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 Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 10:09 pm
Okay, so I have this obsession with voices. I've been picking up funny accents since I watched Monty Python in grade school. I have a thing for voice actors. And I have a thing for my characters' voices. Not just how I write them, but how I imagine they would sound in real life, and this extends to figuring out if there are any actors/voice actors I know of whose voices would work for my characters.
All preamble aside, I'm curious. How much detail do you go into when it comes to your characters' voices (in-story description, dialogue dialects, or just random facts you know)? Do you have any voice actors fixed in your mind as having your character's voice? Do you ever imitate your characters, accidentally or just for fun? Discuss.
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Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:05 pm
I don't really put forth a conscious effort anymore with my characters' voices, since they're all sort of second nature to me. Though I'll admit that occasionally I'll lose Yinda's dialect and have to watch Firefly to get it back. But a couple years ago I did put some thought into the way the main cast speaks, and it goes as follows:
Vitae usually speaks very formally, slowly, quietly, and carefully. He can and will yell, however, and swear, too, if he thinks it will help him get a point across. I don't like to say that he has an Italian accent, but...all things considered, he probably does, though a very slight one. "A lightly accented baritone," is how I describe it in the story. He usually avoids contractions and loves big words, though in all honesty, he isn't very communicative, being more used to settling arguments with his fists. If his life depended on him singing a song in tune and on pitch, with proper rhythm, he would die.
As far as a real life example of his voice, two days ago I would have said Kratos from Tales of Symphonia, but Kratos is a rat-b*****d, and Regal's voice is actually a lot closer. And, considering that Regal is voiced by Crispin Freeman, who also did the voice of Blood +'s Haji (whom I also noted as reminding me of Vitae), it's pretty safe to say that the closest thing to Vitae's voice is Crispin Freeman.
I can't really imitate Vitae's voice, though every now and again I'll try to give an example of how he says "woman." If you've heard me do it, you'll know.
Nathan is a tenor ("male ballerina," if you're a choir person) and speaks in a sort of mock-formal pattern, with a posh almost-British accent where he aspirates his W's so that "what" is "hwat" and "cool whip" is "cool hwip." He's loud and has an annoying habit of sliding from a slightly higher pitch to a slightly lower pitch on long vowels. He does not lisp, but he tosses off endearments like they're going out of style. "Darling," "dear," "doll," "dearest," "my dear," and so on. He has no problem with using contractions, and loves big words almost as much as Vitae does, probably because they make him sound smart. He likes to hear himself talk almost as much as he likes confusing people he doesn't much care for, which results in him redirecting conversations so that they rabbit-trail all over the place. He sings like a dream.
I have no real life examples of Nathan's voice, except that I picked up his dialect from my audio drama of The Horse and His Boy. Lasaraleen's voice was so annoying and hoity-toity, I couldn't help but let it stick. So Nathan is a male Lasaraleen.
I imitate Nathan probably most of all of my characters, because it's funny and it lets me make fun of people's clothes without getting punched. This usually starts with me making a sweeping gesture with both hands and saying, "Darling." I've also had friends accuse me of slipping into the Nathan voice every now and again, usually when fashion is involved or if I'm talking about Nathan himself.
And yeah, okay, I'm really long-winded, so I'll save the other characters for another day.
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Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 12:13 am
Since I'm familiar with Crispin Freeman as Alucard, that hurts my brain. XD But what I can see from the guy, he doesn't always sound so freakin' creepy. I lo-ove voices. Porter grew up in Texas, and would therefore have a Texan drawl (admittedly, I had her grow up in Texas specifically for the accent, and since I know little to nothing about the particulars of growing up in Texas, the early years of her life aren't laid into very much.) So, blurry vowels, and lots of y'alls. I'm somewhat particular, in the sense that she has an East Texan drawl, as opposed to the West Texan twang. It's not the same accent at all, but as far as vocals are concerned, Jodie Foster in the Silence of the Lambs comes to mind. It has this lowness to it that isn't sexy, somewhat androgynous, but there's this strength to it, almost a harshness, that makes me think of Porter. But the accent isn't Texan. Dave's voice would be soft and low. Kiiiinda like the stereotypical anime voiceover for the stoic badass guy character. It's hard to shake, since I grew up with it. But, he'd have a thick Irish accent. Good thing he doesn't talk much, since it would take a while for most people in the story to understand him. Hadyn's voice can be summed up in two words: John Malkovich. Oddly feminine, but also so expressive and slick. I won't even go into description, since nothing can describe the beauty and strangeness of Malkovich's voice. Except for something like this piece of work. Nonexistent on spoilers, but heavy on the f-bombs.
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Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 8:35 pm
I... actually know a bit about a few of my characters' voices! This makes me happy. Kind of. I tend to get them from listening to songs that tend to personify them, so... there you have it. They all get compared to singers. (I stand corrected. Allemande doesn't)
Kita sounds rather like Norah Jones but just a tad lower, (more mezzo to the mezzo soprano) with less training, (she's fine on rhythm, but has trouble carrying a tune) and on about... a pack a day. (although she doesn't smoke) Which is hilarious because when I pulled out a Norah Jones album after not looking at it for a while, the first thing that went through my head was "Holy s**t, she looks like Kita!" She's rather uncommunicative, tends to speak in fragment-y sentences, (MS Word's gonna love that) and always tries to use "tough" language, often reverting to improper, rural grammar and contractions such as 'ain't'.
Allemande, however, has attached herself to Marta from 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' (which every yaoi fangirl must watch, at some point, but I digress) as she has something of a similar Latin accent, although a her voice is a bit higher, and she can occasionally drop the accent, or it can be rather thick, depending on her mood and how quickly she's talking. Her voice also tends to have a bit of an edge to it, though whether because she's always so... perky or because she's just a bit hysterical, even I don't know. Her speech patterns are rather distinctive, in a way, but... I have a bit of trouble describing them. She's very forthright and tends to use simple sentence structures and... I don't know.
Feragel sounds like Peter Gresser's lead singer in 'Food for Thought,' whoever that is. (if you haven't heard it, you need to. Go. Google. Now.) It's cleaner than Kita's, but that's not really saying anything. I think he's... rather firmly in the baritone range, and if you think he'll sing falsetto (even in the shower- and he does sing in the shower) you can ******** right off, and he'll tell you so. He has a good voice. He has a damn good voice. Frankly, I could sit and listen to him b***h aaallllllllllll day. As far as speech patterns... he tends to be overly formal, peppering his speech with endearments, and if you don't know how sarcastic he sounds (got a bit of a drawl) you'll think he was a bit of a fop.
If you think Indio has a lisp, I'll sic him on you to give you a well-deserved knock upside the head. He doesn't. He sounds a bit like the lead singer from Razorwire, except there are... a few high notes that he can no longer hit. (Let's just say... he tried singing 'My Heart Will Go On'. Bad idea.) I have no idea, but I think he almost has a light New York accent, which is just... strange. So far, he has no dialog (argh) and thus, no speech patterns, that I know of. I can see him being quite affected, but he would never use overly long words for anything, or imitate stereotypically masculine ways of speaking or anything.
And now, from the rather secondary characters, Lenore sounds like PJ Harvey. That is all.
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 12:05 am
@ Kita: But fops can be sarcastic. In this case I cite Felix Harrowgate from Doctrine of Labyrinths and Thomas of Schofield from Sorcery and Cecilia. Both masters of sardonic wit and both would rather light themselves on fire than go out in public with a creased cravat.
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Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 1:51 am
Don't forget Archibald Cunningham from Rob Roy, the fop who can kill you.
Speaking of which, Tim Roth is a potential voice actor for the more prissy incarnations of Nerv.
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Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:13 pm
All right, I guess today counts as "another day," so I'll see how many characters I can talk about before I completely lose interest.
Yinda speaks a very slang-y dialect, full of "ain't"s and almost-swears ("hell's bells") and "as for why'm I here"s. I've had people tell me they imagine her with a Cockney accent, but others say they imagine her sounding Australian (I have no clue where they got that idea). I imagine her as having some kind of a southern drawl, a bit like Kayley from Firefly (if that is, in fact, a southern drawl). She's loud and whiny and doesn't like to shut up.
Jericho is sort of a compromise between Yinda and normal speech. He uses slang and "ain't" a bit less, but is more likely to use real swears instead of almost-swears. He also hacks pronouns off the beginnings of sentences: "Knew a guy" instead of "I knew a guy," "Didn't even bother" instead of "She didn't even bother," etc.
Sabine is the "normal" standard of speech for the story. She doesn't swear and hardly even knows slang, let alone uses it. So far in the story she's mostly been soft-spoken and hesitant, and has a habit of starting with a vague statement or question and then correcting herself with "I mean..." and a clarification. Or clarifying and then tagging on "I mean." I'm pretty sure she knows how to be bossy, though. I just have to figure out where she's hiding the stones to up and yell at someone.
I don't know of any voice actors who suit any of these three, and I only imitate their voices if I'm completely alone and reading my story out loud. Or if I forget there are people around and start reading out loud anyway. I've been known to do that.
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Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 1:12 pm
I'm honestly not a very voice-focused person, to the point that when I'm plotting scenes in my head they tend to be largely mute. (I also think that most people overthink their characters' voices, but this may be an extension of not being voice-focused myself.)
I do have some characters with clearer voices than others -- Janus has a generally clear voice to me, as do Malachy and sometimes Leon. I'm not sure I'd go to lengths to describe them, though, nor do I know how I would.
And I have trouble seeing Crispin Freeman as Vitae, if only because I find most people who connect actor's voices to characters are doing it less for the actual voice tones and more for the type of character/s the person is playing/voicing. Connecting Crispin Freeman to Vitae just makes me connect Vitae as a fanwanked anime loner bad-a**.
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 5:17 pm
Okay, I should have done this earlier, but the whole Feragel=?=speaking like a fop thing, his sarcasm is like "Ooh, look at me, I can pretend to be a gentleman, even when I completely intend to throw it in your face, and I can say I'll throw it in your face, and you're such an idiot that you won't believe me." Er. He uses elevated diction that he thinks is a bunch of crap and peppers his speech with sarcastic endearments.
Sort of... I could imagine him narrating Brideshead Revisited, (except for the part where the main character is the narrator) but he'd sneer at the end of each line to show how much he hated people that talked like that.
I don't think I'm explaining it very well.
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Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 11:41 pm
@ Erika: Is that due to my connecting Vitae with Crispin Freeman's choice of voice for Regal, or due to your own biases about Crispin Freeman's voice due to him also voicing Alucard? Because, I assure you, I am judging purely based on voice quality (and try as I might, I can't even remember what Alucard sounds like). If I was only judging based on characters resembling each other in appearance or behavior, I'd be claiming that Nathan had a voice like Raphael Sorel or Nathan Mahler, or that Vitae sounded like Vincent Valentine or Tsunan Tsukioka.
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Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2009 6:50 pm
He also voiced Amon in WHR, Zelgadis in Slayers, Alex in Last Exile, Togusa in Ghost in the Shell Whatever, Balmung in .hack, and the what's-his-face emo wolf from Wolf's Rain. He voices a lot of the same character, moreso than Alucard. So I'm basing my biases off of a lot of characters. (And personal experience, with the connection thing -- I see a lot of writers who song-and-dance the whole "My character sounds JUST LIKE THIS ANIME CHARACTER. And also acts like him. And looks like him. Irrelevant, I promise.")
Crispin Freeman gets around, man.
(Although speaking of anime voice actors -- the guy who voices Taichi Kamiya in Digimon voices young Knives in Trigun. This disturbed me to no end. I kept mentally ending all of Knives' hate against humanity dialogue with "Let's go, Agumon!")
Um. I side-tracked the thread. Uhhh. Ania's voice constantly changes in my head. There, now the post is relevant.
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Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 2:58 pm
Hi, I'm new here, but I have an idea of what your talking about. Or... at least I think I do. In one (I say one, I mean the only one), of my stories, all of my characters have different chapters, so one chapter could be in one persons POV, while the next is a completely different part of the story with a different POV. So they have different voices, to me. However, I do have one problem: everyone who reads what I write says the characters sound the same. My first response to this was, DUH. The SAME person wrote it. But after a while I realized what they meant and what to look for. Now, I agree. But I don't want the character's voices to sound overly accented or obnoxiously different; they NEED a difference though... Does anyone have any suggestions?
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Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:25 pm
@ Fyre: It might help to decide what each character would or would not say. Everyone words things differently, and a person from the Deep South, deprived of accent, would still say things differently than someone from the Upper Midwest, also deprived of accent. One person might say, "I reckon it be so," while another would say, "I suppose it is." Also, some people speak more precisely than others, even if they're from the same region. Some people omit words ("Been running?" instead of "Have you been running?"). Some people just have horrendous grammar ("Yeah, I seen it," instead of "Yeah, I saw it."). In the same vein, dialect has more to do with word choice and less to do with spelling "going" as "goin'". I feel the need to quote Sarah Monette for my next point, since she has a Ph.D. and words the point much better than I could. http://truepenny.livejournal.com/623882.html A sentence should sound different, depending on which character says it, even if you don't have the dramatic differences imposed by a class-based dialect [...]. There's also differences in what information a character will choose to convey, what aspects of a situation he or she notices. For instance: It snowed last night, rather a lot, and in a bit I'm going to have to go out and shovel. If I were writing about it in Felix's voice, I might remark on how strange it makes the topography of the neighborhood, but mostly I'd be bitching about how much work it is, and how cold and wet, and why don't we make enough money to hire someone to do it? (Also, notice that sentence isn't in Felix's voice, because Felix wouldn't use the word "b***h".) If I were writing about it in Mildmay's voice, I'd definitely talk about how weird it makes everything look, but I'd also tell you about a story I heard once about a guy who got lost in a blizzard and was rescued by a polar bear who was really an explorer under an enchantment and how they got the enchantment broken. I probably wouldn't mention the work part of it at all, unless I'm noticing that Felix forgot to say thank you. Again. And if I'm writing in Booth's voice, I describe the harsh sound the shovel makes against the sidewalk and count with painful, meticulous honesty, how many times I fall into the snow. (In my own voice? I b***h about how out of shape I am and notice the paths the feralistas have made in the snow.) Does that help at all? And, technically, this thread is for sharing how you imagine the characters' voices would sound, if they were real and talking and whatnot, so feel free to share that as well, since you mentioned that, to you, they have different voices.
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