In part one of the Discover Your Voice in Fiction series, we discussed voice and defined what it really means in fiction. This month, let’s dig a little deeper with tools to help you along the way in this writing journey. We discussed the two main components of voice and provided examples of each: character voice and author voice.
Let’s put them together in what’s called the CAP Method [1]: Character + Author + Page = Voice. The magic happens when the character (their background, actions, reactions, and language) is filtered through the author’s heart and interpretation, then poured out onto the page. This magic is Voice!
Today we’ll focus on character voice and tools to help you develop strong and engaging characters that define your voice as an author. Next month, we’ll dig into some tools to help you develop the author component of this equation.
C for characters
If you’ve been writing fiction for any length of time, you know that your characters are the backbone of your story. Every work of fiction needs characters. Your job as the author is to give your readers dynamic and engaging characters that readers will connect with, love, hate, root for, or simply beg for them to die.
For me as a writer, developing engaging characters sounds easy. And in theory it is. There are countless websites, blog posts, and books dedicated to character development and they all make it sound so easy.
Ugh, spoiler alert. It’s not…
This is a part of fictional writing I took for granted when writing my first book. I mean, how hard can it be to create a bunch of different characters, with different motives, personalities, hair color, and story purpose? There are countless free resources on the web to help you create these characters. Just do a Google search for “character sketch template” and you’ll see what I mean. But it’s not enough to simply sketch out your characters. It’s a critical step in the process, but as an author, you need to dig a little deeper. Hard lesson learned.
The most reoccurring critique on my first novel was that my characters were hard to connect with and needed more development. I’m not going to lie, I struggled a lot with this critique. I wanted to ignore it and I tried. Overall, my novel was very well received, and this criticism didn’t come from many reviewers. But as professionals, it is our responsibility to our craft to embrace all criticism, take it seriously, grow from it, and continuously work to improve.
So, how do you create engaging characters that readers can connect with that will help you define your voice–characters that go above and beyond the character sketch you used to create them in the first place? Emotion.
Emotional characters create dynamic voices.
Just like we, the author, have dominant emotional drivers that propel our writing forward, our characters do too. The author’s emotional drivers come through in the plot and theme of the novel, but the characters’ emotional drivers come through in their actions and reflection on events, which ultimately propel them though the story.
Notice, I said action and reflection. Actions are external, the things we do that help others form opinions about us. Actions are not always a true representation of a person, though. It’s only one side, the side we can see. In writing, the actions are easier to put down on the page (at least I think so), but the reflection can be challenging and often completely overlooked by an author.
The need for more character reflection, the inner workings of their minds, is really what some readers wanted to see more of from me as an author. I thought I did this, and I did to a degree, but alas, I didn’t take it far enough.
A useful tool to help get this process started are Action/Reaction (A/R) units [2], plus emotional beats (EB). Put simply, an action occurs and your POV character reacts to that action and feels something. These are small-scale, immediate reactions that your POV character internalizes after an action has occurred. If you’ve studied scene-sequel structure, (a large-scale story structure event where the scene is the event that drives the story forward and the sequel is the in-depth, internal reflection of the POV character on that event), then thinking about A/R units plus EBs isn’t much different. They’re much shorter and compressed into the scene to add depth and emotion to your characters. The action doesn’t have to be dramatic or physical, just something that makes your character do something with feeling.
Here’s an example to illustrate an A/R unit plus EB.
The Action (only action, no reaction or EB):
Johnny walked into the boss’s office and took the day planner off the desk.
“Johnny, you…you c…c…can’t take…take that,” Mary said.
“It’s fine, I just need his password to the server. Bill knows I’m here.” Johnny headed for the door, ignoring Mary.
This is a basic action. We could end it here and move on to the main point of the story. You get the point, but there’s no feeling or emotion to make you connect. Let’s kick it up a notch and see how this interaction could continue.
The Reaction plus Emotional Beat:
Mary clinched the hem of her blouse. “I… I don’t kn…kn…know.” She forced herself to release her blouse and straighten the fabric with long, nervous strokes. She could tell by the look on Johnny’s face that he wouldn’t listen to her. She hated her stutter, it made her sound weak and she certainly wasn’t weak. “I ca…can’t let…you…y…y…you take that.” She pushed her shoulders back and snatched the day planner out of Johnny’s hand.
In this example, the action that forces Mary to react is Johnny taking the day planner. Her reaction is nervousness, the clinching of her shirt hem. Her internal reflection/emotion is her self-reflection on how she sounds and how it makes her look. This is the baseline of the A/R unit plus EB. This example ended with another action, Mary snatching the planner back. To keep this scene going, try writing a follow up A/R unit plus EB in Johnny’s POV with how Mary’s action made him react/feel.
In its simplest form, this is how you add depth and emotion to your characters and give them a voice readers will connect with and continue coming back for more.
Do you have some examples of tools that you find helpful in adding emotion to your characters? Leave us a comment with your suggested tools. We’d love to hear from you!
[1]James Scott Bell. 2015. Voice: The Secret Power of Great Writing. CompendiumPress, Woodlands Hills, CA.
[2]Some call these motivation-reaction units. It’s all the same thing. \lsdsemihidde
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Angelique Bochnak is a dreamer and believes all things are possible with a lot of hard work, persistence and, determination. With her head in the clouds or her eyes turned to the stars, she spends countless hours imagining new adventures and far off worlds for which to travel. When she isn’t dreaming, she writes science fiction and fantasy with her focus on epic fantasies, apocalyptic and dystopian fiction. Fortitude Rising, a sci-fi dystopian fantasy, is her first published novel under her pen name A.M. Bochnak. Angelique is also the co-founder of the sci-fi, fantasy, horror focused indie publishing company, Mad Goat Press. Angelique is a member of several writing and publishing organizations including FWA, IBPA, and FAPA. She is passionate about helping other writers become authors and regularly posts inspirational, motivational, and educational material on her various social media platforms. In addition to her contributions in this writing community, you can learn more about her work and workshops on her new platform here! She is an American author and publisher, born and raised in southern Ohio and now lives in Gainesville, Florida.
