Narrative Voice

flickr photo by moriza

It has taken a long time for me to recognize narrative voice as the heart and soul of my stories. Every writer develops a narrative voice with every story he tells, but skilled writers are more conscious of it as the underlying spirit of their works and they are able to use voice as a creative element. I have tended to step back and 'let the story tell itself'. But even that is a form of narrative, expressing who the teller is by his absence. In other words, if you don't step brashly forward, the reader will invent you as an aloof being they are trying to piece together from your script!

Readers want a sense of the story-teller. He cannot escape being part of his story.

More on that another time. What struck me this morning is narrative voice as the essence that separates literature from every other art form. Film and theatre can incorporate narrative voice, but when they do they are really straying into the realm of literature and it is a device they can only use sparingly. Their audiences want immediacy. They want to experience action through their own senses, not interpreted through the intellectual and emotional lenses of a story-teller.

This is what will perpetuate literature as an art form. Whether the narrative voice speaks from the pages of a book, through a book reader, in a YouTube clip, or even in a collaborative work with other art forms such as film or dance, the narrative voice is that distinctive quality that readers and listeners want to experience as part of the story.

There is an intimacy to writing that other art forms do not share. The reader or listener is actually allowing the writer to blossom inside his or her own brain as a narrative voice, and the reader as participant is creating a story with the writer. That is the beauty of the form. It is the same intimacy that people share around a café table or in a conversation with a friend. Or (for those with the courage to write this way), the dreadful intimacy of talking to someone you detest but cannot get away from.

For anyone who thinks literature is somehow passé I have one phrase to utter as my perpetuating mantra: Narrative Voice.

Getting Into Character

A couple of weeks ago, at Open Studio, we sat down with actors Kyle Cassie and Emilie Ullerup to pick their brains about 'Getting into Character'. I mean, who better to ask than people who make a living stepping into and out of roles. What an eye opener!

First, a tribute to actors. I never realized how hard they have to work to take on a persona. I sort of assumed the ability to act is something you're born with. Sure, you have to study theatre to bring out your talent, but in the same way that watering a rose results in a rose every time.

Kyle and Emilie set us straight on that score. They work hard. They meditate on character. They walk through the world in their characters' shoes. They look for settings and experiences to immerse themselves in. One of the techniques they talked about was method acting, a process of absorbing the feelings of your character so you can express them realistically.

A few points they made:

• There's always a bit of 'you' in the character;
• The motives of characters are either 'power' or 'love';
• If a scene is not necessary to move the action forward in a script, cut it.

While I still have some chewing to do on what we learned, the session exhilarated me. It definitely gave me some new approaches to developing character. Most importantly, their techniques for exploring new roles can be used by me to break out of what I will refer to as my character set. If I read my stories, I find the same characters emerging over and over. I know these characters and have become comfortable working with them. Which is not a bad thing. But it would also be good to stretch as a writer and a human being, and get inside the skin of some new characters.

Joy and Wonder

I will add to the Joy and Wonder of my World.
That's my mission. It's taken a long time to identify and formulate into a declarative sentence, but the urge has been with me since I was a child. It's never been the kind of motive you could put forward as a raison d'etre in a world governed by pay cheques and time stamps, but thank God it hasn't been snuffed out during 50 plus years of practical living.
Now when I am asked, why are you here, I have an answer. In a pinch, I can even cut the phrase down to three quick words: Joy and Wonder.