Comments on: Voice Q&A: Evil Narrators and Guy Talk

By: Maya

Maya — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 11:56:03 +0000

hehe… according to the Gender Genie’s analysis of my blog posts, I’m definitely male.

Good to know!
.-= Maya´s last blog ..Still alive! (I blame the lack of posts on Lior Narkis) =-.

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By: Sophie Masson

Sophie Masson — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:55:52 +0000

Sheena, I think that you’re right, the young man in Endless Night is totally evil–and yet yes you can pity him–while recoiling from him–he’s not quite sane. It’s a very chilling book, quite haunting..
Dr Sheppard though is both sane and evil–a more ordinary kind of evil than in Endless Night, but still out for what he can get and apparently without remorse.
And then of course there’s the hidden narrator of And then there were None–an amazing conjuring trick.

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By: hope101

hope101 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:37:30 +0000

This doesn’t help anyone writing contemporary literature, but the author I feel captures dialogue fingerprints best – fantastic term, btw – would be Georgette Heyer. The woman wrote pages of dialogue with three or more characters, often with little in the way of tags or narrative to orient the reader; yet it’s still very clear who’s speaking.

As for myself, I have to read dialogue aloud for any character to see if it rings true. It helps to have an avatar for a character, too.

Ken, you owe me a new keyboard. ;)
.-= hope101´s last blog ..Don’t Cha Wish Your Critique Group Was Odd Like Mine? =-.

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By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:43:44 +0000

I’m a 63 year old male trying to write in the voice of a 14-16 year old female. Mostly, I just think about the character of Holly Jones in Robert Heinlein’s Menace From Earth.

-Steve

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By: Hayley E. Lavik

Hayley E. Lavik — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:01:18 +0000

Great post Therese. You’ve hit all the key points, especially listening to actual people talk. It’s not enough to just go for “what sounds like a guy” (as in this example) but what sounds like the specific character an author is writing. Assumptions that all guys talk in shorter sentences or smaller words (which I see often) just don’t cut it.

While I don’t want to come across as self-promoting, you did ask about techniques for writing the opposite gender, and I actually *just* put up a discussion yesterday about this which has had some great responses. The big thing I’d stress is to write characters, not genders, because gender is a cultural thing, not a biological thing. How a character acts and talks is influenced by culture, among tons of other things, so getting to know a character (such as figuring out their dialogue ‘fingerprints’ as you mentioned) is going to help a lot more, in my opinion, than approaching the problem in terms of ‘How do guys talk?’
.-= Hayley E. Lavik´s last blog ..Gendered Narrative: A Cultural Perspective =-.

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By: Sheena

Sheena — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:51:24 +0000

I loved The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but I think the narrator in Endless Night, also by Agatha Christie, is closer to real evil but still to be pitied. Can anyone comment on him? I did think he worked, and couldn’t put the book down, but it’s years since I read it.

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By: thea

thea — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:43:39 +0000

great post, interesting points of view. thanks

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By: Sophie Masson

Sophie Masson — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:28:38 +0000

My favourite bad–and unreliable– narrator is Doctor Sheppard in Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd–a fantastic deception to pull off–and I believe Christie was one of the first to do it that way. Apparently she got a huge amount of flak over it by critics who said you just couldn’t do that sort of thing. But the readers loved it(and still do!)

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By: Hart

Hart — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:39:51 +0000

My favorite ‘bad’ narrator is Humbert Humbert of Lolita. He is horrible, but self deluded enough that he doesn’t know it, so it works. The reader doesn’t exactly ‘fall for it’, but we get it. Plus at the end, he begins to get some inkling of how he ‘ruined’ Lola.

As for guys… I’ve written teens and that voice is pretty easy for me (having some), but the adult males are a little different–so far they’ve been either academic (like me-so there is some common ground) or foreign (I intend to have a beta reader on those anyway).

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By: Kristan

Kristan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:18:27 +0000

Funny, I *just* decided to put a guy POV in my wip. This oughta be interesting… At least I have this post to consult!
.-= Kristan´s last blog ..Write it simple, write it true =-.

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