Voices in everyone's heads

You know, one of these days I'm going to reach the point where I never miss a scheduled update on this blog. Obviously, I'm not there yet.

Burnt Offerings Books declined on my story, but with kind words. Naturally, I sent them another story, just to teach them a lesson.

I'm at the point in 'In The Dark' where I'm looking at each character and seeing if they actually have a voice, or if they sound like some offstage player reading his lines while getting a massage. If I don't see their faces in my head when I read their words, I'm not done. This is one field where movies have an advantage. You can see each person speak and hear their real voice. I was about to say radio has it too, but the days of fiction being a regular feature on the airwaves are definitely receding. Of course, now we have podcasts, so the same lesson applies.

I have no way of testing this, but I think that everyone makes up their own voices when they read a story. We patch together a hodgepodge of TV actors, people we know or used to know, and voices of random strangers that talk on their phones in public. All those voices go into our heads, stored on the audio track of our lives. So when we need to hear Mack Bolan or Roland speak, we draw on that vast, randomly-organized data bank. What does that have to do with what I'm talking about? It means that no matter what I do, no one is going to hear the gruff, plainly-speaking sergeant of the guard in exactly the way that I imagine him. He'll be their big brother, the cop that pulled them over when they didn't see that new stop sign, or the drill instructor that they lived in fear of for three months. They take the bones and flesh them out all on their own.

So, I can slack off? Nope. I still need to tell them what type of person that sergeant is. Does he sound educated? Speak with an accent? Does he monologue because he loves the sound of his own voice, or because he has something he feels has to be said? Or does he only say five words in the whole story because he just doesn't talk much. I need to give my readers a full set of bones. Can you imagine a sergeant of the guard with one leg, only a few ribs, and half of a mustache? Well, I can, but not for this book.

Still writing.