On Voice

I was asked for writing advice earlier, during which I pointed out that my writing a novel (2 drafts of) while trying to work out a plot problem for a novel I mean to be editing means I am probably not the best person to ask. I made a comment in it about finding one's voice and learning when to let go of it. One that is going to fit into Ghoulish Happenings rather well. My default 'voice' tends to be this low-level snark that works well for some stories* but not for others.

It pretty much won't exist for the MCs in Ghoulish Happenings as far as the two MCs are concerned. Both are rather insecure in themselves and not too likely to use humour as a defense against the world. This will change as the series goes on, but not to a level normally found in urban fantasy, ideally. The genre is pretty much littered with the default male protagonist as walking dead-pan snark and a pop-culture machine even when the humour no longer fits the thrust of the stories. I won't avoid it -- a few secondary characters will be pretty snarky for one reason or another -- but both MCs will be far less in that voice than for other similar projects I've done.

We shall see how it all goes. I have notes on magic and monsters semi-done for this draft of GH and will work on characters proper today as well, fleshing out new relationships and backgrounds. I am slowly getting ready to dive back into that world and quite looking forward to what results from it as well as how many of the characters are even going to survive this draft, and how they cope with that later on. Currently I have plans for three novels in total, the second one being redone entirely because of an evil writing prompt, which should at least make it work rather well...

* Such as in nanowrimo last year for a thriller/lit style story in which one character described the nanowrimo of another as 'Lolita, as if it was written by a five year old'