Friday, December 10, 2010

Writing Your Voice

I’ve been thinking about writing voice lately. Voice is something that’s important to developing your characters. You’re writing what they’d really sound like if they were talking. This makes them real—practically human or inhuman depending on your genre. (Yah, for supernatural books. Love the vamps and warewolves - just not Jacob) Anyway, voice is also important to blogging and other forms of social networking. The voice you portray is who you are, how you sound, or how you want people to think you sound. Probably don’t put up a façade though. Keep it real.

An example of a writer who is A-FREAKING-MAZING at voice is Carrie Harris. Her voice brings a humongous grin on my face. I’ll admit her voice is delicious. You just want to eat more and more of it, like chocolate. Sounds, creepy, but she does write zombie books. Hehe. Carrie is probably the cleverest of bloggers I’ve come across; and I’ve read a lot lately. The way she writes her posts makes me ache to read her book “Bad Taste in Boys.” It comes out next year. I can’t wait any longer for the zombierific book to reach bookstores. I’m dying for it—literally. Just kidding, but you know that already. Right? (I hope so)


Check her blog out at http://carrieharrisbooks.blogspot.com/

Anyway, what’s my voice? I can’t really peg it down, but I think my voice should be diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. I’d say I’m a conglomerate of silly, serious, angsty, and evasive. It will forever be named SANGSTIVE. Yes, I just created a new word. Shakespeare can’t be the only person to make up words. It should be in the dictionary. Like. Right. Now. I stamp my foot. See there’s my silliness coming out. Actually, I like the word silly so maybe that’s why silly is one side of my voice.
With all this thought about writing voice, I’ve decided I need to write more like I speak. It’s just cooler that way. It could get confusing though, cuz sometimes I don’t finish my sentences, and on rare occasions I stutter. But I like my voice—just not the recorded version of it. Who does though?

What kind of voice do you have? Do tell!

4 comments:

  1. ZOMG. You are the NICEST. And AWESOME. And AWESOMELY NICE...EST...SOMETHING.

    You know what I mean.

    I've never had someone say they wanted to eat my voice before. I'm strangely flattered.

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  2. I bow to your scrumptious voice. All bow to the delectable voice. Glad I can flatter people in the strangest ways. I feel super duper silly now. Anywho, thanks for commenting and saying I'm nice. You're just feeding my ego now. Hehe!

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  3. What a timely (and lovely) post. I just came across an amazing article on voice yesterday. Guess voice is all the rage these days. :) and I totally agree with you on Carrie Harris having an appetizing voice...can not wait for Bad Taste in Boys.

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  4. Abby, the post you recommended was awesome. I love how with the collective mind of all us writers, we can improve our writing skills. Thanks. And thanks for commenting and looking at my blog. You rock!

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