Finding Your Character's Voice

If a normal person told you that they spend hours of their day listening to voices of imaginary people in their head - you'd probably call them crazy. Thankfully I am not a normal person, I'm a writer. Not only do I listen to voices, I look forward to hearing them. I spend my time in the car, at night, in the shower -listening. When I finally sit down to write I replay the conversations I've been hearing and then find  the images to go with the voices. 

But every now and then a voice stays quiet. That's what happened this week as I tried to make final revisions in my middle grade novel. While most of the characters came in loud and clear, one character, a boy named Mike, held himself back. Unfortunately, without his voice, the novel couldn't come together.

I realized the problem right away. When I first wrote the story, Mike was sixteen. Since then, after many rewrites, rethinks, and replots, all of the other characters realized they were thirteen. Mike continued to think he was sixteen. It was only three years, but it made a lot of difference.

So how could I find Mike's voice? And how could I isolate his dialogue in a way that I could clearly see what he was saying? I decided to do something which was a little crazy, even for a writer. I turned my entire manuscript into a play.

Once the action, images, and thoughts were taken away, I could clearly hear my characters talking. I realized that while everyone else gave short answers with meaning, Mike spoke in speeches. I talked to parents of thirteen year olds, read books with thirteen year old characters, and listened to them in the real world. Finally thirteen year old Mike began talking and he really didn't understand what sixteen year old Mike had been saying.

Do I have him now? I hope so. I have beta readers and an agent who will tell me. But I feel good about the process, even if it was a little odd.

How do you find your character's voice? Ever do anything interesting to find it?

Middle Grade Romance

Since today is Valentine's Day, I decided to write a love related post. As I pondered what I wanted to say, I was reminded of a conversation I've been having with a group of writers about the difference between middle grade and YA. One of the points brought up was the fact that YA HAD to have some sort of love interest, whereas middle grade did not.

But middle grade is a special time when it comes to romance. Girls who've had crushes on boys for years finally find that the boys are interested too - or that they are not. More people start "going out." Almost every conversation with friends is about who likes who. And along with these first real crushes are the first heart breaks and rejections. So how can middle grade books not touch upon that, at least a little?

Middle grade romances may be(and hopefully are)simple- smiles in the hallway, a friend telling a friend that someone likes you. First dates once you get to middle school. But that doesn't mean they are insignificant or unimportant. When I look at my own journals from that time there is not a page that doesn't contain my feelings towards the boys in my life.

Or maybe that was just me?

Finding the Story Inside Your Own Story

When I was eight my parents took my sister and me on a camping trip from Long Island to Wyoming and back. That camping trip has lived vividly in my memory for all this time, so it is no wonder that when I started writing, I wanted to revisit that trip.  I wrote a lovely story about two sisters who go on a camping trip and have a good time.

Unfortunately, what was a great memory for me was not a page turner for others. Real people don't always have problems and solutions. A camping trip is just a vacation. To tell that story in a way others would want to read was, and still is, a challenge. 

Now I am starting again, with only a setting. While I may pull from memory, what happens this time will be my characters' stories, not mine. They will have to face obstacles, challenges, and overcome flaws that my sister and I didn't experience. While I know their location, I am going to leave it to the characters to see where this journey takes them. 

Have you ever used your own story in your story? How did it work for you?