I’m kind of embarrassed to admit I didn’t have much of an understanding of character voice two years ago. I’m an English graduate, and none of my professors in college really talked about it. I think I remember learning the definition in high school and reading it briefly in a few writing tips.
In truth, I’ve probably heard the fact that “voice is one of the biggest draws for getting an agent or editor” more than I’ve actually heard tips on writing voice. Since then, I’ve gotten to the heart of what voice is. Or so I think. You’ll have to judge for yourself. Here’s what I found for anyone who might be struggling like I once was, or anyone who wants to learn more. The stuff in this post is what helped me bring that elusive voice into focus.
First, by definition, “voice” can refer to the writer’s style, the narrator’s style, or, your characters’ persona, thoughts, speech patterns, and word choice.
Sometimes when people think of character voice, they think of first-person narration, but really, all characters have a voice of their own, even if they aren’t telling the story. To illustrate, here are three lines from Harry, Ron, and Hermione:
“Don’t go picking a row with Malfoy, don’t forget, he’s a prefect now, he could make life difficult for you…”
“Can I have a look at Uranus too, Lavender?”
“I don’t go looking for trouble. Trouble usually finds me.”
If you’ve read the books, I bet you can tell who said what.
Voice is made up of two things: What the character talks (or sometimes thinks) about, and how she says it. In other words:
What the Character Talks about + How She Says it = Voice
Hermione believes in following rules and frequently tells Ron and Harry to do likewise. She’s also very logical and intelligent. In the first line above, she chooses to warn Harry, and then explains, logically, why he should heed her warning. Ron usually says those comical one-liners, and his language is usually a little coarser than the other two, so his quote is the second one. Because Harry is frequently accused of things, he often has to defend himself, “I don’t go looking for trouble.”
What Your Character Talks About
So, What does your character choose to talk about? What does he not talk about?
In Lord of the Rings, the Hobbits often talk about food. They’re Hobbits, so they eat a lot more than the other characters and therefore food is important to their culture. Because they bring up food a lot, we know that’s what they are thinking about on their journey. They don’t casually strike up conversations about advanced battle tactics; they don’t have a war-based background. And any conversation they do have about battle tactics wouldn’t be on the same level as a warrior. So their background, culture, interests, and experience influence their voice.
If your character is a nutritionist, she might look at her lunch and talk about complex carbs, protein, calories, and vitamins. A fashionista might notice that her best friend is wearing this season’s color. A dentist might see people’s teeth first.
Remember, what your character chooses to talk about reflects what he’s thinking about. I know that sounds obvious, but have you really considered it? If your character says something, it’s also conveying to your reader what’s on his mind at that moment.
You can work that to your advantage by having your character say something surprising in a specific situation. If I have a character break up with her boyfriend, and she’s crying, and someone tries to comfort her, and she says, “It’s not Zach so much. Now I have to go to the dance looking like a complete idiot.” Not only is the response surprising—she’s not crying over the loss of Zach, but her potential embarrassment—it also reveals character—she’s more concerned with her image than the loss of her significant other.
Having that specific line stated in that situation conveys a lot about the character and her relationship with her boyfriend. It conveys what she’s thinking about most.
In Part 2 of this, I’ll delve into how characters talk, mentioning some of the potential problems and a few minor techniques you can use for a character’s voice.
It would depend on how thickly forested you would want the area.
5 years: You will see some small trees and concrete being busted up by new growth. Priorly planted areas will be over grown and unmanageable. Small animals, insects, and large herbivores will be attracted to the area and establish populations.
10 Years: Concrete will be almost overgrown and trees will be further busting up the side walks and buildings may start to collapse due to the plants or disrepair from severe weather. Herbivore populations will have attracted small predators and the occasional lone large one.
25 Years: Large buildings will have mostly collapsed due to damage done to their structure by tree roots. Asphalt and sidewalks will be mostly gone or reduced to patches of rubble. Roads will be unusable due to their disrepair or gone completely. Ecosystems will be mostly developed and water sources may begin to appear in areas where they may not have before.
50 Years: Most traces of buildings and other human civilization except for heaps of rubble will likely be gone or covered in plant growth. Roads and side walks will have disappeared and full blown ecosystems will have re-established themselves in the area.
100 Years: Ecosystems will thrive without human civilization and most if not all traces of humans will be gone or buried under new dirt and substrate, allowing plants to grow over it and life to go on without it. Areas will be thickly grown in with trees and shrubbery that would resemble a national park or state sanctuary.
It really depends and most of those times are a guestimate. For cities like NYC or Chicago, would guess it would take about 50% longer because of how heavily industrialized and concreted the area is while small towns or rural areas could disappear about 25% faster due to the spread out nature of most small towns. Severe weather such as hurricanes, wildfires, heavy flooding, tornadoes, tsunamis/tidal waves, sinkholes, and earthquakes would speed things up drastically by the thorough devastation of a civilized area.
I hope this helps and is what you were looking for! So sorry this sat in the ask box for so long! -Mod Fluke
(Most of these time estimates are just that, estimates, and are based off of what I know about plant growth and the behavior of ecosystems interacting with human civilization.)
It’s about time someone got around to uncovering all the cheat codes for this “human being” software. It’s only been out for like 10,000 years.
?????????????
I’ve used this technique for about a year, and I can safely say that it has efficiently transformed my sleeping habits from several hours of struggle to fall asleep, to passing out in a matter of minutes.
It’s a form of Alexander Technique. It’s a technique that was designed for actors to keep their body in ready working condition and give it the best way to perform. This is the method used to calm, and center the body. Once the body is at that point it can perform anything you want it to.
Reblogging for later reference after I tried it earlier today to try to calm down. It actually does help a lot, not just for sleep but if you have problems with anxiety.
My default mental setting is “vibrating intensely in the background.” After doing this, I felt noticeably calm and relaxed – I wasn’t as fixated on my breathing, I wasn’t tense, my movements weren’t jerky and I didn’t feel like I had to be as tense as possible to be under control. 10/10 would recommend.
me gonna try it
dont wanna reblog but insomnia is a bitch for some ppl so heres for my mutuals having trouble sleeping.
(A table of contents will be available at the end of the series. In the meantime, you can find previous installments in the space building tag and other original posts in the posts by pear tag.)
Part Nine: Moons, Moons, and More Moons
Just like how planets orbit a star and the stars orbit the center of a galaxy, and two stars might orbit each other, and two pairs of stars might orbit each other, and asteroids sometimes orbit each other, so too do planets get their own tag-alongs orbiting them. These celestial bodies–natural ones, mind, not constructed ones–are called moons or satellites.
Moons are defined by both size and composition. Major moons have enough mass that they retain a mostly spherical shape while minor moons are smaller, with less mass, and therefore are frequently oddly shaped. The key to size and shape is 200-300km in size, with minor moons being less than that size and major moons being larger. Moons tend to be comprised of either rock or ice, depending on where in the system it’s located. Obviously, like the formation of icy planets, icy moons must form outside the frost line.
Gas Giants:
Moons collect around gas giants in kind of three groups:
Small, irregular rocky minor moons gathered in an orbit on the outer edge of where the planet could potentially have rings. They are generally only 10-100km in size and make sure to leave 0.25-1.5 Earth-radii of space between each other.
A handful of large major moons gathered in orbit outside where the planet’s rings are. They leave more than half the planet’s size between each other. They may even have minor moons of their own.
Tiny, irregular minor moons–often captured asteroids–orbiting distantly, at the very edge of where they’re able to orbit. Generally in the 10s of kilometers in size, these minor moons orbit on very eccentric and inclined paths, and sometimes even backwards (retrograde).
Don’t forget! Moons clear out the debris from their orbits paths! So if you position a moon in the midst of a gas giant’s rings, they’ll create a gap in the rings where they orbit. Some major moons of gas giants cause major gaps in the rings, even though they’re not actively orbiting in the rings to clear it out. The reasons for this are a bit complex, but if you wanted to build a ringed gas giant with a major moon close-ish to the planet and a major gap in its rings, you totally could!
Terrestrial Planets:
Terrestrial planets don’t tend to accumulate many moons. They may have enough gravity to pull in some asteroids to become moons, like Mars’ two moons. (Remember that asteroids are mostly chunks of rock that are small enough that they would be considered minor moons.) To go along with this, distant planets are likely to have more moons, and close-in planets will have less.
(A table of contents will be available at the end of the series. In the meantime, you can find previous installments in the space building tag and other original posts in the posts by pear tag.)
Part of Fifteen: Further Research and Resources
AKA What Pear Read To Write This Series
I read a lot of stuff in preparation for writing this series of posts. Researching and writing each post usually took about 3-5 hours. Here’s most of what I read and watched, though admittedly not all of it, and yes, I did go out and read some very basic, elementary-school-level things sometimes to make sure I wasn’t misremembering things or misrepresenting them.
My biggest suggestion is: When in doubt, go to Youtuber Artifexian. He goes through all the math and how it’s related to what, and even has conlang and calendar creation videos. You’ll see him pop up a lot on these lists.
For hard sci-fi writers looking for all the math equations, go through the video descriptions for the Artifexian videos linked below. He explains what each equation means and why you should bother with it.
If there’s a topic I didn’t cover or that you’d like to see more on, feel free to drop in a request for it and I’ll work on adding it. These series are always open to additions, and those topics can come from you!
Someone was wondering why even people on TV with non-mainstream-TV-approved body shapes always look so good in their clothes.
The long and short of it is: their bodies aren’t better than yours. They just have people tailoring every single piece of clothing they wear to flatter their figures.
Off-the-rack clothes aren’t made to look good on most people’s bodies. The advice in the post was buy clothes that fit the largest part of you, even if they’re too big elsewhere, and have them altered to fit.
That post hit me like a lightning bolt. I have a curvy figure. I’m not plus-sized, but I’ve got a small waist and large hips. Which is great in certain types of clothes (dresses, mainly), but means that if I don’t wear fitted t-shirts or blouses–if they fall straight–I just look sort of… boxy. I need clothes that go in at the waist.
My grandma was an amazing seamstress, so when I needed clothes fixed, she was around to tailor them. When she got into her 90s and her eyesight was too diminished for her to sew, we started going to a woman in our neighborhood who’d lost her husband and had started doing alterations to bring in some extra income. OF COURSE I looked good back then. I had a tailor.
Then I moved away from my parents without really knowing How To Adult and would go to Target to get clothes and just get depressed by them and never realized how much of an advantage having people who could tailor my clothes (and, you know, parents to pay for having them tailored…) had been.
So. I have a 1970s Singer Fashion Mate sewing machine that is designed to weather the apocalypse–I got it at Goodwill for $20.
And I have begun researching how to tailor your own clothes. If anyone else was wondering about that after that last post, here are some helpful links I’ve discovered.
When and Why to Get it Tailored – This article is (annoyingly) set up as a slideshow, and focuses on getting a professional to do your alterations rather than doing them yourself, but it’s got some good advice nonetheless, such as:
Basic alterations that can make a huge difference, such as adding lingerie loops to keep bra straps in place (SERIOUSLY MY FAVORITE DRESSES FROM HIGH SCHOOL ALL HAD THESE AND WHY DID THEY DISAPPEAR IN EVERYTHING I WEAR NOW?), adding snaps between the buttons on button-down shirts for larger-busted women (you know how sometimes they gap? there’s help for that), etc.
Average prices (at least on the East Coast) for basic alterations: replacing a zipper will run you about $20, while tailoring pants or a skirt to fit your hips and butt will be about $35.
If you want to get a garment made of special materials (leather, fur, beaded/embroidered silk) altered, go to someone who specializes in working with that material.
What NOT to try to alter.
How to find a tailor.
Having that perfect dress that you love so much duplicated and how much that will cost.
Learning Alterations – Great step-by-step tutorials on basic alterations like how to take in the waist of jeans (essential if you have a smaller waist and larger hips, because it’ll stop them from riding down every time you bend over or sit down).
Tailoring Ready-to-Wear – A full-on online course from Craftsy (costs $24.99) with videos and individual lessons on everything from hemming pants to lengthening them to altering shoulders and armholes to adding hidden zippers.
Plus-Sized Fitting and Design – Another online course (this one’s $34.99) that looks like it focuses both on alterations and on actually making clothes that are flattering to plus-sized forms.
Alterations and Tailoring 101 – Not a how-to post, but this one has a lot of useful information and ideas, such as identifying which garments to alter.
Alterations Needed blog – A whole blog on this stuff, with a lot of detailed how-tos. It focuses on fixing things to fit if you’re shorter than average/petite, but contains a lot of great advice for anyone (like an entry on why button-down shirts often bulge in back and how to fix it).
Pinch and Pin your Shirt – Super-quick video tutorial (aimed at gentlemen), but useful for anyone who wears button-down shirts on how to fix a baggy shirt.
If I find other helpful tutorials, I’ll add them. If you know of any, please let me know!
@edderkopper A few guides on altering clothes on one’s own.
I also do it the very simple/somewhat sloppy way of taking the seam at the side if it’s too wide in the area, turning the clothes inside out, and getting someone to pin it in place while I’m wearing. You want to pin at a point you can still comfortably move and do any motions you might do in day to day life, but then you can just sew along that seam where it’s pinned, rather than needing to measure things constantly.
Tailoring under the armpit will make the vest look more fitted and fit your shoulders properly, so it’ll sit the way the garment is supposed to, and shouldn’t look any different than it would if someone with broader shoulders were wearing it.
Thanks! I don’t know how realistic it is for me to try a project that size….I have a disability that makes sewing by hand kinda rough, and I don’t have access to a sewing machine. But I guess I could at least use this to guesstimate how much it would involve and whether it’s even feasible.
Rambles & Rabble 