{"id":525,"date":"2010-10-26T14:55:17","date_gmt":"2010-10-26T18:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=525"},"modified":"2011-01-17T10:27:53","modified_gmt":"2011-01-17T15:27:53","slug":"gaias-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/gaias-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaia’s Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nan Mercado, my editor, asked me the other day how I came up with Gaia\u2019s voice and how I developed it, and I had no idea how to answer her.\u00a0 What\u2019s strange is that I know Gaia inside and out.\u00a0 I know her personality, and how she talks, acts, and thinks.\u00a0 Her belongings have history.\u00a0 How she perceives her world and how that changes are all part of her, too.\u00a0 I know her so completely that when I wrote a little story about Gaia at age eleven last week, the younger version of Gaia appeared to me whole and ready to go, entirely consistent with the more mature version in Birthmarked<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Yet knowing a character completely is not the same thing as knowing how I came up with her voice, let alone how I developed it, so I\u2019ve been pondering this.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard for me to isolate her voice from her behavior or gestures, as if it were coming at me over a phone line.\u00a0 Voice, I realize, isn\u2019t just what Gaia says and how she says it, although there are words that have sounded wrong from her so I\u2019ve changed them.\u00a0 It\u2019s also what she thinks, and the gap between what she thinks and what she says.\u00a0 It\u2019s what she doesn\u2019t say.<\/p>\n

Writing in third person, as I did for Birthmarked<\/em>, doesn\u2019t allow for many opportunities to deliver Gaia\u2019s thoughts directly.\u00a0 I did, occasionally, with italics, but italics risk being distracting, especially if they\u2019re too frequent.\u00a0 I\u2019m looking at a passage here and I see that what I did instead was give Gaia\u2019s reactions, and when they\u2019re important, her feelings.\u00a0 I don\u2019t usually notice this when I\u2019m writing, because it\u2019s all mixed in with imagining the scene, but take a look.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a passage from Chapter Two, when Sgt. Grey is examining the satchel Gaia keeps her midwifery supplies in:<\/p>\n

He then turned the satchel inside out and examined the cloth, every seam and ripple of the brown, gray and white fabric.\u00a0 Gaia\u2019s father had lovingly sewn each stitch, making a thing of beauty as well as a strong, practical bag that fit comfortably over Gaia\u2019s shoulder.\u00a0 She felt like the satchel was part of her, and watching Sgt. Grey\u2019s examination of the cloth and its contents felt like a keen violation of her privacy, all the more because his fingers were meticulous and careful in their movements.<\/em><\/p>\n

His hands stilled on the cloth and he looked over at her finally, his expression neutral.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t tell if he was relieved or disappointed.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re young,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n

His comment surprised her, and she saw no reason to answer.\u00a0 Besides, she could say the same thing to him.\u00a0 He straightened, then exhaled with a sigh and started putting her things back in the satchel.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d she said, stepping forward to the table.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll do it.\u00a0 I need to clean my things anyway.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She hardly says<\/em> anything, but she\u2019s vulnerable and watching intently so we know what she\u2019s thinking.\u00a0 There\u2019s a pleasing little mental turn in the word \u201cBesides.\u201d\u00a0 Around that word, we get to see her mind move from surprise, to privacy, to a sort of annoyance, and then when she finally speaks, the only thing she reveals is her competence.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid what I\u2019ve discovered is that I can\u2019t separate voice from the rest of the way I write.\u00a0 It\u2019s completely enmeshed with character, scene, and plot.\u00a0 I\u2019d be curious to know what other writers think about voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nan Mercado, my editor, asked me the other day how I came up with Gaia\u2019s voice and how I developed it, and I had no idea how to answer her.\u00a0 What\u2019s strange is that I know Gaia inside and out.\u00a0 I know her personality, and how she talks, acts, and thinks.\u00a0 Her belongings have history.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[29,37],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked","category-writing","tag-gaia","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":731,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}