Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Sarah Weinman: Hearing Voices

At Sunday's DetecToday chat, several of us said voice was an important factor in the fiction we read. I've mentioned I'm a fan of sound and its power to engage the imagination sometimes better than sight can. I try to let my characters talk to me so I can get into their voices. I don't, however, hear them on the same level as the musically-gifted Sarah Weinman:

...I actually assign particular voices to different characters, and the narrator gets one as well. It's not just amorphous, but specific. So I suppose that every time I pick up a book, I hear a litany of different--sometimes wildly different--voices in my head, an experience which is most often pleasurable but sometimes confusing as well...

Among other things, Sarah's full entry explores voices for S.J. Rozan's Lydia Chin and Bill Smith. (I'm currently reading the Smith book STONE QUARRY.)

I'm curious what types of voices Sarah has assigned to my characters.

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