Clubis

A musing of the various components of voice. Upon reflection, it appears that I enjoy writing with many narrative voices. Until recently, I always thought that the differences in my styles were merely a matter of tone. That is, until I caught people off-guard by establishing the hastily egomaniacal conclusion in my most recent blog (more on that later).

So today I will make my best attempts to analyze and personify each of my favorite voices, and hopefully my efforts will provide some useful results applicable to your own writing endeavors.

Before I begin, I’d like to understand the distinctions betwixt these narrative voices and my own character. While there is obviously a part of me in every voice I use (they are supposed to represent me after all), some are more exaggerated than others. In real life conversation with all but my closest friends, I am almost if not exactly like I am in the responses to my posts, albeit far less outspoken. My specific grammar and style in general can be attributed mostly to nineteenth century political philosophy books, which is sufficiently odd, but not enough to really explain the ATTITUDE, TONE, and METHOD, which all combine to form VOICE.

The first character I will examine is Ricky. I believe he was my first creation to diverge from my usual attitude and tone, and was probably developed at about the same time when the notion of voice first began to occur to me subconsciously. I was about fifteen at the time, and he was my attempt to be cool and humorous.

I’ve never liked the phrase “be yourself.” What if you don’t know exactly who you are yet? You can be anyone you want to be (you know what I mean), and I believe you can change or perhaps develop different areas of who you are. While perhaps “deep down” you are always going to be disposed to act a certain way, I believe that in the great “nurture vs. nature” debate, nurture wins out and affects your character ninety percent of the time.

In my case, I was always made fun of in sports. I was not very coordinated in my youth, and spent my baseball career as a benchwarmer. When kids teased me, I never said anything in response because I didn’t want to sink to their level. That was who I was. If I kept on being myself, nothing would ever change. My life would have kept going in that direction, which may arguably not have been a bad thing, but was not the type of life I wanted. So I changed who I was. Slightly.

When kids teased me, rather than take it or give it back, I’d say something funny or clever to point out how pointless they were being. And it couldn’t hurt to practice more often either, and I ended up hitting a homerun in one of my later years.

This is the breakdown of Ricky:

ATTITUDE: Happy to be alive.

He’s cool and good at sports. He gets all the girls and is very popular. He is intelligent, but not excessively so. Ricky pretty much embodies all the things that I never was but always wanted to be.

TONE: Energetic.

METHOD: Casual and laid-back, but with a hint of craziness.

When I write in the voice of Ricky, I usually begin with him having complete control over the situation, and then having someone a bit smarter undermine his strategy and make things turn out rather how he didn’t want them. Take a look at my previous blog “Interview With Socrates” for a good example of this.

In syntax, things follow from one thing to the next in an assuredly logical but humorous way. To cite examples of contemporary literature, think of a combination of Scott Adams and Douglas Adams. And no, they aren’t related.

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The next voice we’ll be examining is what I’ve just decided to name Mark.

Mark is an egomaniac, megalomaniac, and a super genius. I’ll get right to the breakdown:

ATTITUDE: I AM SUPERIOR TO YOU IN ALL WAYS! BOW BEFORE ME!

TONE: I WILL RULE THE WORLD!!!

METHOD: Whatever he’s talking about, eventually it all comes down to how he is far superior to you mere mortals, of which he refers to as “the common populace.” Mere facts do not matter, for as long as he can make people believe that he is right and surrender to him all of their liberty, then things are good.

I used a form of this voice to write my most recent post about the survey. In context, I was sick of completely making up all of the data from the survey, and just decided to get to the point of me ruling the world.

I must confess that this is probably my favorite voice to write with; however the response it gets is often sub-optimal. Also, it is the voice least similar to how I am in person. Usually. When people comment that I have a huge ego when I write like that, they are absolutely right… to a degree. They are correct when they say it’s egotistical, but they miss that I intended it to be that way for shameful comedic effect. It isn’t so much me, but rather the voice I used.

For contemporary examples, think of Dogbert. Mark is Dogbert to the core, so really that’s the only example you need. If you don’t know who Dogbert is, get out from under that rock, but first recall Plankton from Sponge Bob Square Pants. If you’re still lost, I can no longer help you.

I’ll write more about a magical* thing called “The NRC” in upcoming posts, where you’ll see the Mark in me show a little more, however in a much less inflated way. You know, like, I’ll actually employ modesty.

Modesty? Bah! Who needs it? Pfff… foolish mortal.

*If you are squeamish around the term “magical,” probably because I didn’t refer to it in the context of Christian allegory, you may mentally replace it with “really cool.”

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My third and final major voice is that of Socrates. It’s obviously based on the actual Socrates, and the breakdown follows:

ATTITUDE: Outwardly respectful. The goal of life is to discover the best life, which so far means the life of the philosopher.

TONE: Soft but sharp. Sort of passive-aggressive.

METHOD: He first understands how you see the world and how you form your beliefs, and then (with a soft smile) tears your logic to shreds until you agree with him or walk away inwardly infuriated.

This is a new voice for me, and I quickly learned of its inherent ineffectiveness in arguing with someone who bases his or her beliefs on faulty logic but ardently believes that he or she is right. If you start picking out incongruities in a person’s belief system, he or she becomes very angry very quickly. However, when someone can pose his or her arguments logically, you can learn so much more from being a Socrates than you would have ever thought possible.

Let me put it like this: when someone is on his or her deathbed, don’t make him or her try to prove the truth of his or her religion if you’d like to have a pleasant conversation. You can’t say you weren’t warned…

So there is my treatise on the three major voices I use, which, when combined, create the powerful white light of VOICE you’re hearing right now.

One cool thing about establishing a voice is that you can usually change one or (sometimes) two of the three attributes I outlined above and still distinguish the major character beneath the words.

For example, if I keep the same ATTITUDE and TONE of Ricky, but manipulate the intelligently grammatical METHOD, you could get something like my minor character I call “Da bRuCe.”

Like so:

The “Inna” Style

Yo Hommies! Wussup? Dis is Da bRuCe here to chil yo crib, dawg! Wussup again! I gotta say wussup juss one mo time! WUSSUP!!! Stayin’ coo is a tough biz but if y’all stick wit me you’ll be bigga than the moon on a summa night, iight? K, man. First we gotta talk ‘bout your wicked style called the “inna style”. The “inna style” is wut u all about that not on the “outta style.” It’s wut makes up you.

My inna style is offf the heezzy, dawg! To find yo inna style, don’t use an x-ray, man! Juss look inside yo wit yo mind! Is yo inna style all packed away, dude? If it is, you juss gotta let it go! Juss let em all go, dawg!! My inna style is blue sometimes and red some other, but it’s always my inna style no matter what! Rememmer yo inna style and let it out!!!

The astute reader can see that beneath the “ghetto” finish are the true colors of a nice kid trying to explain how it’s who you are on the inside that counts, and that your outward appearance should reflect your inner self. It’s poetic, really. In fact, VOICE is exactly where poetry and insipid “legal text” converge.

Of course I’m leaving out the fact that having a voice makes writing several gazillion times easier, but you probably know this already.

Until next time, remember that there’s a little bit of Ricky, Mark, and Socrates in all of us.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Philosophy, Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.