Your 'Writing Voice'

Again, apologies for the long gap between posts: life is not giving me much free time at the moment and I'm not one for stealing (unless from my sister).

Back to my topic of the day.
As anyone who's been looking to become a writer will know - or if you didn't you'll definitely find out some time - having your own voice is essential for keeping the reader interested and stopping them abandoning you due to boredom. This is different for every writer and it takes time to find it, lots of practising and lots of changing styles. I think, now, that I have found mine and believe me it is very different from how I first started out.

Here's a short tale of how my writing voice has developed and changed:
I started off like everyone does as a child. The usual:

One day Dave got out of bed and looked out of the window. It was raining outside.
"Well," Dave said; "I'll have to wear my coat to work today, then."

In other words truly awfully, with no personality at all.

Then I started reading more, reading real books with plots and well developed characters and I started being more descriptive in my writing:

Hannah stared blankly out of the window at the pouring rain, that was running down the glass pane from a leaking drainpipe above and showed no sign off stopping any time soon.
"I hate rain." sighed Hannah.

Not much better but a lot more interesting than Dave and his coat. However, still no real personality to it.

A few more years and books passed, and with each my writing got better. Then, finally, I read the first book in my favourite series of all time: Across The Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn (a true masterpiece of a book that should be read by everyone). Hearn's style is a very poetic one;thick on descriptions and making even the most mundane things seem poignant and beautiful. Her style really stuck with me and from then on I also tried to add a more poetic quality to my writing and started using my complex language from my very over-developed vocabulary (note that when I read this book I was only nine years old, while the book itself is rated for teens and young adults). From then on my writing became more like this:

The air was warm, but not still. A cool breeze ruffled the bushes and swept through the smooth, long grass so that it rippled like the waves out at sea. Below, a long, wide river ran through the valley, like molten silver in predawn light occasionally splashing up against the bank sending a spray of foam over the cattle grazing nearby, but they only flicked an ear. There were many other creatures too; a family of field mice stirred in the grass at the top of the valley, a lone hawk hovering above them, waiting for one to emerge. And there was the girl. (This was actually written a few years after I first read that book, but you get the idea.)

Much, much better, but still not me. It was too formal and almost cold, not as friendly and emotive as I would have liked - though at the time I though it was brilliant (ah, my poor over-sized ego).

 A few more years passed and I read more teen fiction and popular books, but as well expanded my reading to some other adult authors such as Phillipa Gregory and worked my way through some more classical novels such as Pride and Prejudice. In other words, I read just about anything I could get my hands on. It was during my perusal of teen fiction that I picked up on a more colloquial style of writing, a way of keeping things informal and light but at the same time keeping the audience emotionally involved with the story.

This was where my writing voice really started to come into being. I kept my vocab and my love of Hearn's descriptive style, but made it less formal; only using the more complex vocab where appropriate and not superfluously, as I had before. I learnt how to use different lengths of sentences and ways of phrasing things that worked for me and the story. This took several years to truly come into being, but now I feel like I have a voice that is entirely my own and what I want it to be:

I never found life to be empty; there was always something new to enjoy or to learn, something to fascinate or enthrall. It felt good to work towards my goals – to feel I was achieving something – and to do well was an undeniable pleasure.

But things change.

I changed.

Now life seems pointless. I watch other people enjoying it, revelling in it, but I can no longer join them; I envy them and long to feel the way I used to, but that isn’t possible. I barely pay attention to my daily life any more; just go through the motions, like a bored audience at a play – a play about me.

This is something I wrote only a few months ago. It is far from perfect I'm sure, but I know it is so much better than what I started with and it's sounds how I want it to: to me and hopefully to you too.

I hope you've enjoyed my little life story. The first two samples of writing were not really from when I was younger, just something I thought would give you an idea of how I was (I was probably much worse than that, but I have no evidence of it - hehe!). Please do not use either of the other samples as they are mine and I may use them later on.

See you next time.

W-O xx

Character development - how I create people

This is how I go about creating and developing my characters.
I start out with a basic layout:
Age: (this doesn't always work as ages can change throughout the story)
D.O.B: (I normally just have a month and day)
Natural hair colour:
Eye colour:
Parents: (include mother's maiden name)
Siblings: (include rough ages)
Pets:
Known Powers: (this for when the characters are magical folk)
Subjects: (if the character is still at school)
Profession: (if the character has a job)
Weapons of choice: (should my character ever end up in a fight)
Martial arts grade: (same as above or in case I want them to have some cool fighting moves up their sleeves)
Characteristics: (these range from 'bad liar' to things like 'hates disappointing people')
Querks: (any funny or interesting habits the character may have, like hates red foods or believes in ghosts)

This gives me a basic character profile and an idea of who this person is. I don't always fill it all in at once: sometimes I just start off with the basics like name and appearance and add the rest as and when it comes to me.

Sometimes I create the characters on whim and then add them into the story later. Other times, I start writing a scene and suddenly introduce this character that I've never even thought about before: I then go and write them a character profile in my little planning notebook, filling in everything I've included in the scene with them and then add the rest (then or later on).
My main characters are, obviously, ones I thought about before writing them. However, I originally started my story with just one main protagonist in mind, but as I continued I reaslised I wanted somebody else to express a different point of view and have different ways of doing and thinking about things: someone who was more than just a sidekick or secondary character. I then developed this new character to have her own plot within the book and to have equal importance to my original main chracter.
So now I have two protagonists whose stories I can weave together and two separate points of view that I can write from: this lets me choose what I feel like writing, as the two are very different people and have their own distictive moods and atmospheres.

Well, that's my character development for you.
Hope this was helpful
Bye
W-O xx