Mastering Male Voice

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.