Crafting a Strong Character Voice || Part 4Exercise 1 –Take the above photo. Describe it with
Crafting a Strong Character Voice || Part 4Exercise 1 –Take the above photo. Describe it with your own style and your own literary flair. Bring the scene to life. Give it its own characterization. Capture a moment.Exercise 2 –Now, describe the scene from the eyes of one of your characters. Don’t be afraid to borrow those moments of gold you write in exercise 1, but make sure to stay absolutely true and honest to the voice of the character.Bonus –Describe the scene from the eyes of the protagonist.Goal –A big part of what makes a story stand out is character voice. Your own personal style changes as you do, and a character’s voice changes as the character does. When the two come together, there’s potential for literary magic, but bringing out and differentiating between different character voices takes lots of practice and even more reading.Write for yourself, but also take time to write with the intention of improving skills. There’s reading for pleasure, and then there’s reading like a writer. The same applies to writing: write for pleasure, then write to improve. Experiment in these exercises. Try things you haven’t tried before.Remember, the image is meant to generate ideas, so it’s intentionally vague. If you’re not used to writing about the subjects in the image, good. Write something you’ve never written before. Push yourself.Need some help? Check out the guide on character voice, or look at the Voice & Style Summer Camp exercises for additional tips!Share your pieces, however perfect or raw, with other KSWers by posting under the “ksw exercise” tag!Need an Example? Here’s a Poor One – Exercise 1 – The pathway was caged. Wire encased the narrow strip of overgrown walkway between the looming trees, almost like some sort of birdcage.But if this was a birdcage, I was the bird.My feet moved as if I was waiting for one twig to snap, something to set me running back the way I’d come. My hands floated at shoulder height, palms facing the wire, but not touching it. Sometimes I liked to let my fingers graze the wall as I walked, but this wasn’t a wall I wanted to touch. The fencing looked hand-crafted—a long, distorted cage woven from wire strong enough to choke someone. I was afraid to touch it. Afraid it might come alive and wrap a noose around my neck.Something caught my eye. I paused. A leaf, caught between the tangled web, dangled above my head like a fragile Christmas ornament. The leaf was old, shriveled and rigid and long since dead. But it wasn’t the leaf that earned my attention—it was what nestled between the wrinkles.I squinted at the white speck, no bigger than a nickel, and I watched it work its way toward the stem with tiny legs. Delicate wings flattened, fringed at the tips, softer than the flesh of a newborn. All I had to do was breathe too deeply and I set the moth into a flurried escape. A rift of wind between the trees carried the moth between the wire and into the nearby bushes, where it disappeared.I almost braved touching the fence, as if to follow after it. But, a hairline away from the gnarled wire, my hand stopped. My arm retracted.If this was a birdcage, it wasn’t designed to keep things out. It was designed to keep things in. Exercise 2 – I didn’t watch horror movies for a good reason. A very good reason.I kept my limbs buckled tight against my body as I took tiny shuffling steps against the hard dirt ground. A cage surrounded the path, which winded between the dense overgrowth of the forest.Was the cage meant to protect the path? It wasn’t much of a path, honestly. More like a sidle-space as narrow as the room between parked cars. Whatever the case, I wasn’t real big on cages, no. And I especially wasn’t real big on this particular cage, how it looked hand-crafted—a long, distorted cage woven from wire strong enough to choke a person. I was afraid to touch it. Afraid it might come alive and wrap a noose around my neck. I was even afraid to breathe too heavily on it.Gosh darn it, I was even afraid to blink.Something shifted above my head and I flinched away with a squeal in my throat.Oh, it was only a leaf.I planted my hand against my chest, heart ramming my ribs, as I braved a peek up at the leaf. The simple, harmless leaf, dangled like a fragile Christmas ornament, old and shriveled and rigid. Long since dead.But when I looked closer, I noticed something nestled in the bones of the leaf. Remember, these are purely examples and not a set of rules to tell anyone the right way to write – there’s no such thing. Take the examples as only one way to approach the exercises. Then, make your own. -- source link
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