The Summer of Writing workshops are back! In the run-up to the summer workshops in August & September, I'm posting free Writing Skills for you to play with fresh angles, develop your writing, and whet your appetite for the workshops.
This Writing Skill is Voice Trait, a lovely way to play with character voice. A character's voice comes from a wide range of things: their age, dialect, education, class, region, personality, etc. It's often easiest to go for the extremes – the "eeh bah gum, t'were a reet mess" or "I say, old chap, that's frightfully out of line", but that can also end up creating caricatures, rather than characters. Also, people of the same age / dialect / education / class / region still have their own distinct voices. So for this skill, we're going to focus purely on character traits. I suggest that for the other voice indicators (age / dialect / education / class / region) you stick to your own, or to the set you're most familiar with, so you can really concentrate on how their personality traits shape their voice.
For personality traits, grab the first choice from this handy rangen. You can use all three, or whichever feels most useful to you. I got "manipulative, inspirational and industrious". I think I could have a lot of fun with "inspirational" – which I'm reading in the sense of those endless online inspo memes, so my interpretation's probably quite influenced by the word "manipulative" as well!
Then for what to write about, we're going to keep this as plain as possible, so you can really concentrate on the voice itself. The character is explaining, in detail, one of these three things:
- how to make a cup of tea
- how to change a tyre
- how to sew on a button
Choose whichever suits you best. I can already hear my character exclaiming "You've got this!" and "There are no mistakes, only opportunities to learn!" and "I like to imagine there's a sunset seascape behind my words, it gives me a lot more confidence to really own my truth." (Oops, I think I just punched them.)
Why this skill?
This skill links with the Narrative Voice workshop on 26 August, where we'll explore multiple ways of creating a narrator's voice: their personality traits, moods, and attitudes, and all the voice indicators that go into making them distinctive. We'll try out practical ways to set about creating or developing a voice, and how you can balance the voice with strong prose and strong storytelling. We'll also look at how to play with just how reliable – or not! – your narrator is. This is a brand-new workshop, running for the first time this year. It's now fully booked, but you can still add your name to the waiting list (which is worth doing; I had a cancellation this week and it promptly filled back up a couple days later). You can read more about it here.
The full list of Summer of Writing workshops is...
- Unravelling Secrets (Saturday 5 August), 3 places left: How to balance suspense, secrets, and clues in thrillers, mysteries, and crime fiction
- Page Turners (Saturday 12 August), 4 places left: How to map out your novel and every scene to keep the reader engrossed
- Planning a Novel (Saturday 19 August), Waiting List only: Hands-on practical strategies to manage the process of planning a novel, whether you’re starting from scratch or reworking raw draft
- Narrative Voice (Saturday 26 August), Waiting List only: Using a character’s voice to narrate the story, playing with their limits, and keeping the story vivid
- The Creative Well (Saturday 2 September), Waiting List only: Playful challenging activities based on top research to create new ideas and explore the creative process
You can read the full descriptions of all of the workshops and book your places here. Workshops start at £60 each and are 10am–4pm, in person in Oxford.
