Point of View/Characterization

           

An author's voice is one of the most important aspects of writing. It's the author's ability to connect and engage the reader with his or her writing, to tell a great and entertaining story while also revealing themes and truths that the reader will find relatable. For instance, what you're reading now is MY voice--it's the way Matt Perrino writes, describes, and communicates to you as the reader. It's this concept of voice that distinguishes the great writers from the mediocre ones. 

I also believe that, to be one of the best, authors have to be able to give their protagonists a voice of their own. In other words, each protagonist should have a different way of articulating emotions, thoughts, actions, and goals; no two protagonists should sound the same. For example, let's say you and I walk into a building. We are in the same place, at the same time, seeing the same exact things. But your description of the setting and circumstances will be completely different than my own. No two people are the same; we are all unique, and even though we may share similar views, our perceptions of the world around us will always differ. The best writers will try to apply this mentality to their writing. Every protagonist will have their own voice, their own way of describing things, a specific way of communicating their story. There have been times where I've read different books by the same author and have walked away saying, "The protagonist of this book sounds exactly like the protagonist in that book." There's no distinction, nothing to differentiate one from the other. That's because the author is telling the story as HE or SHE would tell it; not necessarily the way the character would.  Some of the best writers out there will inhabit the mind of the character, will stop and ponder,  "How would this character tell this story? Would they use this word or that one? How would they describe this setting?" etc. 

 A few months ago, I was working on two novels simultaneously (on a side note, one of them is currently halfway done and has been sent to various people for opinions and critiques. If you'd like to be one of these people, let me know! I'm always eager for opinions). The protagonists in each story are similar. Tyler and Andrew are both in their twenties, male, and deeply disturbed. However, the voice of each character is, hopefully, different. To demonstrate this, I've taken a short scene from Tyler's story and altered it, writing it in a way that would fit Andrew's mentality. In this scene, the protagonist has just trespassed into the lobby of an abandoned mental asylum.

Tyler:

 I breathe in the asylum. Must, dirt, staleness. The smell of something that’s far past its expiration date. Our flashlights, along with the moonlight steaming through the shattered windows and gaping doorway, illuminate the world around us. The interior of the place looks even worse. As if the hospital has been rotting from the inside out for the past few decades. Thick cobwebs curtain the windows. Debris and dust cover the black-and-white tiled floor. The white walls are smudged with dirt, the paint chipped and peeling with decay like skin off a corpse. Their vandalized surfaces shout colorful obscenities at us. “Fuck you.” “Kiss my ass.” “Smoke weed everyday.”

            That last one I spray-painted myself.  

            Some walls flaunt holes the size of bodies, turning them into shortcuts into adjacent rooms. Smiling, I imagine a lunatic in a strait jacket running into these walls over and over again, until he comes bursting through the other side.

 The front desk sits directly across the entrance. A young assistant had probably once sat there, behind that semi-circle structure, smiling and nodding and saying to anyone who visited, “Hello, how may I help you?” while patients screamed with anguish and laughed maniacally in the background, as if the noises didn’t bother her at all. Now all that the desk holds is debris and dust and dirt. The little door that leads behind it is missing, torn off its hinges. I find it discarded in the waiting room, where the only things waiting are vacant, wooden chairs. This area must’ve been chaos in its prime. I envision families waiting with hungry anticipation and forlorn faces, as their disturbed relatives slump absent-mindedly in their seats or dash about the room like rabid animals. Those families probably used to pray to the lost crucifix outside that their demented kin would be strapped up and stowed away, far out of their lives and concern.

 Now here's that same scene, only described using Andrew's voice: 

            A musty, stale odor was there to greet us. If it weren’t for our flashlights and the moonlight shining through the nonexistent windows and entrance, the asylum would’ve been pitch-black. The lobby was even more decrepit than the hospital’s exterior. Cobwebs veiled the broken windows and every corner in the room. A thin film of dust shrouded the black-and-white tiled floor, with pieces of the asylum strewn about here and there. The walls, which had once been white, were smudged with dirt, and the paint was cracked and peeling. Their surfaces shouted obscenities at us, spray-painted in an array of different colors. “Fuck you.” “Kiss my ass.” “Smoke weed everyday.” Other walls had been vandalized in more drastic ways. They stood partially demolished, with holes the size of bodies acting like shortcuts into adjacent rooms. 

The front desk had a semi-circle shape and sat across from the main entrance. Its surface was covered with more debris, more dust. The little, swinging door that led behind it was missing, just like the door in the main entrance. After more wandering, I found it--the door to the front desk, that is--discarded in the waiting room. It was an eerie and foreboding sight. The area was full of wooden chairs, vacant and waiting for new patients. 

   

Hopefully, you can see the difference. Tyler tends to use short, fragmented thoughts, but every now and then, he'll whip out a long, complex description. He also has a vivid imagination and utilizes it to create scenarios that can be correlated to whatever he's experiencing at the moment. Tyler is also a very dark character and uses images of death to describe what he's seeing, i.e. comparing the peeling of paint to the skin peeling off of a corpse. He's an intelligent character and likes to use witty metaphors and similes whenever he can. And then there's Andrew. Andrew's voice is similar to my own, which makes him much easier to write than Tyler. He speaks in a simpler, more traditional style, without the use of fragments. He's more formal in his speech and doesn't possess the same imagination as Tyler. He's also not the type to write graffiti or vandalize a public place, even if it is abandoned (he's also not the type to trespass into an abandoned facility in the first place, but for the sake of this demonstration, I made an exception).  Hopefully, through this blog post, you can see the distinction between Tyler and Andrew--the differences between their thought processes, descriptive methods, and mindsets.