Monday, April 18, 2011

Listen! Your Protag Is Talking – Z to A Blog Challenge

Can’t you hear them, the voices? The protag pulling your shirttail, yelling in your ear. She is trying to tell you something.

Psychotic much?

Naaah. We are all writers here; we know about the voices and accept them as part of our passion to compose. But are you listening to them?

Ask your characters what they are experiencing at the beginning of a scene. Are they anxious? Impatient? Spoiling for a fight? Angry, suspicious, terrified beyond all capacity to reason?

Put yourself in their shoes.

Okay, maybe that is just this side of nuts but you know what I mean. Ask them what they feel at that particular moment in the story, tap into those voices, and show this in your writing. It gives your MS the reality it requires.

Yeah, I know medication is available for the voices but this is way more fun.

8 comments:

  1. Hey, there is no right side of nuts when you're a writer! I hear voices all the time, some aren't characters but that doesn't stop me TURNING them into characters :P

    Steven Chapman (writer)

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  2. Ha, Huntress. Writing as 'medication'! Great! Actually, I heard author Jonathan Maberry say once, people ask him where he gets his ideas. After talking to some of them for a while, it seemed as if they don't have imaginations. So, there are worse things than voices in your head...no voices in your head! ;)

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  3. Hehehe, my husband is a dispatcher and always talks about hearing voices in his head. He just doesn't mention it's because they wear headsets and the 911 calls come through them.

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  4. So true! The only bad part about this is when they're silent for a bit and refuse to talk back. Hmm...

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  5. Writers block is when the voices in your head stop talking to you.

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  6. I love your post. I better put on my listening cap in case the mc comes callin'.
    ;)

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  7. I love the voices. I nurture them often. I'm afraid medication would alter them. Shudder.

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  8. Hehehe. This is not nuts - it's something all writers should do. Characters talk to us for a reason!

    Awesome post.

    Ellie Garratt

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