Authorial Voice vs. Character Voice

[ysabetwordsmith]

I was intrigued by this exploration of authorial voice vs. character voice.  These are two different yet related aspects of writing. 

Authorial voice is what characterizes a particular person's writing overall.  Frex, mine tends to use rich description and wide vocabulary, unless I have a reason not to do that in a certain story.  Other writers excel at different things -- some are known for writing stories heavy in dialog, for instance. 

Character voice is what distinguishes an individual person in a story.  A young character will have simpler speech and knowledge than an older character.  Prejudices and expectations also color word choices.  A character's interests or expertise will affect what they notice, and thus, what they talk about or describe and how they do that.

Between the two are regional clusters of varying sizes.  If you look at all the stuff I write in my main fantasy setting of Hallelaine, or my dark fantasy setting of Penumbra, or ellenmillion's shared world setting of Torn World, then you can see how each of those has an overall flavor.  Penumbra, for instance, has very stark writing almost devoid of description -- a departure from my usual mode.  Then if you look closer, characters from the same area sound somewhat alike.  In Torn World, there's a certain worldview and vocabulary shared by the Northerners contrasted with that shared by the Southerners.  So my Northerners sound more like each other than like the Southerners, and vice versa; but together they are Torn World folks who have things in common with each other, as contrasted with my characters from some other world.

Authorial range varies too.  I have an exceptionally wide range when it comes to writing about different people and places, in different voices and tones.  Some of my characters are almost nothing like each other or myself.  There are writers with wider ranges -- such as Harlan Ellison -- but not a lot.  Most people specialize more.  Some writers also have a unique voice that, while it manifests differently in their diverse settings, can be recognized as theirs even beyond the usual authorial choice issues.  An icon of this phenomenon is Joss Whedon.  Compare what his characters say in Buffy the Vampire Slayer  and Firefly  vs. what Joss says in interviews.  He has an incredibly strong vocal stamp whose underlying patterns manifest in wildly different details across his different settings.

What have you noticed about these things?

Comments

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

I'm working on a series of stories set in the UK right now. I'm not British but I have a lot of people reading these stories who are. I find that I'm constantly on alert when I write dialog because I don't want the cadence and vocabulary to be incorrect for the dialect. It's tough but sometimes I'm also using it to my advantage to make the conversations which should be stilted and uncomfortable even more so because I as the writer am stilted and uncomfortable within them.

[estaratshirai.livejournal.com]

I'm a character- and dialog-oriented writer, absolutely. On one hand I am so to the point where I sometimes worry about providing enough plot, but on the other, I'm pleased at the consistent feedback that my character voices are strong and feel "right" to the reader.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, when I want my character voices to be distinct I pick friends of mine and assign their voices to characters.

Otherwise I have a few basics... but it's really hard not to slip into 'generic dialog' mode where everything could have been said by anyone because it's all... generic.

Also hard not to do nothing but write dialog and dialog and dialog with no descriptions of anything or anything happening. Okay, that sentence was horrible. Anyway, that's especially annoying because I can clearly see what's happening in my mind's eye, and what everything looks like, but when I try to describe anything it comes out awkward.

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

Writing a Magical School serial with three main protagonists and ~15 frequently recurring characters, "character" voice is something my co-author and I juggle a lot. "I love this phrase, but Jaya wouldn't say that; it's more like Shahin;" voice is one way we differentiate the characters.

Author voice is fun. Sometimes I'll pick up an author with a particularly strong and imitable voice when I want to shift my own voice for a bit - Jim Butcher when I want to write stronger, gruffer male characters, Terry Pratchett when I want to be more tongue-in cheek, for instance.

When I was doing Live-action RP frequently, I would sometimes challenge myself by writing things in other character's voices to see how close I could get. And the only fanfic I ever did was trying to closely match Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake voice.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

One of my signature things is that I like to inject humor into even the most serious works when I can, because life just works like that sometimes, and because humor is how I cope with the world myself.

Also, all my characters have to have at least one thing in common with me, or else they never gain any depth, for some reason. Even villains. Sometimes it's something fairly simple, though. For example, in my Lyria stories there is a... well, not really a villain. Just someone Lyria doesn't like, and the feeling is mutual. His name is Jarnion. His alignment is Lawful Good, and Lyria being a True Neutral dark sorceress, he doesn't trust her. What I have in common with him so far is just being out of shape. There might be something else more subtle, I don't know. Oh, and he's intelligent. I daresay most of my characters are intelligent.

[danceswithwaves.livejournal.com]

Looking at this from a reader's point of view rather than a writer's, I would say every writer has a particular "voice" that is extremely hard to "disguise" or change, even if they change the overall tone of the series or book.

So I would say there are character voices, book/series voices, and then author voices and each is its own layer.