Voice
is the IT factor, the most important
element of craft that makes a piece special, sets it apart. It’s often the
reason agents and editors acquire a story or cast it aside, and while not every
reader or editor will like the same voice, it is my job as the writer to make
choices authentic to both the story and the character. Ultimately, “voice is
the sum of a series of technical choices made by the writer including decisions
about word choice, sentence and paragraph structure and length, and consistency”
(Griffin, pgs. 171-192). Since the voice of a first person point of view story is the voice of the character, I as the
writer, need to step aside and let the character tell his or her story. That
can be a bit tricky when my protagonist is a teenage male and I’m a thirty-year-old
woman, but it can be done. For this submission, I read four teenage male first
person point of view books (Steelheart
by Brandon Sanderson, Feed by M.T.
Anderson, Paper Towns by John Green,
and Legend by Marie Lu) to analyze
the distinct features of male voice and hopefully emulate what I learn into my
work in progress.
A
few things I’ve learned about the male mind from my readings which affect voice:
it’s extremely aware of visual images, it’s action orientated and often acts
before it thinks, it’s confident (at least in dialogue or at a surface level),
it’s conversational and uses a lot of colloquialisms or slang, it’s short and
to the point in dialogue and often masks emotion, and it’s often humorous.
Let’s dig into each of these with examples at a sentence and word level.
First,
the male mind is highly visual which affects their focus and therefore their
thoughts. For example,
A woman walked
past Fortuity. Tall, lithe, and blond, and perhaps twenty years old, she wore a
thin red dress with a plunging neckline. Even with two beauties on his arms,
Fortuity turned and stared at her. She hesitated, glancing back at him. Then
she smiled and walked up, hips undulating back and forth…that dress showed plenty
of curves. A gun strapped to her thigh, perhaps? I looked closer as she moved
into another pool of light, though I found myself staring at her, rather than
looking for weapons. She was gorgeous. Eyes that glittered, bright red lips,
golden hair. And that low neckline…I shook myself. Idiot, I thought. You have a
purpose. Women interfere with things like a purpose (Sanderson, pg. 24).
This
protagonist’s voice in Steelheart is
full of short, descriptive sentences that are primarily focused on one thing:
the woman’s curves. He could have described the street, the villain Fortuity,
or even the other women, but this voice is selective about the visual he takes
in. Also, I love how this character is easily distracted by this woman. He
admits it and I appreciate his humor, his self-deprivation with idiot. Here is another visual example
from Legend.
No, this girl is
nothing like the last one. She’s hesitating not because she’s afraid to fight,
or because she fears losing, but because she’s thinking. Calculating. She has
dark hair tied back in a high ponytail and a lean, athletic build. She stands deliberately, with a hand resting on her
hip, as if nothing in the world can catch her off guard. I find myself pausing
to admire her face. Something about this girl…I don’t know what it is. But her
eyes burn in the light, and although it’s hot and might be my imagination, I
think I see a small smile on the girl’s face (Lu, pg. 95).
Again,
this male character named Day pauses to take in the girl’s features: her build,
her hips, her hair, her face, her eyes. And he comments on how hot the room
might be, a subtle way of showing he’s into her without fully admitting it. The
male voice is much more subtle about feelings, but the character reveals
himself through action and observation. I also love the use of ellipses in both
the above examples. They emphasize the distraction, the interruption of thought
both males have when looking at these girls which often leads them into rash
action.
Male
point of view characters are extremely action oriented and often act before
they think, are impulsive and confident, especially in scenes where they’re
trying to impress someone.
Regardless,
driving had proven a tad more difficult than I’d expected it to be. I screeched
around the corner of the dark street, the stop sign and a street sign on my
way, but I made it down the block in a matter of heartbeats and screeched
around another corner. I hit a few trashcans as I went up over the curb, but
managed to regain control…There was a pop, Fortuity dodged, and my windshield
suddenly cracked—a bullet hole blasting through it about an inch from my head. You know, David, I thought to myself. You really need to start thinking your plans
through a little more carefully (Sanderson, pg. 41).
David’s
voice in Steelheart is full of action
verbs and onomatopoeia: screeched, pop,
dodged, cracked, blasting. He has a confidence that owns the page. I love
how he says, “proven a tad more difficult than I’d expected.” He doesn’t want
to flat out admit he screwed up, but Sanderson’s use of the word “tad”
brilliantly showcases David’s confidence and humor in this scene where he acts
before he thinks. Of course, this is all to impress and save the woman in the
red dress with the low neckline. I also noticed there is no use of simile or
metaphor. The male voice is more direct. Here’s another example of
impulsiveness to impress a girl from Paper
Towns.
“I’d started to
waffle again. “I’ve got school tomorrow,” I told her.
“Yeah, I know,”
Margo answered. “There’s school tomorrow and the day after that…”
“I don’t know.”
“Q,” she said. “Q.
Darling. How long have we been dear friends?”
“We’re not
friends. We’re neighbors.”
“Oh Christ, Q. Am
I not nice to you? Do I not order my various and sundry minions to be nice to
you at school?”
“Uh-huh,” I
answered dubiously.
She blinked. She’d
even painted her eyelids. “Q,” she said, “we have to go.”
And so I went… The
thing about Margo Roth Spiegelman is that really all I could ever do was let
her talk, and then when she stopped talking encourage her to go on, due to the
facts that 1. I was incontestably in love with her, and 2. She was absolutely
unprecedented in every way, and 3. She never really asked me questions (Green,
pg. 31).
What
I observe in this excerpt on male voice is how short and to the point Q’s
dialogue is. He doesn’t talk in long drawn out sentences. He doesn’t seem to
overthink the decision to go with Margo. He hesitates, yes, but there’s no long
interior monologue: should I or shouldn’t I. Margo bats her eyelashes and
that’s all it takes for him to act, which ties into my first point about males
being extremely visual. But this also demonstrates how impulsive and quick to
act most males are, especially to impress someone.
Male
teenage voice also utilizes a lot of slang with more informal words. Take for
example Titus in Feed.
It was maybe,
okay, maybe it was like two days after the party with the “never pukes when he
chugalugs” that Violet chatted me first thing in the morning and said she was
working on a brand new project. I asked her what was the old project, and she
was like, did I want to see the new one? I said, Okay, should I come over to su casa? I’ve never been there, and she
was like, No, not yet. Let’s meet at the
mall. I was like, Okay, sure, fine,
whatever swings your string (Anderson, pg. 65).
In
this example, Titus talks in long sentences and uses a lot of excess words: okay, maybe, like, sure, fine, whatever
which is true to Titus’ superficial persona. The word choices chugalugs and swings your string add to the wittiness and fun of Titus as a
character. Also the lack of education he has due to the Feed. The word choices
I make must tie into the story I’m telling otherwise they’ll seem unnatural and
pull readers from the story. In this case, the slang is very successful.
Lastly,
male voices are rarely vulnerable. They don’t dwell on emotion, and when they
do reveal emotion, it’s usually very light, sarcastic, masked with humor, and
shared in either internal dialogue or with someone they trust. They often won’t
risk appearing weak. Take for example Q in Paper
Towns.
I lay down and
started to feel a little depressed about prom. I refused to feel any kind of
sadness over the fact that I wasn’t going to prom, but I had
stupidly—embarrassingly—thought of finding Margo, and getting her to come home
with me just in time for prom, like late on Saturday night, and we’d walk into
the Hilton ballroom wearing jeans and ratty T-shirts, and we’d be just in time
for the last dance, and we’d dance while everyone pointed at us and marveled at
the return of Margo, and then we’d fox trot the hell out of there and go get
ice cream at Friendly’s (Green, pg. 113).
It’s
obvious he is sad that Margo hasn’t returned for prom. Green writes in long,
almost whimsical sentences almost like a dream never fulfilled. Q, the
protagonist, is a bit disappointed, a bit embarrassed that he was wrong, that
Margo hasn’t returned after their magical night of pranks and her sudden running
away. But Q doesn’t admit this to anyone else. These thoughts are in his own
head and even there, he denies sadness with self-deprivation. Another example
of masking emotion takes place in the prologue of Steelheart. David watches his father die at the hands of an Epic, a
person with superhuman powers. David says, “I don’t remember how I felt. Isn’t
that odd. I can remember the lighting—those magnificent chandeliers up above,
sprinkling the room with bits of refracted light” (Sanderson, pg. 4). He goes
on to describe other sights and sounds, even smells, but he can’t remember how
he felt, he can’t describe that emotion.
In
conclusion, to faithfully emulate the teenage male voice I must include: visuals
to catch my leading man’s eye, more action and impulsivity, more confidence,
more slang, and tone down the emotion so my character doesn’t appear whinny or
emasculated. I don’t need to turn my protagonist into a male stereotype, but
there are varying degrees of these elements I must weave into his voice if I
want him to sound different from my female POV lead. Which I do!
Works
Cited
Anderson,
M. T. Feed. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2002. Print.
Green,
John. Paper Towns. New York: Dutton, 2008. Print.
Griffin,
Hardy. "Voice: The Sound of a Story." Gotham Writers' Workshop:
Writing Fiction: A Practical Guide from New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing
School. London: & C Black, 2008. Print.
Lu,
Marie. Legend. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2011. Print.
Sanderson,
Brandon. Steelheart. Print.
