One of my most favorite things about writing is dialogue. I enjoy thinking about how people sound when speaking. What type of words would this character use? What type of punctuation? Do they have an accent? What gestures would they use?
To me, these sorts of things have a big impact on how the character is viewed. So while content (what they are saying) is important, I feel how they are saying something is almost as important.
This is one factor for me as a reader that can really throw me off and disrupt my reading experience. The personality, age, sex, nationality and so on of the character and their manner of speaking need to match. So I work hard to achieve this synergy for my readers.
I can't claim to be unique in my feeling of the importance of character's voices. Stephen King talks about a similar idea in his book "On Writing".
Another idea that he highlights that I agree with is his concept that writers need to create and follow a situation rather than worrying about plotting.
What I do is come up with an idea for a book then develop my characters and put them in the situation and see what happens. That's the fun part- seeing what the characters will do.
For anyone wanting to write a novel, I highly recommend reading "On Writing" as well as Stephen King's novels. A lot of writing craft can be understood by studying master story tellers.
To me, these sorts of things have a big impact on how the character is viewed. So while content (what they are saying) is important, I feel how they are saying something is almost as important.
This is one factor for me as a reader that can really throw me off and disrupt my reading experience. The personality, age, sex, nationality and so on of the character and their manner of speaking need to match. So I work hard to achieve this synergy for my readers.
I can't claim to be unique in my feeling of the importance of character's voices. Stephen King talks about a similar idea in his book "On Writing".
Another idea that he highlights that I agree with is his concept that writers need to create and follow a situation rather than worrying about plotting.
What I do is come up with an idea for a book then develop my characters and put them in the situation and see what happens. That's the fun part- seeing what the characters will do.
For anyone wanting to write a novel, I highly recommend reading "On Writing" as well as Stephen King's novels. A lot of writing craft can be understood by studying master story tellers.
Here is a good summary of "On Writing": http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/...
Enjoy!