Friday Celebrations & a Visit from Misha Gerrick

It's Friday and that means it's time to Celebrate the Small Things from the past week. The hop is hosted by my buddy Lexa Cain and co-hosted by L.G Keltner at Writing Off the Edge, Tonja Drecker at Kidbits, and Katie at The Cyborg Mom. Visit Lexa's blog here to find out how join in the hop yourself and to see the list of participants.

I'm going to make my list of celebrations short & sweet because I am also welcoming Misha Gerrick to the blog today as part of her tour for her new release.

I'm celebrating:

1. I attended the Mad Anthony Writer's Conference in Hamilton, Ohio last weekend and had a great time. I met up with some members of my SICCO writer's group and enjoyed spending time with them, plus I feel like I learned some things thanks to a great presentation from Jane Friedman.

2. As I mentioned in my IWSG post, I'm working on a new book in my Polar Night series and I'm super excited about it.

3. Game of Thrones is back and, as of the end of last week's episode, so is my favorite character. (I'll leave it at that in case anyone is behind on watching.) All is right in my tv world. :D

And now I'm turning it over to Misha. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Voice

One of my favorite things about Endless was Nick’s narrative voice. It was just magic from the beginning. I didn’t need to do anything. He just came alive as I wrote, so often writing his scenes were the easiest writing I would do all day.

Ryan and Aleria’s voices were a bit more difficult. Ryan, because he’s more of distant person, who’d built so many walls around himself over the past few decades that he just doesn’t come across as interesting unless I push him.

Aleria was tricky because… well… she doesn’t know who she is.

That said, the foundations for both were laid in the rough draft phase, same as with Nick. All I did was to start with whatever the character wanted to say, and then let the characters do the talking.

As the story progressed, I got more of a feel for who each character was, and how that influences how they sound. Which meant that by the time edits came around, it was easier for me to refine each character’s voice.

I know that nailing down voice in a story is seriously difficult, so I thought I’d share my five tips for managing it.

1) Focus on how the character would say something. Not you. The character is the one speaking to the reader. Not the author. If you can remember that, you’re on your way.

2) Listen to your character even as you write. You’ll start getting a feel for the character’s word choices, speech patterns and turns of phrase. So that you can go back and reinforce moments where you slip up during the rough draft.

3) What that character reveals is important. What the character doesn’t reveal to the reader can be even more so. So get to know that character as well as possible so you know what’s going on. If you’re familiar with a character, you’ll know the things the character will never say.

4) Don’t focus so much on making a character sound unique that the character ends up sounding fake. Some phrases are commonly used between at least more than half of English speakers everywhere. It would be stupid to make one character avoid using one of those just because another character used the same phrase earlier.

5) Careful of letting a character’s hobbies/jobs/interests inform every description or turn of phrase. Just because someone is a vegetarian doesn’t mean that they will describe everything in terms of vegetable or fruit colors, for example. It comes back to point #4. Yes, a character’s life will inform the way they see and describe things. But often, this difference will be subtle. Think of yourself and your job. How does it affect your perceptions?

My day-job is exporting fruit and veg. I still don’t see everything in terms of fruit and veg. But I will pick up quality issues in almost any fresh produce within seconds of seeing them. Because it’s my job. But I won’t arbitrarily call a green “lime green” unless the color exactly matched that of a lime.

Bonus tip: Subtlety goes a long way.

How do you nail down voice in your story?

About the Book

“First, do no harm.” Blake Ryan swore that oath to become a doctor. Ironic, given that he spent most of his thousand year life sucking souls out of other immortals.

Things are different now. Using regular shots of morphine to keep his inner monster at bay, Ryan has led a quiet life since the Second World War. His thrills now come from saving lives, not taking them.

Until a plane crash brings Aleria into his hospital. Her life is vibrant. Crack to predators like him. She’s the exact sort of person they would hunt, and thanks to a severe case of amnesia, she’s all but defenseless.

Leaving Aleria vulnerable isn’t an option, but protecting her means unleashing his own inner monster. Which is a problem, because his inner monster wants her dead most of all.

Amazon US | Amazon Universal | Apple | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Goodreads

About the Author

Misha Gerrick lives near Cape Town, South Africa, and can usually be found staring at her surroundings while figuring out her next book.

If you’d like to see what Misha’s up to at the moment, you can find her on these social networks:

Tumblr | Twitter | Google Plus | Writing Blog