Real, Consistent and Authentic: A Discussion of Voice

(Kermit Dunkelberg and Allison Linker in the Pilgrim Theatre Production of N (Bonaparte) by Laura Harrington)

I am lucky enough to work at MIT where I teach an Introduction to Playwriting course which keeps me coming back to the empty page and to the basics we all need to know to write well. Working with students has enriched and sharpened my own skills.  This is a conversation – via email – I had with one of those terrific students about voice, one of the “intangibles” of writing, which often defies description.

1) How can I develop a more distinct “voice” for both the narrative I use and for a character’s dialogue?

Ultimately you want people to be able to say — that’s a Mamet play or a Pinter play or a Laura Harrington play — to recognize your voice in the overall experience, while at the same time, feeling that each character’s voice is distinct, believable and “true”.

2) I feel as if I’m only focusing right now on what is said, not how it is said.  I want to start moving toward a more particular rhythm or poetry.

Try experimenting more. Play with language. Imitate other writers. This seems like cheating, I know, but is an essential step to finding your own voice. Try on other voices. It will open up the process for you. Write a scene in the voice of David Mamet or Suzan Lori Parks or Jose Rivera.

Ultimately, you want the voices in your play to be so real, so consistent, so authentic, that we believe them. This is how a character becomes real.

And even though great dialogue sounds like real people talking, written dialogue is incredibly “constructed,” crafted and carefully built.  It is complete artifice, but feels and sounds utterly real.  This is why we are always developing our “ear.”  How we hear has an enormous impact on how we write.

3) What about using very particular language for dialogue, for example terse, aggressive language in Harold Pinter’s “Dumbwaiter” or poetic language in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”?

The particulars are hugely responsible for creating a character’s voice.  Playwright Maria Irene Fornes once said you have no business writing a character until you know so much about them that you know what their underwear smells like.  And, while that’s kind of gross, that is the level of intimate knowledge you have to start building with your characters.

4) How do I start working towards this?  I called it “voice” but that may not be the correct term.

Experiment.  Play.  Close your eyes and see your characters: the state of their fingernails, their scars, internal and external, their fears, their particular kind of energy, the way each character uses language, rhythm, repetition, how they are funny or defensive or prickly or offensive or aggressive or passive.

Finding your voice is a lifelong quest.

5) I want to explore writing plays where the world is extremely important, in the way society and the Jazz age in “The Great Gatsby” are crucial to the novel.

You are talking about context, which I believe is critical.  It is the frame of the world you are creating. Characters are much more interesting when their internal struggle is enhanced or made more difficult, or even revealed by the world around them and the times they are living in.

6) How can I recreate an accurate and historically genuine world?  I feel limited to setting things in the present day, since I know about it.

Even your “historical world” will, for the most part, be made up, or constructed.  For instance, when I was writing about Joan of Arc, I had to create a language that sounded formal enough to give us the “flavor” of the time period, while at the same time being easy to understand for a modern audience.

7) What works best in helping you create a genuine, historical world?

I find images – drawings, paintings, photographs — an invaluable doorway into the past.

Knowing the exact dimensions of Joan of Arc’s prison cell was very important to me. Knowing the size and weight of the chains she wore, where they were on her body, how they were fastened, who controlled the key to her cell — all of these things were critical to my imagining my way into her cell.

At the same time, writing is still all about dreaming and making up a world.  So, there is this combination of real catalysts in terms of research, images, objects; and then there is the power of the writer’s mind to imagine him or herself inside multiple characters and multiple points of view.  My Joan of Arc, for instance, will always be filtered through me: my life, my opinions, my beliefs, the time I live in, my own personal obsessions.  All of those things are also part of what make up my “voice” as a writer.