Giving Characters Voices, Part 2

Why my narrator unconsciously shifts between three voices.

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About a month ago, I wrote the first installment on the subject of voices. As I wrote:

With a great book, it barely registers with the reader that the author has given different characters different voices. That’s because when it’s done well, it seems completely natural, inevitable even, for that character to sound like that. But getting the character voice to perfectly fit the character’s character is HARD.

In that column I discussed things like the sound of a character’s voice, a character’s vocabulary, and a character’s vocal mannerisms. I explained how such things could reinforce the character’s character—and I give specifics related to three of my characters.

But I also promised to later write about how I gave a few characters multiple voices. In this column, I describe my narrator’s three voices: 1) The grandiloquent storyteller voice, 2) The emotional, unguarded voice, and most importantly 3) The reversion-to-childhood voice.

The narrator