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The narrator is different from you



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Fri May 30, 2014 2:16 am
Milanimo says...



I'm attempting to write a short story where the narrator has a different personality and voice than I do.

Do you believe that writers should try to go outside their comfort zone in this manner? Does it help improve writing, or simply open up a new perspective? And how do you keep from straying back to your own ideals and opinions?

Let me know what you think!
  





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Fri May 30, 2014 5:54 pm
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eldEr says...



I think that writers should definitely do this. I mean, how boring would it be if we only wrote characters who are like us and have the same voice as us? If you're going to write more than one book, about more than one person, chances are that you're going to have to give them a different personality and voice than your last character in your last book. Otherwise, readers are going to notice this really obnoxious "this person can only write one thing" trend.

I'm actually not a huge fan of the "write what you know" line. It's way, way more fun to write what you don't know. I mean, research it heavily and show it to people who do know it, and fix things if they tell you you got something wrong, but honestly. Only writing what you know, and only writing within your comfort zone, will do nothing but stifle your creativity and squander the quality of your piece.

As far as characters with other personalities and voices go: it's all a matter of empathy. You have to be able to put yourself into someone else's shoes, and to try to understand why they believe what and act the way they do, even if it's not necessarily what you believe or how you react. Observe people. Dabble in psychology. Pick up a few textbooks. Read books with really strong characters. Start by using your friends and the people you know really well as models. Poke around your character. Figure out what they believe and why, even if it disagrees with what you do.

Always step outside your comfort zone when writing.

Always.
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Fri May 30, 2014 6:18 pm
dragonfphoenix says...



If writers never went outside their comfort zone, then we'd never get real, quality writing. Most of my best writing was completely impulsive, "Oh I've never done this before" kind of writing. The answer to Question 2 is "Yes." Whenever you're writing something new, it shows you something you've never seen before about writing, grows your writing strengths (and weaknesses), and gives a bit of exhilaration for the "I just did that!" feeling. :)

Now, as for straying back into your own voice...that's a bit more of a challenge. It helps when you have very dominant, highly defined characters that just feel like a completely different person living inside your head, but those character are few and far between sometimes.
To stay 'in character' while writing from another voice, have a one-sentence summary of that character's outlook on life, like "highly cynical because of a rough childhood, but is gentle with animals and likes making people better." A short description of their looks, relationships to other characters, and any other defining quirks to serve as a reference will keep you on the tracks.
Hope this helps!
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Fri May 30, 2014 6:38 pm
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crossroads says...



dragonfphoenix wrote:To stay 'in character' while writing from another voice, have a one-sentence summary of that character's outlook on life, like "highly cynical because of a rough childhood, but is gentle with animals and likes making people better." A short description of their looks, relationships to other characters, and any other defining quirks to serve as a reference will keep you on the tracks.


Murr. To each their own, but personally I would be very careful with this.
Different characters need to have different voices, yes, but those voices must be *theirs*. Assigning them a set of traits like that ^ can very very easily make you stubbornly stick to them and force your characters into the mould those traits shape, which shows in writing more than the writers tend to think.
People are never as simple as "always doing this or that". They can have something they do a lot, or something they say a lot, but there are always circumstances in which a person would make a choice which doesn't seem to quite fit their personality, make a wrong move or end up having to deal with something in a way they wouldn't normally pick.
Characters should grow, develop, resist their writers' ideas of keeping them the way they originally imagined them. Then we're talking about strong characters, who tend to tell the writer what their voice is like rather than the other way around.

As for whether or not to step out of your comfort zone, no need to do that. Stepping out could make you confused and lost and force you back into it eventually.
Read, research, note ideas, play with different sentences and styles and expand your comfort zone. It doesn't need to be just one style or voice that we're comfortable with. The more you explore (haha that rhymes), the wider this zone gets, and the richer your writing can become.
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Fri May 30, 2014 7:12 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Every single time you go out of your comfort zone as a writer, you do two things:

1- Improve your writing
2- Gain new perspective

If you write horror, and only read horror, you are only pulling from the horror genre to write your own works. This means, you are only using horror tropes. Maybe you're pulling a little from other media you consume, but for the most part, it's a straight wash of horror. People who know the horror genre will get very bored with your writing, because they've read it all before.

Now, if you write horror, and fantasy, and westerns, and historical fiction, and romance, and you read all of those genres, too, suddenly, you're pulling from all those tropes. While your writing is still those genres in each individual work, you have more to you than that. If you end up finding the perfect plot twist for your western from the romance genre, or you've got particularly horrific fiction, or whatever. Readers notice this. They start devouring your books because they've not read this before. It's more interesting to them, and it's more interesting for you (who'd want to only read one genre?). Suddenly, you've got a base the size of a mountain instead of an anthill.

Reading and writing wildly is actually a way to help you write different voices. It lets you expand your comfort zone. Read more. Write more. Do drabbles, do RPs, do storybooks on YWS. Force yourself to write characters that have traits that are totally different than you, and always remember those traits. Collaborative writing is particularly useful because other people hold your character accountable to how they see them, and you're constantly reminded "hey, this character isn't what I'm used to."

It will feel awkward. Very awkward. But writing always does when you're starting out. It means you're growing as a writer.

Eventually, these new types of characters will become comfortable. So you'll have to continue doing people you don't know to expand yourself. Your secondary characters will become more diverse, too, because you're looking at totally different worlds and thinking in broader terms. Secondary characters can also be an awesome way to expand how diverse you write, because you can explore from a distance, exploring how different characters are seen on top of how they react.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

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Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.
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