Pleased to meet you

On April 6, 2011, Wendy wrote, …I’m trying to write a story that has a lot of characters, and they all have an important part in the story. But I’m not sure if I need to show my main character meeting them all, or if she should just know them when the story begins. How should I introduce everyone? How specific do I need to be, and how much should I assume on the part of the reader? Would it be confusing for me to throw characters in there without an introduction? How soon should I show character developing scenes for them?

I discussed a similar question about a year ago, in my post of June 23rd, 2010, so you may want to look at that.

Novels, especially ones with an old-fashioned tone, occasionally begin with a list of characters and brief character descriptions, just as you see when you read a play. This device is sometimes used when there are many characters. Might go something like this:

Abigail – Twenty-something, ramrod-straight posture, perfect diction, wholehearted about everything she undertakes, first in a long line of seamstresses to complete her college education, assistant to the comptroller of a manufacturer of sports socks.

Bartholomew – Fourteen, narrow face, narrow shoulders, small for his age but no one dares tease him because he’s master of the secret revenge, ninth grader studying masters-level physics. Son of Abigail’s boss.

Christopher – sentient lizard, three inches long, brown-and-green scales, Abigail’s pet although she is unaware of his special powers.

And so on, offering the information that you, the author, want the reader to know.

The advantage is that you don’t have to introduce the characters inside the story. They can just walk on when their turn comes, again as in a play, and the reader can thumb back to the beginning to find out who’s made an entrance. Of course, as the story progresses, the characters won’t remain static. The author still has to develop them, and the thumbnails don’t cover very much.

The disadvantage is that the reader has to thumb back and forth until he gets to know the characters. Some don’t mind this; I’m not fond of it. On the other hand, an e-reader, which I have no experience with, may make this jumping around a snap.

Since there are no laws of story writing, you can develop your own form. You might give each major character her own scene at the beginning so she’s fixed in the reader’s mind. Naturally, the scenes have to be interesting, and it will help if they connect with the events that follow. Then you can launch the body of the story in whatever POV you like.

But if you prefer standard storytelling, I’d say variety is the key. You can have your main meet one or two of the characters for the first time. The others she may already know.

What I would avoid is a blitz of new characters. If your main, Toni, goes to a party and meets the twelve significant characters all at once, the reader is likely to be overloaded no matter how clever you are at setting them apart. Suppose you arrange it as a memory game. Toni may even see it this way. She’s trying to remember the people along with the reader, so she’s thinking, I met Ken and Karen in the kitchen. Look at that! Two K’s in the kitchen, which starts with a k. Ken was washing dishes and whistling, Clean Ken. Karen dropped the bag of potato chips. Klutzy Karen. Toni stays with them for a while and gets a deeper impression of each, which she passes along to the reader.

A little later, while she waits in the hallway to get into the bathroom, she chats with Beryl. Look at that, Beryl and bathroom, more alliteration! Beryl reveals secrets about the host that she shouldn’t. Toni and the reader are put off by her lack of discretion.

You tour Toni from room to room through the party, introducing characters. You’ve done a great job. When the chapter ends, the reader has a fix on everybody.

The problem is that if Karen doesn’t show up again until four more chapters go by, your reader may recognize her name and may remember that she’s Klutzy Karen, but little else. Your hard work in the first chapter was wasted.

Of course, some characters are memorable whenever they appear. The reader is likely to remember Christopher, the sentient lizard, even if fifty pages go by between appearances – unless your other characters include five other thinking animals. A potential love interest is likely to stand out and be remembered, likewise a character who threatens the safety of your main.

The advantage of a first-time meeting is that you don’t need an excuse to describe the new character. Toni will be paying particular attention to someone unfamiliar. She’ll notice Abigail’s erect posture and perfect speech. However, if she’s known Abigail for three years, you’ll have a harder time revealing these traits. You’ll need a hook. You can have Bartholomew comment on Abigail’s characteristics, if he’s likely to. You can have Abigail herself say something about them, for example, if someone made fun of her, she can tell her pal Toni about the ridicule. Or you can have the traits become temporarily prominent in Toni’s mind, as in, Abigail was freaked. She always talked like every word was worth ten dollars, but today each one was a museum piece. I wanted to hug her, but she was standing so straight and sharp I thought I might cut myself.

If you bring characters in only as they’re needed, the new entries will be fresh when they appear. Some may be necessary only for a scene or two, and you don’t have to burden the reader with remembering them from an earlier point in the story.

In the comments that followed my recent post called “Foggy First Page” I was surprised at how many people are untroubled by ambiguity, so I wouldn’t worry much about starting new characters in the middle of your story. A common writer’s maxim is: Trust the reader. If Bartholomew barges into Abigail’s work cubicle ranting about Chaos Theory, the reader will probably be willing to wait to understand him and his role in the story.

As for character-developing scenes, I suggest you reveal your other characters’ development only in relation to your main. If Bartholomew is your main, for example, and Abigail an important secondary, she will be fleshed out as needed in relation to Bartholomew. If Abigail’s emotional growth isn’t important to him, it doesn’t matter how her character evolves. You don’t want to distract the reader from the thrust of your tale.

A few prompts:

• Christopher the lizard is the main character in a love story between him and – you pick, another lizard or anybody else, a different animal, an extra-terrestrial, a human, an elf. Abigail and Bartholomew are important secondary characters. Write the story.

• Write a cast-of-characters list along with short descriptions of each one. Start a story in which you rely on your list and bring on your characters as if the reader has always known them.

• Make a cast-of-characters list for a story you’re already working on. Rewrite your first three chapters (or as much as you like) relying on the list and not repeating any of the information. Then drop the list and descriptions and put back in only what you need to help the reader identify these characters. Do you find that you have to return your story to its original state, or have you been able to leave some material out? Is your revision leaner?

• Write the party scene I started above. Have Toni meet lots of people and make as many as possible memorable. This may be a lively party, with arguments, food fights, vigorous dancing, whatever.

• Toni is twelve years old. She’s just been taken to her new foster home. It’s dinnertime, and she’s meeting the characters in her new, large family. Write the scene and as much that follows as you like.

Have fun and save what you write!

The Scene-ic Route

Before I start, you may not know this but June is National Audio Book Month. It’s also forty-two Other-Things Month, like Accordion Awareness, Turkey Lovers, Papaya (also September – greedy papaya people), Dairy, and, weirdly, Dairy Alternative. My favorite is Bathroom Reading. Really! Here’s the link: http://womeninbusiness.about.com/od/diversityeventcalendars/a/nat-month-june.htm. See for yourself.

Back to National Audio Book Month, Random House is releasing a CD audio book of Dave at Night, and I was interviewed to promote the release. If you go to my website and click on videos, you can watch it. I like the interview and I’m thrilled about the release. Dave at Night is probably my least known novel and possibly my favorite. The reading is also my favorite of all my book recordings, so I hope the audio book finds lots of listeners.

Also, I missed an opportunity in last week’s post. I made up this passage: Marisette gizoxed down the previo at zyonga speed. If the ashymi didn’t boosheg, she’d find herself and the precious kizage in the boiling svik and all would be owped. But I didn’t think of mentioning “Jabberwocky,” Lewis Carroll’s amazing nonsense poem from Through the Looking Glass. The poem is full of action that’s understandable and exciting and words that either have no meaning or an elusive meaning that we can almost grasp but not quite. If you don’t know the poem, I recommend it and recommend that you read it aloud after you’ve read it to yourself a few times. Here’s the second stanza:

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

Now for the main post. On April 1, 2011, bluekiwii wrote, …I don’t have a problem with linking a few scenes together, but instead, have a problem with how the scenes fit in the grand scheme of things–in the overall storyline. I would have no problem linking two scenes together, but linking 4 or more scenes together that are very different from each other to form a cohesive story–an overall theme–is far more difficult. Still the entry gave me some food for thought. Should writers have a clear picture of what the story will be about or should you flesh out each scene, edit them to form a cohesive whole, and think of possibilities as it goes along? Personally, I want to have a good picture of what type of story I want to create, instead of spontaneously making random scenes with the same characters.

No two writers write alike, and the only wrong way to write is not to write.

I write consecutively for the most part, start to finish. Occasionally I’ll see a scene glimmering in the near distance and write it. But even though I write in order, I don’t have a clear picture of the story as a whole. In the case of the mystery I’m struggling through right now, I know the it will be solved but have no clue as to how, nor have I figured out who the villain is. But I have a detailed image of a moment at the end that will put the source of the story problem away forever.

Does this murkiness make me worry? Yes.

Some of my books have been easier to steer through than others, but my process is generally to hack my way across a plot jungle. Occasionally I climb to higher ground, but – murdering the metaphor – usually I can’t see the forest for the trees.

Meanwhile, I’m writing tons of notes, asking myself plot questions, sometimes confusing myself even more, sometimes gaining understanding.

I’ve recently been able to frame the new mystery, Beloved Elodie (although this no longer seems a fitting title), in my mind as a quest, a simple story shape that I’ve used many times and that I’m hoping will help me now. Elodie’s quest is to discover a thief, and my job alternates between throwing up obstacles and helping her out.

If you can see your story this way, as a quest, my strategy may help you too. You may not know what the obstacles will be, but you don’t have to, you only have to know that you’ll need to create them and then solve them.

I read somewhere that if you can’t express your plot in a few sentences it’s not working. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m sure that a simple story shape is easier to work with. I love simple story shapes, which may be why I go to fairytales for inspiration. The charm of a simple plot is that you can fool around, embroider, have a great time, and still rely on a straight course from start to finish. The occasions when I’ve understood the simplicity of my form have been my happiest writing experiences.

A quest is simple. Here’s another simple idea: Two characters hate each other, and the story is about their enmity and each one’s attempts to destroy the other. Maybe one character is bad and the other good, or maybe they’re both good or bad, or they’re both an ordinary complicated assortment of qualities. Three possibilities suggest themselves: one will defeat the other (a suspense story); both will be vanquished (a tragedy); they’ll come together and both triumph (a love story). Maybe this is a quest tale too, a double quest, one for each protagonist.

See if you can come up with simple story shapes you can use. Think of books you love and search for the simplicity. Hamlet can be seen as a quest for understanding, Pride and Prejudice a quest for balance. You can take these frameworks and adapt them. Probably you won’t have your hero addressed by his father’s ghost, but he could receive a mysterious communication about the death of a loved one. You can bring in false friends and true and a dastardly deed by characters who seem above reproach.

However, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the scene approach bluekiwii asks about. I like books of linked short stories, the same characters, more or less, appearing in each story. Some characters grow and change, some remain the same. There’s no overall climax but there’s drama in each story. I come to care about the important characters. The end doesn’t have to nail everything down, just has to make me feel I’ve traveled with these people and we’ve had an interesting time together.

There may be another way to look at your scenes, other than as linked short stories. If you have a bunch of scenes that don’t line up, hunt for common themes. See if the conflicts repeat. Consider what your characters want. Is there conflict in their desires? If Quinn gets what he wants, will Wendy lose out? Who from all the scenes can be your main characters?

Try writing a short summary of each scene on an index card then spread them out somewhere. Move them around. Do they fall into a natural order? Does one suggest itself as a beginning? One as the end or, if not the absolute end, as coming late in the overall story? When you think about the characters, do you see threads? Can you find a simple story shape?

You can even bring in scenes from some of your other stories that haven’t worked out but seem like they might connect thematically to the new one. Edgar in your old story can turn into Quinn with a few personality adjustments.

Not that I’ve tried it, but this seems like a wonderful way to write a book.

Some prompts courtesy of Lewis Carroll:

∙ Alice In Wonderland is beloved by many but not me, and if you adore it this prompt may not be for you. In my opinion, Alice’s actions are random. She’s curious but never concerned. She has no skin in the game, which I believe makes it a book with plot problems. So write a scene for Alice, could be a new beginning for the novel or come from a later point, that gives her a problem and a reason to do what she does. Or choose another character and make him or her the main character of a story or a novel.

∙ Reread “Jabberwocky.” There’s a simple story shape if I’ve ever seen one. Flesh it out with detail. What’s the relationship between the narrator and his (her?) son? What’s at stake in the battle? Develop other characters. Turn it into a novel if you like.

∙ From last week, incorporate nonsense words into a paragraph or a poem. Max out on the made-up words while still letting the reader gain a sense of what’s going on. If you try a poem, remember that rhyming is a snap with nonsense words. Then, if you feel like it, post your results here. I’d love to see them.

Have fun and save what you write!

Foggy first page

On March 31, 2011, Jill wrote, How confused do you think readers are willing to be in the very beginning of a story? Most of the time the reason I quit on a book is because I can only handle so much confusion on the first page. I like to be ambiguous in my stories to keep readers interested but I am afraid to do that at the beginning. Any thoughts?

Tastes differ. I’m with you, though. I’m daunted if I have to contend with too much on the first page. I’ll probably hang in a while unless the grammar is bad. If it is, I’m out. And if the confusion doesn’t clear up by the second chapter, I’m done – unless something in the incomprehensibility has charmed me.

Recently I began The Good Son by Craig Nova, definitely a serious novel for adults. I don’t read much literary fiction and the jacket copy got me worried that I’d be in over my head. But the beginning of the book was so welcoming that I jumped right in. Here’s the first sentence: My father is a coarse, charming man, a lawyer, and a good one, and when I was flying over the desert and the German pursuit pilot began pouring round after round into my plane (a P-40), I was thinking of how I learned to drive, and how it affected my father.

What an achievement this sentence is! Three topics are introduced and I want to know about all of them: the father, the war, and the driving. I’m not far into the book, but the learning-to-drive incident does not disappoint.

Some readers are perfectly content not to understand immediately. Some like the challenge and don’t want anything straightforward. When such readers are also writers, they’re likely to write prose of the sort they like to read.

This is fine. Fortunately, nothing is for everybody. It’s a losing proposition to try to write a book that no one will fail to love. You’re doomed to frustration.

However, some books succeed with millions of readers, and some of these are great books, Pride and Prejudice, for example. Some bestsellers may not be beautifully written or the characters well developed, but the theme is universal or the subject fascinating.

If events are very exciting at the beginning of a story, I’ll probably stick around. For instance, I’d keep reading beyond this: Marisette gizoxed down the previo at zyonga speed. If the ashymi didn’t boosheg, she’d find herself and her precious kizage in the boiling svik and all would be owped.

I’d understand that Marisette was in trouble and I’d want to know what the precious kizage and the hot svik were and why I should care. But if the crazy words went on much longer without an explanation in standard English, I’d give up.

Jill, I’m not sure what you mean by ambiguous in your question. If you mean you like to misdirect your reader for a purpose, I’m all for it. Suppose a drapery tie is the murder weapon in a mystery and you’re describing the living room where the drapery tie stays when it’s not strangling anyone. The victim, a high school student named Hope, is only a missing person at this point, but she’s beginning to be presumed dead. Detective Rosalie Swift has been talking to Hope’s teachers, and right now she’s in the living room of Algebra teacher Max Kilcannon, who will turn out to be the murderer. It’s the detective’s curse, Rosalie thought, to look for murder weapons everywhere. She scanned the room, a fuddy-duddy place, she thought – over-stuffed chairs, the couch with cloth protectors at the ends of the arms, side tables in dark wood, a coffee-table book on the coffee table, still lifes of flowers hanging on the walls in ornate frames, heavy green drapes tied back with cream-colored, ties, and a gas fireplace. Why a poker for a gas fire? How pretentious! The poker could be the weapon, except that a poker appeared in so many detective stories that no self-respecting murderer would use one. The coffee-table book, too, could bludgeon someone to death. The good teacher would also have his pick of cushions to suffocate poor Hope with. Or he could just leave her alone in here for a few hours and she’d die of boredom.

There. The drapery ties are shown, but they’re buried in the rest of the description. When the murder weapon is revealed, the reader can page back to this spot and find it.

In The Two Princesses of Bamarre I used specters more than once to misdirect the reader, and what fun that was!

But in Two Princesses and in the example above, the writing is clear, nothing ambiguous about it. Clarity is a sine qua non (an essential condition) of good storytelling. We don’t want to throw mud in the reader’s eyes. If you’re worried about catching the reader’s interest from the outset, go with action. Excellent beginnings can open many ways, but action is the most direct, the glucose of storytelling.

Here are some misdirecting prompts:

∙ Hope is in Jim Kilcannon’s living room. Her parents have hired him to tutor her to get her grade up. In this version he may or may not be the murderer; you, the author, haven’t decided yet. Write a scene in which you make Hope and the reader alternately creeped out and reassured by Kilcannon .

∙ On her way home from her first tutoring session, Hope passes a psychic’s shop and goes in. Being behind in Algebra isn’t her only problem. Write the scene with the psychic and mislead the reader about the source of Hope’s danger.

∙ Hope is now a baronet’s daughter in the Kingdom of Kestor. She’s been warned that her life is at risk, and has been invited to tea at the palace of the king’s youngest brother. She has reason to suspect that one of the other guests intends to kill her. Write the tea and make the reader suspect several guests.

Have fun and save what you write!

Unfinished business

Last week welliewalks posted to the guestbook on my website that she hadn’t been able to post directly on the blog, so I asked you all, and the problem seems to be more widespread than just one person, although not universal. The trouble isn’t with us, says David, my high-tech husband, so we can’t fix it. If you can’t get through, just post your comment on the guestbook (following the link on the right to the website) and I’ll approve it there and move it to the blog. I love to hear from you!

On March 29, 2011, Erica wrote, Okay, so I was wondering, I always have tons of different story ideas (like notebooks full of them) but I can never finish them. At this point I have one short story done and one picture book rough draft for my English class. I can think in my head of almost exactly how I want it to end but I can never get it out on paper. My mom thinks that it’s because if I finish something then I will feel the need to do something with it and she thinks that it’s because I’m afraid people won’t like it. Whatever the reason I don’t know how to fix it. Help?

Many are afflicted with unfinished-itis, and the reasons vary, so here are some possibilities:

Erica’s mother suggested one. Finishing is the first step toward exposing your work to criticism and even rejection in the sometimes cold, cruel publishing world. Your fingers may curl into fists at the prospect, and fists can’t type.

A solution to this may be to find friends, relatives, teachers, librarians, a critique group, to show your stories to even before they’re finished. Encouragement may push you to completion. The writers in particular may have useful ideas about where to go next in your tale. Showing at an early stage can reduce the fear of criticism, if not wipe it out entirely. You’re in an early stage. Naturally your story needs work. Helpful advice is welcome.

And just a word about unhelpful advice and unhelpful criticism. See it for what it is, unhelpful, useless, irrelevant. If somebody reads what you’ve got and says something like, “I hope you have other talents, dear,” ignore and do not show your writing to this person again. To yourself you can say, Yeah, and how many books have you written, Mister or Missus?

Unhelpful advice can masquerade as the helpful sort and sometimes it’s hard to tell one from the other. Someone might say, “You should try to make your prose more lyrical.” Press for specifics. “What do you mean?” you ask. “Where in my story is lyricism needed?” If your critic can explain, then this may be useful, but if she says, “That’s just what I think,” put it in the unhelpful category.

You may be someone who needs a deadline. If you’re not writing a piece that’s due in school and no publisher is clamoring for your work, you may not feel the urgency, and when another idea comes along, you may jump ship. So set a deadline. If you need to, enlist a friend to help you stick to your writing. Whether you meet the deadline or not, you’ll get more done, and you can always set a new deadline. I think this is why NaNoWriMo is so terrific. It pushes you. Even if you don’t make the word count, you’ve written a lot.

You may not have found the right story, the one that finishes itself. If you keep writing, you’ll get there.

The plodding nature of writing gets to you. You start resisting writing the details. Your story is magical, thrilling. Why do you have to mention that your main character’s feet hurt or that her best friend has a dab of catsup on her chin? And why can’t you just tell the reader that the friend is loyal and also illogical? Why do you also have to demonstrate it? You want to put in the broad strokes, the essence of your story, and be done with it. Eventually you get so sick of the details that you give up and start something shiny and new. Or you write down ideas, which don’t have to be detailed at all.

The remedy here is to limit the task. Write a scene. Don’t think about how many scenes remain. After you’ve written one, write another, little dotted lines along the road of your narrative.

If you despise writing the scenes and can’t bring yourself to complete any of them, but you adore coming up with ideas and planning out stories, you may be more of a storyteller than a novelist. Or graphic novels may be the right form for you.

You don’t want the characters you love to suffer, so you get stuck. I suspect this is afflicting me now in the second mystery. I love Elodie, and I have to make some awful things happen to her, so I’m progressing at the speed of an inchworm. Since I’m facing this myself, it’s hard to know what the solution is. In my case it’s probably just inching along, and possibly that will work for you, too. Pat yourself heartily on the back at the end of each completed page.

Or jump right in and bring the dreadful event about. Then write up to it, if you’re not at that point in your story. If you don’t even know what the tragedy will be yet, write a scene in which your main endures misery, which may not be the misery you eventually use. See how he responds. Decide what helps him pull through if he does pull through. Then, when you get to the actual crisis you’ll have prepared yourself. I think I’m going to try this as soon as I finish wrtiting this post!

You haven’t explored any of your ideas sufficiently to know which ones are keepers. Pick three of your ideas or your petered-out drafts. In notes ask yourself questions. What lit you up when you started? What turned you off? What will it take to bring back the spark? (No negativity allowed.) How can you define your main character so you want to have a long-term relationship with her? What fascinates you about her? Ask yourself about setting, plot, other characters. Quit note-writing and move over to the story when you find yourself eager to start.

What I’m suggesting are just ideas, which may not work for you. The most important thing is to keep writing, whether you finish something next month or three years from now.

These prompts need some setting up:

Right now I’m riding home from New York on a commuter train, a wonderful place for observation. Most of the seats face the backs of the seats ahead, like in an airplane, but some, the less desirable ones, where I am, face the fronts of the seats ahead without good legroom between. I’m in an aisle seat. There’s a middle seat and a window seat next to me, across from me the same. When I sat down at Grand Central where the train originates, the only other occupant of our six-seat grouping was a man in the window seat facing me, who had placed his briefcase on the seat facing him, a little piggishly, I think, but it’s not interfering with my comfort so I don’t care.

After a few minutes a woman sits across from me and we arrange our legs so they don’t touch. She puts her huge purse on the seat between her and the man, also a little piggishly. Then a woman comes along and wants to sit in the other window seat, the one next to me, with one empty seat between us. She asks if the briefcase is mine and I say no. The man across from her says it’s his and doesn’t move it or offer to move it. How selfish! The woman doesn’t ask him to move it either and rides awkwardly on the (slightly) raised area between the window seat and the middle seat next to me. How meek! I resist the temptation to tell the man to be a gentleman and the woman to grow a spine.

(Of course they may each have had reasonable reasons for their behavior.) So here come the prompts:

• Write a scene from the childhood of each passenger that suggests how they became their future adult selves.

• He is King Oogu the Terrible, ruler of the kingdom of Ploog (or more serious names), and she is a member of a rebel group plotting to overthrow him. Write a scene. How will her meekness play out? How will his selfishness?

• He is Oogu, dictator of a small republic. She is a diplomat given the task of reforming him. Write a scene.

• As young people, they oppose each other on their school debating team. Pick a debate topic you know something about. Write a debate with him winning; then rewrite it with her winning.

• They’re in high school. He asks her to the junior prom. Write what happens.

• Both are fleeing the devastation caused by Queen Ooga the Awful. He’s the son of a peasant, she the daughter of a scholar. Circumstances throw them together, both in danger. They will survive only if they cooperate. Write a scene.

• Invent any other situations you like for these two.

Have fun and save what you write!

Is There A Problem?

A mid-week post to ask if people are having trouble posting to the blog. Welliewalks posted to the guestbook page on my website because she couldn’t get through. If you’re having a problem too, would you also let me know on my guestbook page? If no problem, please post to the blog. If something is wrong we’ll get right on it. I love to hear from you!

Playing doubles

On March 27, 2011, welliewalks wrote, I have two MCs in my story and I switch off writing them- they each get their own chapters. They’ve never seen each other before, but in the book, their lives are entwined and they end up meeting each other (kinda early on). They are very different- one doesn’t trust anyone but is close to her family (and trusts them). The other is hurt (emotionally) and feels betrayed by one family member. I’m having trouble making them have their own voices. Any suggestions?

Then Jenna Royal wrote, @Welliewalks – If you’ve ever read The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan, that is a really good example of different voices. I’ve never attempted to write a story with multiple characters in first person POV, but I would think that it might help to give each character a distinct way of reacting to certain situations, or maybe a list of words that each character uses frequently. By making your characters recognizable, you make the voices more obvious. Also, maybe setting characteristics such as a squeaky door or a cold climate, or a view or sudden storms would help. If you can give traits that will show through in the narration, it will lend itself to a more distinct voice.
These are great ideas. I haven’t read The Red Pyramid, but I did use the Search-Inside-This-Book feature on Amazon to get an impression. I’m sure there’s more to it, but I noticed that the sentences were shorter and more direct in the Carter chapters I looked at, while his sister seemed to use more modifiers and more dependent clauses.

For all of you who are writing from multiple narrators or who might like to, for the next week listen to the conversation around you. (This is a always good practice for writers.) You may notice that your best friend has trouble staying on topic. One thing reminds him of another, and soon he’s forgotten what he started with. Your other close friend keeps tugging him back. A third pal tires of any subject quickly. And you, writer that you are, find yourself suggesting ways to improve the telling. Each of you would be different narrators on the page.

Here’s a prompt early in the post: Pick a day during your week of listening, a day you haven’t spent alone. Write this day in the persona of each of the people you were with, a page or so for each person, up to, say, five narrators. You are likely to find that it’s harder with some, easier with others. For one or two it may be agony to squeeze out a page and for others you can hardly stop writing. Your cousin Ida may baffle you. You never know where she’s coming from, so how can you write her take on the day? That’s where being a fiction writer comes in. If Ida gives you little to go on, imagine the possibilities. Speculate about what might have happened to her before you got together. Was she awake half the night? Did she win a tennis match the day before? She may be very private, so you have to invent her opinions. Make her adore someone and have only contempt for someone else. Give her a sore knee that saps her attention. Have her mentally working on a homework assignment.

When you’re finished, revise until each telling is distinctive. Remember Jenna Royal’s suggestions. Here are some more: Along the lines of word choice, main character Jayne may be more educated than main character Jerry. Her vocabulary may be studded with fifty-dollar words; his may be monosyllabic. Try what Rick Riordan seems to do, too – vary the sentence structure from one character to the other. You can change the emotional tone as well. Jerry worries constantly, so his chapters are full of dire predictions and better-than-expected outcomes. Jayne analyzes everyone; her chapters teem with insight, right or wrong. Thought process is involved here. Jerry is intuitive. He doesn’t reason carefully but jumps from A to M without stopping at each letter in between, and his thoughts on the page reveal his process. Jayne plods in her thinking. She gets from A to M but she lingers at each letter; she may even pause at C-and-a-half before moving on to D.

Character traits come into it, too. Jerry is quick to anger, and his narration will reflect that. Jayne buries her rage; her narration may show the effort this causes her. She makes excuses for people, while Jerry won’t give anyone a break.

So far we have vocabulary, sentence structure, emotional tone, thought process, and character. Situation is essential also. The two main characters won’t always be together. If Jerry is in a desert and Jayne in a castle, the reader will have no trouble distinguishing them, as Jenna Royal suggested.

Two narrators are, naturally, two voices. My chapter on voice in Writing Magic may be helpful as well as my post on the subject on September 8th, 2010. The prompt at the end of the Writing Magic chapter and the suggestions above may seem mechanical, but much of writing is mechanical. Inspiration pours in, and we write in a mad burst. Then we go back to deal with the mechanics, which we can call by the more elevated name of technique.

Having said all this, I have to ask if two narrators are necessary. Writing is so hard that there’s no disgrace in making the job easier when we can. An omniscient third-person point of view might succeed here, or a limited third person that shifts from Jerry to Jayne might too. By using third person you can show how each character views events, but you don’t have to invent a voice for each except in dialogue, when you will certainly want them to sound different. I use two narrators in my Mesopotamian fantasy, Ever, because I couldn’t seem to tell the story any other way, and I tried. If this is the case for you or even if you’re just experimenting, go for it, but if the split narration isn’t working, remember that there are other options.

Welliewalks, your two main characters both seem to have been hurt, one by people outside the family and the other from within. You may be having trouble because of the similarity. I know this is a fundamental change (the kind I often find myself making 250 pages into a novel), but might you lift the burden from one of them and make him or her quirky in some other way? If you try this, you may find that they will write themselves, always a writer’s dream.

There’s a prompt near the beginning of the post, and here’s another:

Jerry and Jayne are classmates separated by disaster, political or meteorological or geological, whatever. Jerry is trying to find Jayne, and Jayne is trying not to be found. You decide if they have cell phones or if this isn’t a high-tech world. Write a single chapter from the POV of each. Keep going if you like.

Have fun, and save what you write!