Thoughts About Voices

[joandarck.livejournal.com]

Please assume IMHOs sprinkled liberally throughout, okay?


So, I'm here to talk about character voices, or specifically, dialogue. As a fanfic reader, voices are very important to me. Life is short and I don't want to just read a decent story: I want to feel that it's definitely about characters from the show. Getting dialogue to sound right isn't the most important thing; you could have an excellent story where the characters never speak at all. But I do think it's vital not to get it wrong.

A story that gets the dialogue wrong breaks the spell for me faster than anything. No matter how excellently written it is or how well it pushes my buttons, it's all over if a British character sounds obviously American or a Tolkein elf starts shouting "F–-k me, Gimli, f--k me!" (Real. Life. Example. Don't make me come back there and give you the URL.)

Of course, there are lots of ways to get it right. Maybe you're able to write dialogue that sounds like the actors are reading it to you off the page. Maybe you can present a perfect character POV. Maybe you make the characters so your own that anything they say becomes right by definition. But the rest of us have a problem.

Part of the problem being that the dialogue on the show isn't necessarily 'consistent.' Of course, real people aren't that simple and predictable. And different episodes had different writers. Above all, an actor can force any line to become part of a coherent characterization just by saying it. You hear it in the same voice, you see the same face, and if the acting sells it, you accept it. Take Fraser: he favours lengthy speeches and formal phrasing, but he also says "gonna" and "You got it." But try giving him those lines in a story: it doesn't exactly scream 'Fraser!'

And retreating to the opposite end of the scale and using nothing but recognizable phrases becomes cliche, which is also bad for the reader. Everyone's entitled to the occasional "Greatness" and the smorgasbord of Fraser's nervous tics, but pile them on all at once and all it conveys is "You are reading fanfic."

The positive side to this inconsistency is it means, for Due South, you've got a lot of room to manoeuver before dialogue becomes truly wrong. Fraser can swear and RayK can make flowery speeches: that's canon. So if most of the story consists of things-they-wouldn't-necessarily-NOT-say, that's probably good enough.

And one great thing for fan fiction writers, speaking as a reader, is we know what you're aiming for and we want it to work; give us a smidge of what we came for and we will do our best to meet you halfway. Still, a willing reader asks only a decent canvas to project onto; a picky reader wants to be forced to see. (I don't mean that in some judgmental sense, we all read differently in different moods.) To bring the feeling home, you have to take your base of not-wrong and add more.

For purposes of argument, I'm going to say that I've noticed two approaches:

1) Imitate the episodes. Make it a priority to reproduce the characters' language and mannerisms. Pepper your field of not-wrong with careful descriptions of recognizable moments, so the reader says "Yes. I can see that."

Also, creating the right mood around a line can sell it more than the words – if the emotions and situation are familiar, a simple line can seem oh-so-right. If you're convinced RayK's nervous, if Fraser's in his space, if his voice breaks a little, then suddenly it's not just the word "Okay," it's RayK's "Okay." Oh sorry, is my slash bias showing?

If you veer from canon, keep it in the spirit: for example, the issue of swearing. You can take the level of swearing seen on the show as canon and stick to it, or you can figure the kind of "Chicago hard guy" these cops are supposed to be would swear more, and show them that way, without altering the essential characterisation. Like changing key but not the melody.

2) Do your own thing well. Write something that's not what you'd see if you put on the DVD, but it's internally consistent. Use your own style, your own narrative viewpoint, your own type of subject matter. It doesn't have to have crimes or rubber ducks. If the story is good in itself and the characterization is still recognizable, then readers can transpose from your world to their own notions of Due South without trouble. Rather like identifying with a song on the radio: the details differ, but the emotional meaning is universal.

In fact, 'right' dialogue can break the mood of one of these stories as badly as 'wrong' can. If we're drifting along on an elegant narrative voice full of deep feeling and suddenly Ray Kowalski mentions "our skinny asses" – whiplash!

So, in summary: On the show, the actors lend the characters reality. We can't count on getting the same effect just by using dialogue that might have been said on the show. So we try to use the phrases or describe the habits that most strongly suggest the character. But that attempt leads naturally to stereotype, giving predictable dialogue and exaggerated, simplified characterization (e.g. Prissy Aunt Fraser.)

There: one way to state the problem. Any thoughts? I'm very curious how other people think about these things. Also, china_shop suggested that I include some examples of dialogue that works for me. What a very good idea that would have been to follow. So if instead of talking theory you'd like to provide examples of lines that sound just right to you, the ones that really force you to hear the voice, please share.

Comments

[doylefan22.livejournal.com]

Interesting Essay.

One tip I'd like to add is something I use a lot. I try to always have an image of the characters I'm writing about there for me to look at whilst I'm writing. It helps me focus on who I'm writing for and stops them in my head becoming generic characters. I'm not entirely sure why this works but I always find it very helpful.

[buzzylittleb.livejournal.com]

Personally, my big fear is making the characters sound too much like me. Dialogue tends to run in my head, and as somebody whose range of spoken expresion veers from the extremely Fraserish to RayK-esque paraphrases of classical texts, I do worry about it too much.

[china_shop]

Um, hi! *waves* Coming back to this ages late (I meant to comment at the time, but /o\ *loses*), this makes me think about AUs. How much the characters have to be like themselves, how much lenience we're willing to allow while still considering them in character, how recognisable they can be outside their familiar context. What's more, people have written them with quite different speech patterns (historical AUs, for example) and still kept their characters (more or less) intact. So there must be something essentially them that can transcend exact duplication of speech.

Hmm, this is making less sense than I thought it would. *waves again, dorkily*

Part of the problem being that the dialogue on the show isn't necessarily 'consistent.'

This is very true.

[llassah.livejournal.com]

Good essay- writing in stereotypes is an easy way to do things- copying and pasting dialogue from the show et cetera. It's so important to delineate between 'in character' and 'cardboard cutout'. Much of the joy in writing fanfic is taking the characters out of situations where they will behave predictably, and poke them with a stick. And the 'x factor'? It seperates the Good from the Great, (and still eludes me *g*)

British writers also have another problem with this: the American idiom. Sometimes the speech patterns I use sound, well, mary poppinsish. Fraser (bless him) has said 'golly', but he'd never go down the 'cor blimey guv'nor' route, and RayK has said 'hell', but wouldn't say 'bloody hell', and syntax is different. So there's 'what would fraser/rayk/rayv do/say', and there's also 'what would someone speaking americanish say?'Apart from that, though, it's a complete doss (sigh).