Voice and Tone

I'm working on a new project right now (unrelated to The Never Silent) and seeing how I feel about it. Unlike my most recent novels, it's got a dual POV. This isn't the first time I've written two main characters, but it's been long enough that I'm more aware of the individual voices.

Voice. Such a nebulous thing, but so important. A lot of people say they read for the voice. Or, in some cases, not read. An annoying voice can really get under the skin.

Voice is supposed to be unique to a character. It encompasses so much about that person--how they think, how they speak, how they look at the world.

And yet I keep noticing in some of the books I've read a lack of distinction between the individual voices. Surely the characters aren't identical in thought, speech and perspective. But they sound the same.

As I'm discovering, though, it's really hard not to make them sound the same.

For me voice is really easy to change from book to book. In The Never Silent, my main character Henry is a boy from the 1840s. He absolutely does not sound like a boy from today would sound. In my previous novel, the character was a girl from a post-apocalyptic future. Very different.

But I've realized that the voices I write depend not only on setting, but also very much on tone. Is the tone serious? Playful? Wry? Spooky? I don't know about other writers, but I'm finding that I have a specific default voice for each of those tones.

Well, that's great, right? Different tones means different voices.

Only in most cases the tone of a book should remain the same even when the voices change. And here's where I'm running into trouble. The tone of the new project is fun and lighthearted (which, by the way, is a huge departure from most of my other writing). I'm so very tempted to put both voices into my default for that tone.

But that's lazy. I have to concentrate on separating the two.

Will it work? We'll see. Personally I can tell the difference between them, but whether anyone else can remains to be seen.

How do you feel about voice and tone? Do they come naturally, or do you have to work on them?

1st Person POV

POV is a tricky little thing.

Growing up I always thought that 3rd person POV was the only normal way to write.  Anything else was too stylistic and glaringly obvious.  Nearly everything I read was in 3rd person, so that's what felt right to me.  All else was wrong.

Somewhere along the way I've changed my mind.  I suppose I've just read enough 1st person books now to see it as a very natural style.  (2nd is still a whole other creature.  I might be willing to poke at it with a stick, but no way am I ready to pick it up and examine it with my bare hands.)  Perhaps it is a false perception, but it seems to me that 1st person is far more widely used now, particularly in young adult fiction.

I know I've read a lot of it lately.  I would guess that of the YA books I've read this past year, the majority that have a single POV character are written in 1st person.  Whereas I used to find that POV so jarring, now I don't even notice until half way through the book unless I'm intentionally looking for the POV.

All the same, it wasn't until very recently that I was willing to attempt writing in 1st person myself.  I've built a comfortable home out of 3rd person bricks, and I know what I'm doing in there.  I've worked on 3rd person for (what feels like) so long with True Sight and Swift Flight (Kierr and Deisa's first two books) that it's very strange for me to make a change to a new story at all, not even counting the POV change.

I didn't originally plan to write Annie (my most recent character) in 1st person.  I wrote a few practice scenes several months ago just to start getting a feel for her world, and they were all in 3rd.  But recently, right before I started writing the first chapter, I felt that little click in my mind that happens when something that should have been obvious all along finally falls into place.  Annie belongs in a 1st person world.

So far it's been quite an adventure for me trying to write her that way.  It feels very right, but it's also a big challenge.  The POV is forcing me to examine her personality a lot more closely.  Some of her traits are different enough from my own that I have to be very intentional about the way she thinks.  It's mental exercise for sure.  I come away with my cerebrum panting from the effort.

But the experience has been very rewarding too.  I know Annie so much better than I've known any other character after such a short time.  When I force myself to look through her eyes, somehow I see more of the world she lives in.  She brings me closer to the details and makes me think more about her surroundings.  It's a bit of a rush.

I guess that makes me a 1st person convert after all.