The Voices in your Head

(And Other Things That Will Happen to You when You Become a Writer)

The Voices

Let's start with the voices. No, writers are not schizophrenic people who belong in strait-jackets.


...Probably

Every character in a story has a voice. When you read a book chances are you don't have the same voice for every character. You didn't read Hunger Games with Katniss having the same soft, feminine voice as Peeta (or is that supposed to be the other way around?)

If bread could talk it would have his sweet, honey-and-oats voice.

The same holds true for the people who write the dialogue, and I've read it numerous times by other writers, so I'm not the only one. Writers have character's voices in their heads all the time, running through dialogue, just speaking in general to get their type of personality down, heck sometimes they even argue with the writer.

Character: No, stop right there. I wouldn't do that.
Writer: What? No, you have to do this, For the plot's sake.
Character: I won't. I'm not that kind of person. Make someone else do it.
Writer: But you have to! Without it I've got a gaping hole in the story!
Character: Yes, but it wouldn't be me.
Writer: Ugh! Fine! I'll fix it.
Character: Thank you.
Writer: Jerk.

At the same time, this can also explain how, in more poorly-written stories, all the character's dialogue sounds the same. In the writer's head, they all have different voices. Sometimes you have to stand back, remove the voice from the dialogue, and see if you can still tell one character apart from another.

You Ruin Plots in Other Stories for Yourself

Chekhov's Guns, Red Herrings, Plot Holes, things of This caliber are always running through my head.

It really ruins things.

Since becoming a writer I've been able to not only spot Chekhov's Guns, but also when they will be employed. I can't turn my brain off, no matter how hard I try. As a writer your Suspension of Disbelief is not only shot, but dead and gathering flies. You hyper-analyze movies, books, everything. Take it apart, figure out how it works, and then when you try to put it back together so that the magic can work again, it doesn't. (Which is basically summed up by this comic.)


I tried looking up an image to represent Chekhov's Gun, but the
results were weird. so here's a picture of some Fennec Foxes.

That's just my theory though. Maybe it's not because I'm a writer. It could be because I'm all grown up now, or because books and movies are all starting to become the same thing churned out over and over, or I'm just particularly jaded. Seriously, it would be like trying to watch The Sixth Sense and feel the same surprise at the twist ending that you did the first time (which, actually, I had figured out early on, thus ruining it anyway)
Still, I have to admit that I don't always see something coming. So that when it does, it always gets me in a big way. That, combined with being a writer, definitely makes ruining stuff for me worth it.

You Run with Every Stupid Little Idea


I'm sitting on a toilet.



A toilet that only a rich, successful novelist can afford.

Bam, an angel bursts through the window and tells me I have to save the world before whisking me away. He's actually kind of cute.
I'm eating at a restaurant.

Bam, the incarnation of Death sits down at my table and tells me I have a week to live. He's actually kind of cute.

I'm cooking dinner.

Bam, someone breaks into my house and my immaterial lifestyle, combined with my apathetic attitude toward life at the sight of his gun, causes the housebreaker to stop and think about what he's doing. He's actually kind of cute.

Every little thought that runs though my head is like a little piece of snow that rolls down a mountain, gathering more as it goes and, before I know it, I've got at least a ten-thousand word story in my head. Sometimes they get discarded, sometimes they keep nagging at me until I pause at the story I was working on to crank a first draft of this one out so that it will finally leave me alone or, at least, stop nagging me as badly.

Everything has Inspiration

Much like the previous statement, everywhere can give you an idea. Not just places, either. I think the first sprouting thoughts of Dusted came from the grocery store line. I had sort of let my eyes glaze over and was listening to the sounds of the checkstands. They'd recently updated some of the machines, but the problem was that now all the boop! sounds had varying tones. It sounded like a game of Pong. Who thinks of videogames? Kids. I looked around and someone was buying bean dip and a couple of other items.

What if...

What if there were kids, buying bean dip, and one of them was thinking about how all the busy register noises sounded like a game of Pong?

It eventually coalesced into a story about an underground rebel group that formed after videogames were banned (and actually was going to play out a lot like Cory Doctorow's Little Brother.) I never got a single word into the story, but it does surface in my brain from time to time. Anyway, the point is: I got an entire story started from the noises of an item being dragged across a scanner at a grocery store.


STOP GIVING ME INSPIRATION!

Being a writer is more than writing. It's more than even planning and researching and publishing and selling books. It's like an entire rewiring of every sense of your brain. A blessing and a curse. When a computer-programmer looks at a hairbrush he sees nothing. When a stylist sees a line of C++ she sees a blob of letters on a screen. When a writer looks at either one he's got voices in his head and worlds and plots and ideas.

So maybe that strait-jacket idea isn't too far off.