Before I start, thank you to all who read my previous blog and sent me emails or commented. Your kindness and support mean a lot to me, and I know that many people felt comfort reading your responses to that article about how hard the hustle can be.
After writing that piece and getting your suggestions, I’ve decided to take a little vacation during a no-narration-work week and visit my kiddo at college. We’ll be prepping food for their freezer so they can eat something besides ramen, and I’ll have some quiet time to myself to write, relax, and reflect. Feels like a really good use of the empty space on my calendar. Phew!

Now…

Quick tips when you’re crafting characters:

When working on your portrayal of characters, sometimes we think of the character’s VOICE. We think: This person needs to be low and boomy, or this person needs to be higher pitched.

Thinking of sound and tone can be helpful, but it can also be limiting.

What if you don’t have a huge range? What if you don’t want to ‘do’ a male/female voice? What if you can’t go super low or super high with your characters?

What do you DO?

A Few Pointers:

• Remember to focus on making your characters distinct within the chapter.

  Even if there’s a cast of 1,000 your goal is to make it clear who is speaking in each section. So don’t think about the 1,000 characters in the entire book. That’s overwhelming. Look at your characters notes for vocal choices and then…just focus on the three people talking in the chapter you’re recording. Make those characters in that scene or chapter distinct and discernable from each other. It’s more manageable.

• When voicing a character of a gender different than yours, don’t think just about pitch. Think about CHARACTER.

  Look at the character in the scene. How are they behaving? What do they want? Are they mad, nervous, excited? If you can zero in on a character’s emotions, you can lean into that emotion instead of leaning into the voice. Does that make sense? I’ve heard acting teachers say things like “An emotion is playable”. So, simplify the emotion of that character to a word like ANGRY or SCARED or HOPEFUL, hold that word in your mind during the scene you’re reading, and lean into the emotion. That emotion will inform how you voice the character. Suddenly, it’s not just a sound of voice, but the voice of a person.

• Accents are helpful with characters but remember there are different strengths of accents.

  If you have a lot of characters from the same place, think of Goldilocks. Who likes the porridge cold, who likes it hot, and who likes it just right? Or in other words, who has a super light accent, who has a super heavy accent, and who is neutral? You can play a lot with the thickness of accents.

To read more tips, see this article where I talk about different qualities you can use to craft your characters. Sometimes, though, all you really need to do is lock into the writing the author has created, zero in on the emotion, and the characters will follow naturally.

Did you like these quick tips? Want more? Let Tanya know!

ABOUT TANYA EBY

Tanya likes baths, which is nice, because she believes in smelling good. She also likes cheesecake, which is not so nice when she’s trying to lose weight, but nice in every other way. She’s enjoying watching SILO and MURDER 101 right now and she’s reading a book about the moon and aliens, but she can’t tell you the title because she can never remember titles. Or names. Or streets. Or what she was doing five minutes ago. She writes, narrates, and bakes. Here’s a ridiculously tasty (pretty sweet, though) recipe she made a couple of weeks ago:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/8088/gooey-butter-cake-iii/