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Part 3: Using "Voice" To Depict Age





ELIZABETH:

 

Let’s do a quick little experiment. Read these excerpts and notice everything you can about the character, Alwyn, from my upcoming novella.

 

EXCERPT 1: Men scorned him for his abnormality, women feared him for his looks, and children believed him to be a ghost, a creature of the night, or some other sort of horrific fantasy. Alwyn grew up knowing he’d never live a typical life. A woman’s love would be foreign to him. Children of his own—he refused to curse an innocent child with his misfortune. The acceptable standard of life all held and eventually achieved would never be his. So he wore black, always grieving the death that occurred the moment he came into the world: the death of a normal life.

His knuckles tensed with emotion…

 

EXCERPT 2: Why he had stayed there for such a time, Alwyn didn’t know. Perhaps it was to show spite. He had every reason and right to celebrate his hard work among the very townsfolk who wore articles of the wool he provided. Perhaps, in a way, his presence at the Inn was a declaration, to remind them, “I provide your clothing. I am allowed among you.” 

Or, perhaps, deep down in the places of his heart he never cared to visit, there was another reason. Longing crept up his skeleton-like insects. To belong, to be around the others of his kind instead of being the curse they all saw him to be. The emotions mixed in a familiar concoction.

 

EXCERPT 3: “You were born special,” Mam said. She stroked her thumb against young Alwyn’s pale cheek, wiping away the tears her son had released.

“I am cursed!” Alwyn wailed. At only seven, he couldn’t understand why his mother could not change his skin. He begged her, “Please, Mami! Make me like you!” 

His mother’s soothing words did nothing to ease his tumultuous heart. He couldn’t bear it. Why was he trapped in such a hated speciality – for which the children called him names, and threw dirt in his face, hoping it would dye him “human.”

He didn’t understand at seven years old, nor did he understand at _____ years old.

He had done nothing to deserve the torment – nothing, except be born.



Based On The Excerpts Above, How Old Do You Think Alwyn Is?

  • 13-19

  • 20-30

  • 40-50

  • 60-70


 

Why did you choose the answer you did? Is there anything in the excerpts above that indicates his age?

 

Would it shock you if I said Alwyn was actually fifty-seven years old?

 

For many of you, this age might not fit with the character you were imagining. Alwyn doesn’t sound like a 57-year-old. Why is that? It’s okay if you can’t figure out the specifics of why this character sounds the way he does. Again, voice is difficult to recognize.

 

As we talked about in the first two parts of this blog series, “voice” is a powerful, multi-faceted character quality. It isn’t just dialogue, but it’s your character’s thoughts, their reactions, their memories, and more. You can learn a lot about a character through the elements that make up their voice. When used correctly, it can almost be as powerful as a description. But when used incorrectly… you can cause your readers to get confused about who, exactly, they are following.

 

This is what happened with Alwyn. So, let’s figure out why.


D.T. Powell

When it comes to character voice, the same elements that influence writer voice also apply: faith and worldview, age, upbringing, personal preferences, life experience, education level, economic status, geographic location, personality, talents and interests, etc.


A middle-aged hat salesman from 1800’s London is going to have a different character voice than the seven-year-old princess of a race of star-faring cyborgs.


There’s so much that goes into who a person is and how they communicate life and experience, but we’d like to key in on just one of those factors. Age.


When we meet other people in-person, we have the advantage of being able to directly observe them. We can (usually) tell whether they’re older, younger, or roughly the same age as us. 


Some ways we do that: 

  • If we’re able to see the other person, we observe their hair color, skin texture, posture, clothing choices, and more. 

  • If we’re able to hear them, we note their accent, the weight and emotion of their voice, pitch, vocal range, the way they say certain words, their vocabulary choices, what they talk about. 

  • If we’re able to smell them, we can tell whether they’re wearing perfume or cologne, hints of where they’ve been or what they’ve eaten, whether they smoke or have pets, and cues to their personal hygiene.  


But all those potential clues to age are useless if we can’t directly observe someone in a physical sense.


As writers, (unless you’re working in a medium that incorporates images) we have the monumental task of using words alone to communicate this often-essential element of a character.


So, how do we condense the depiction of age down to something both manageable and distinct? What’s the common factor that links all ages but remains unique to every age segment?


Last post, we mentioned that Elizabeth and I discussed the reason her character Alwyn seemed significantly younger than he was. We concluded it had to do with the depiction of Alwyn’s thoughts and emotions—how he experienced and expressed what he was thinking and feeling.


The way our brains work changes as we age, as does our ability to manage and interpret emotion. It’s the reason typical babies have a much easier time learning language than the average adult. It’s also the reason teenagers intensely feel the blooming urge to be independent, whereas, most adults have known this feeling for years, so it isn’t fascinating and new anymore. In fact, it’s probably faded from conscious thought altogether.


When we focus on how a character experiences and expresses thoughts and emotions, we ask questions. If a character is close to us in age, we don’t need to ask as many questions, because we already know fundamentals of how they experience the world. But when we move to someone of a different age, those questions seem to multiply into an impossibly intricate web.


Especially for younger writers, this mess of interwoven questions for which they have no answers can be daunting. Portraying characters significantly older suddenly seems unattainable. It’s a nightmare. One answer prompts three new questions. Minutia becomes a tsunami. Internet research turns into a black hole.


To combat the threat of being swallowed by the unknown, young writers may attempt to find refuge in stereotypes, copying other writers, or just winging it and hoping for the best. But lackluster solutions do no one any good. 


We need a solid answer—something that untangles the impractical web of mystery and bridges the yawning generation gap.


We need a new perspective. A new illustration. Streamlined and simple.


What about a straight line?


Every person has a beginning and end to their lives in this world. No matter how long (or short) that time is, those two points exist. Between those points is the line we call Life. Where someone is on that line heavily contributes to how they view the past and future.


Think of it as walking away from a building. The closer you are to the building, the easier it is to see and recall its height and shape, the color of the windows, how many stories it is, whether it has a black roof or a gray one. All the details are sharp. But as you walk away, those physical details fade, and some vanish from memory. The specifics of the building’s appearance become less important than the events that occurred inside the building and how they shaped the person. The why partially eclipses the what.


When portraying characters of a differing age, examine how far they are from the beginning and end of their life as well as significant personal events. That distance will clarify a lot and narrow the list of follow-up questions to something manageable.


What are a few life events that an older character might be “farther away from” than a younger character? How might that shape the way they remember and talk about those events?

Elizabeth:

D.T. Powell illustrates it so perfectly! The mistake I made with Alwyn was ascribing my voice to him. It was as if I was cosplaying Alwyn and trying to imitate what I thought he would do. But no matter how much I tried, he still had my sentence structures, phrasing, reactions, preferences, emotions, etc.


As authors, we do have the ability to really bring characters to life in a way that they feel real to our readers. But we can't do that if we're putting the character in the writer's shoes.


Rather than empathizing with my character, I made him empathize with what I assumed is a proper response to his situation. As I was writing Alwyn, I remember asking myself: how would I react to being completely rejected from my community? What would it be like if my community considered me some evil, cursed creature rather than a valued person?


Do you see what I was asking? “How would I react…” “What would it be like if I,” “What would I do if ______ happened to me?” You see, while I had the right idea, I was asking the wrong questions. My character’s experience is not about me.


The character’s experience is not about what the writer assumes would happen.


As writers, we have to remove, “I” from the equation when it comes to figuring out our character’s voices.


Obviously, for myself and most people, being rejected by a community would be awful. I’m already a self-conscious, hyper-aware person, even around people I’m comfortable with. Going to a place where I know I’m not accepted because of something I can’t help would result in me focusing on the entire situation, judging myself and my “flaws,” and becoming extra hyper-aware of everyone else and myself. It would be a miserable experience.


And... for a lot of people... an accurate experience.


However, my mistake was that I had been imagining this scenario as a new experience—for me and for Alwyn. I wasn’t writing it as if Alwyn had been experiencing this for essentially 60 years—three times longer than I’ve been on this earth.


What should’ve been his voice, thoughts, emotions, and reactions were mine, and they were too new. I was writing from the perspective of a 21-year-old woman freshly imagining this scenario, not a 57-year-old man living in the situation his entire life. When that happened, my youth came through the words and became part of Alwyn’s identity in the reader’s mind, despite being completely opposite of what I intended.


So, first thing you need to do when you’re writing an age-gap between you and your character: get out of the way! You don’t need to relate to every aspect of their emotions (or try to make them relate to what you think would happen.) You have to discover their emotions, reactions, etc. as if they are a completely real life person. You have to find their unique response to whatever situation you have planned for them. 


One way you can do this is by "interviewing" your character. Here's an interactive document I made with 50+ Questions you can ask your character to get to know them as a separate person. These questions, while meant to help develop your character can also highlight your character's specific voice.


Now, let's take a look at two of the three excerpts from, "Angau." (We'll look at the last one in the next post -- talking specifically about memories.)


Men scorned him for his abnormality, women feared him for his looks, and children believed him to be a ghost, a creature of the night, or some other sort of horrific fantasy. Alwyn grew up knowing he’d never live a typical life. A woman’s love would be foreign to him. Children of his own—he refused to curse an innocent child with his misfortune. The acceptable standard of life all held and eventually achieved would never be his. So he wore black, always grieving the death that occurred the moment he came into the world: the death of a normal life.

His knuckles tensed with emotion…


The underlined text was (unintentionally) written in a way that misrepresents Alwyn. "He grew up knowing he would never live a typical life. A woman's love would be foreign to him. He refused to curse an innocent child with his misfortune. The acceptable standard of life all held and eventually achieved would never be his.


The would never and would be implies that these things have not yet happened but would still be a possibility in the future (or would be if he wasn't an outcast.) It's as if Alwyn is looking at that future, and grieving that it would never happen, not aching because it didn't happen. Someone who is 57 isn't going to just start accepting it or be in a fresh "grieving" stage for having a family or normal life. That may have been how he felt as a teenager or in his 20s. But he had lived a lonely life for almost 60 years. As sad as it is, he would've been used to the pain.


A better way to rewrite this would be:


Men still scorned him for his abnormality, women feared him for his appearance, and their children grew up believing him to be a ghost or some other horrific creature of the night. His black cloak concealed his face from the patrons of the Inn like a shroud for a dead man. It may as well have been; he was no more than dead to people of Carmarthen.

Until, of course, they needed wool for the winter.


Tossing out his thoughts as one would rubbish, Alwyn removed a bag from his pocket, grimacing at the stiffness of his arm. Inside the bag, the bundle of silver coins made him feel rich, though it wasn’t an outrageous amount of money by any means.


If you notice, I used the phrase, children grew up believing... to indicate children had grown up in his life time. Words like still indicate the aloofness that would come with the redundancy of the people's behavior. I also got rid of simply stating the emotional hurt in his life (about not having a wife or kids) because I feel that can be shown and implied in other ways. (Such as Alwyn going to his empty home or spending all his time out in the field with his sheep. Remember, you don't have to state every fact. Weave as many details as you can into the exposition and leave room for your reader to make their own inferences) The strong display of emotion ("His knuckles tensed with emotion.") implies that he is getting aggravated or upset about his loneliness. Getting rid of that and going immediately into action also shows his dismissal or disconnect with his situation.


It's clear Alwyn does not enjoy the state of his life but it isn't a fresh, raw wound. He won't be hyper-focused on everyone else's thoughts of him. Instead of continuing to describe what people think of him, the sentence, "Until, of course, they needed wool for the winter," shows irony. The patrons of the Inn won't treat Alwyn right unless they needed what he provided. Alwyn isn't heartbroken by their treatment; he's just frustrated and sick of it as one would be in the same situation for over 50 years.


What do you think? Does the new excerpt better portray Alwyn's age?


Let's try the next one:


Original: Why he had stayed there for such a time, Alwyn didn’t know. Perhaps it was to show spite. He had every reason and right to celebrate his hard work among the very townsfolk who wore articles of the wool he provided. Perhaps, in a way, his presence at the Inn was a declaration, to remind them, “I provide your clothing. I am allowed among you.” Or, perhaps, deep down in the places of his heart he never cared to visit, there was another reason. Longing crept up his skeleton-like insects. To belong, to be around the others of his kind instead of being the curse they all saw him to be. The emotions mixed in a familiar concoction.



Rewrite: Alwyn stayed at the an hour after the sun dipped beneath the horizon. Nearby customers cast frequent glances in his way, their eyes narrowed with suspicion and bloodshot with drunkenness. Whispers and pointing gestures followed, accompanied by the turning of heads and more stares. Alwyn raised his brows at them -- not that they could see into the shadows of his cloak -- and tucked eight coins under beneath his plate.


He had no reason to have stayed so late aside from the simple fact that he provided the wool for the clothing they all wore. Spring had proven to be a season of plenty--more lambs, more wool, more work. It left his body and mind wearier than seasons passed, and he was in desperate need of ale, food, and rest. Those, alone, were worth the piddling glances.


Here, a lot is changed. Why? Because the original excerpt focuses on the Alwyn's hurt/sense of unbelonging. I completely got rid of the sentences talking about Alwyn's "deep down desire" to just be normal. He isn't normal, and he knows it. It's miserable, but it isn't anything new. Changing the focus to the other's reactions and Alwyn's lack of reaction dials down the newness of the situation. This is just another night in town to him. Nothing is surprising--he's dealt with this kind of situation plenty of times--and views food, ale, and some relaxation as more important than the thoughts of the others. At this point, Alwyn just isn't bothered enough to let them keep hurting him. He has accepted that this is his life. But do you notice how, in the excerpts, I never explicitly say, "Alwyn has accepted his life." No... you use voice to imply that. You use the age of his voice to show the redundancy and familiarity of the people's view towards him.


 

Here's a quick writing exercise to help you discover your character’s unique voice.

Take a scene or situation from your book, something where your character is really the focal point of the plot. (Something high emotion, high stakes, not focusing on description or action. You want to be in your character's head.)


Now, ask yourself, "How is my character reacting?" (Try not to think about how you would react because, remember, you aren't them.) List out their reactions, phrases they would use, and take some time explaining what each reaction reveals about your character. You can also ask friends or family members how they would react in the same situation and why. You'll be surprised how different people's responses can be! You can do this for a wide range of scenarios--some happy, some funny, some sad, etc. Explore your character's different emotions during different types of experiences. You can even try exploring different types of reactions, maybe something "out of character" for them. Experiment with writing from different life perspectives. How would your character reactions differ from how they would react if they were a child? Think about the things that will happen and lessons learned that will grow the young voice into an older voice.



 


About The Authors




D. T. Powell has loved stories since before she can remember, and it was love for a story God used to change her life that prompted her to start writing. She has actively contributed to the fanfiction community since 2013 in addition to writing original speculative fiction for both inspirational and general markets. She spends her days supervising three furry felines, all named for Studio Ghibli characters, playing pickleball, reading, and enjoying her favorite video games. Her life verse is Psalm 126:5, "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”


Instagram @dtill359

Goodreads @D.T. Powell



Elizabeth Mae Wolfram is a twenty-something-year-old living in the breathtaking mountains of the Ozarks. She is an author, blogger, podcaster, web designer, & book formatter -- all powered by the publishing company she and her mom founded in 2022, called DHK Creations & Publications, LLC. When she isn’t writing, she can be found drinking coffee with her parents, hanging out with her little siblings, or chasing around her fiery kittens, Phoenix, Ember, and Bella.


Facebook: E.M. Wolfram

 
 
 

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