trashy tank and shorts ever’ day, hair all done up in knots, knocking it back. Beer, wine, whiskey, vodka. Anything you need ID to buy. Lays out on the couch or leans up against the stove in the kitchen, tilting her head back and just glugging it down like there ain’t no tomorrow. Sometimes I think maybe there ain’t. But there always is.

From the prompt “alcoholic mother.” Read the other versions: Day 1Day 3Day 4Day 5

Who does the character feel like to you? How old, what gender? Where did you think the voice was strong or weak? Let me know!

Voice Week 2011: Monday

Voice Week is underway! As you can see below, I’ll be the first to break the 100 words rule – just to prove I won’t fault anyone else for doing the same. But I promise my other entries  are all under limit. Except that other one…

The thing about my mom – she’s sick a lot. Not the kind of sick you get from germs and stuff, but the kind you get from life. I mean, I don’t know that much about her past, because she doesn’t talk about it much, but you don’t live with somebody for fifteen years and not pick up some details.
Like, she hates men. You don’t get that way without being slapped around by a few creeps. And unless she’s passed out, I can’t go out anywhere except school, ‘cause she’ll freak out. She acts like she’s afraid something will happen to me, but really I think she’s afraid I’ll just decide not to come back. And she’s got scars on her arms, but like a lot of other things, I don’t ask about them.
Yeah, she’s been sick a long time. The booze? That’s just medication.

 

From the prompt “alcoholic mother.” Read the other versions: Day 2Day 3Day 4Day 5

Who does the character feel like to you? How old, what gender? Where did you think the voice was strong or weak? Let me know!

5 fantastic examples of voice

Photo by Anna Gutermuth

Photo by Anna Gutermuth

Following last week’s post on how to find your voice, here are the first 100-ish words from five books with unique and strong voices; a mix of first and third person, and of new and classic authors.

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge Signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Unnecessary words like “of my own knowledge,” “myself,” and “emphatically.” Beginning sentences with articles and ending them with prepositions! And of course his completely pointless rabbit trail about the door nail. Yet none of it is truly pointless. By breaking these rules in the way he did, Mr. Dickens makes the story conversational. We’re not simply reading a story; we’re hearing it told by a charming, if slightly wordy, English gentleman.

First the colors.

Then the humans.

That’s usually how I see things.

Or at least, how I try.

***Here is a small fact***

You are going to die.

I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that’s only the A’s. Just don’t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

***Reaction to the aforementioned fact***

Does this worry you? I urge you—don’t be afraid. I’m nothing if not fair.

You can tell at a glance that Mr. Zusak is different. His bold interruptions to his own prose are a fascinating quirk all by themselves. Add the narrator’s somewhat depressed sense of humor and subtle conveyance of authority, and you become hooked. Notice the things he says and doesn’t say. He doesn’t say who or what he is, but we can infer from what he does say (“Then the humans.”) that he is not human and (“I’m nothing if not fair.”) that he has some control over whether we live or die.

 

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has—or rather had—a problem. Which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

Note the intentional wordiness, the amusing use of adverbs, how quickly he zeroes in from the hugeness of the universe to the ordinariness of digital watches. Mr. Adams has a unique way of looking at life, the universe, and everything—it is all absurd to him, and he enjoys the simple pleasure of sharing that absurdity with the rest of us.

You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunty Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas, is all told about in that book—which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Breaking rules left and right here. Note the atrocious grammar and the way he interrupts and repeats himself. Mr. Twain puts us right in the room with Huck Finn. Simply the way it is worded helps us to both hear the accent and see the boy—before ever being told what he sounds or looks like.

 

All my life I’ve wanted to go to Earth. Not to live, of course—just to see it. As everybody knows, Terra is a wonderful place to visit but not to live. Not truly suited to human habitation.

Personally, I’m not convinced that the human race originated on Earth. I mean to say, how much reliance should you place on the evidence of a few pounds of old bones plus the opinions of anthropologists who usually contradict each other anyhow when what you are being asked to swallow so obviously flies in the face of all common sense?

Look at how long that last sentence is, with only one comma, and how it makes you read straight through it without breathing—and how subtly it conveys the talkative teenage girl. Mr. Heinlein achieves the ultimate victory in turning himself into an underage female.

 

Which of your favorite books have unique voices? Post an excerpt in the comments, or on your blog and link it back here!

WANT HELP FINDING YOUR VOICE? Join us for Voice Week 2014, September 22-26

 

July flash fiction: Independence Day

Let’s hope I practice what I preach.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted some real writing. I wrote this last week based entirely on the phrase “my cappuccino is a choppy sea” which came to me randomly. Maybe I should make it an InMon prompt.

We sit in the very center of the café, swaddled by the muted bustle of coffee mug chit chat. I’m staring down at a froth-topped cappuccino. Giant bowl. Tiny handle. I don’t think my fingers are that strong.

“We’re just not the same people we used to be,” he says. He is half apologizing to me, half justifying himself. He hopes I will look up. I take the spoon and swirl the foam into my coffee.

“We want different things now.”

But he doesn’t want something different. He just wants out. My cappuccino is a choppy sea, swishing and swirling and slapping up in waves against the sides of the cup.

“I just don’t think I can make you happy.”

But I am happy. At least, I was until he bought me this cappuccino, this wretched ugly storm I hold in my hands. For a moment, I feel like I’m drowning. Then I remember to swallow.

“I feel like I’m holding you back.”

What does he even mean? Nothing. Nothing at all. Just sounds to fill the vacuum as I mop up a caramel-colored drip from the table with my sleeve. Now my sleeve is sticky. Stupid, stupid. Where are the napkins? He disappears for a moment and returns with a stack. But what thin paper handkerchief could soak up this ocean?

Why can’t he just ask me to look at him? Why can’t he have the guts to make me face him? Because he’s nicer than he is good. If he had been good, he would never have chased after me, or begged for my phone number, or paid for my dinner, or made me addicted to his smile. He would have known that he would get bored with me, and he would have left me alone. Because he wants excitement and flirtation and impassioned wrestling bouts. But I want a hand to hold, and a soul to talk to, and a band on my finger.

No, he is only nice. Guilt is his only motivation to be good. And he is not what I wanted. I wish that made it easier. I wish it meant I could flash him a smile and walk out with my chin up. But my heart is stronger than my pride. One little crack, and everything else stops working. It’s raining on my cappuccino sea, now.

“You’ll be so much better off without me,” his voice is gentler, but only because it makes him uncomfortable to see me cry.

“What you mean,” I croak out after another swallow and a few clearings of the throat. “Is that you will be better off without me.”

He makes an objection, but it is weak, and empty.

“But that’s alright,” I still can’t look at him. “You can have your life. I don’t think I want it any more. Buy me another coffee?”

He blinks and stares and eventually stutters, “uh, sure.”

“Make it to-go.”