Maybe even a few blind spots.įor instance, they could believe that they’re Casanova or Helena of Troy, but we’ll see, as person after person in bars turns them down, that their self-perception is incorrect. One of the most beautiful things about writing in the first person is that your narrator has a blind spot. Highlight Your Character’s Self-Deception. The voice will be the voice of your character, and it will be telling you a story verbatim. I mean actually hear, like a gravelly timbre of a truck driver or the screech of an elderly woman or the plaintive innocent bleat of a child. It should especially come through in the dialogue, where you have a wonderful opportunity to fly your character’s freak flag (do they speak in dialect? What’s their catchphrase or filler words?).Īdvice: Hear your character’s voices talking inside your head. Your characters need personality, and that personality should be embedded in every sentence of your manuscript. If you can put your energy on the page, readers will keep reading to soak up that energy. The second one is the opening to “ Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer, and as Joyce Carol Oates noted, it has the most elusive and best quality of writing: energy. This is the voice of a private eye or a recent divorcee or some other strange character. But it doesn’t tell you very much about the character through the voice alone. The first one isn’t terrible, but it’s not great either. “ What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad’s voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of “Yellow Submarine,” which is a song by the Beatles, who I love.” I tried to read the newspaper but it was all the same stuff I read every day.” Even though the bar was closed, the bartender was able to pour me a beer. “ I went into the bar and decided to ask the bartender for a drink. The more personality you can infuse into your narrator, the more fun the reader will have. Nothing is duller than a first-person narrator who speaks like a computer on the page. Your characters need to stand out from the crowd. Attitude is what we call “voice-driven.” Make your character’s voice, personality and behaviour distinctive. Give them a solid backstory that influences their perspective. Instead of writing “I felt tired walking through the deep snow”, try “the mountain was buried in snow, making every step feel like a mile.”Ĭreate a strong narrator: Make your first-person narrator an interesting character to make the story really work. Mix it up: Starting every line with “I” can become repetitive vary your sentences by illustrating thoughts or feelings. When you’re writing, stay true to your narrator’s perspective. Stay in character: When using the pronoun “I,” it’s easy to slip out of your character’s voice and into your own as the author. We also want to see through their eyes so use visual language to show the reader around their world. Be descriptive: In the first person, avoid phrases that keep the reader in the narrator’s brain-for example, “I thought,” or “I felt.” While one of the advantages of the first-person is to know what the narrator is thinking, don’t get stuck in their head.
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