Writers in the Storm

by Janice Hardy

Voice isn't what people think it is.

In my two decades of teaching, I’ve met so many writers who have struggled with creating character voice, and none of the advice or tips they tried worked for them.

And I know why.

These writers were probably looking at ways to “write character voices” as if it was something separate from the character, a trick or technique that “made voice happen.”

Normally, this is where I’d say “but voice doesn’t just happen,” but it actually kinda does.

But only if your point of view is strong enough to reveal it. Because…

Voice is what a character notices and how they feel about what they notice.

When you're writing through the perspective of the character (or narrator), their opinions come through in every line. You use words they’d use, and judge what’s seen how they would judge it.

But when your point of view is weak, the story feels detached and generic. Readers lose interest and start skimming, since there's no one on the page for them to connect with.

Sure, they can see everything that happens, but nothing feels personal, and every character sounds pretty much the same. There’s no voice because there’s no sense of character at all.

Let's look at an example.

Here's a scene from a bestselling novel, but I stripped out all the point of view:

Conscription day has the highest casualty rate of the year. The sunrise is unusually bright this morning, brighter than it has been recently.

I tighten the straps of my heavy canvas rucksack and climb the wide staircase of the stone fortress where I live. I am breathing hard and my lungs hurt by the time I reach the stone corridor leading to General Sorrengail's office. I have completed six months of intense physical training, and I am still short of breath after six flights of stairs with a thirty-pound pack.

This is a problem.

It’s not awful, but notice how little personality (hence, voice) is in this. Even though it’s first person, all you get are the details and the explanations. It’s facts, not judgments or opinions.

But compare it to this one.

Contrast this to the original, from Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing:

Conscription day is always the deadliest. Maybe that’s why the sunrise is especially beautiful this morning—because I know it might be my last.

I tighten the straps of my heavy canvas rucksack and trudge up the wide staircase of the stone fortress I call home. My chest heaves with exertion, my lungs burning by the time I reach the stone corridor leading to General Sorrengail’s office. This is what six months of intense physical training has given me—the ability to barely climb six flights of stairs with a thirty-pound pack.

I’m so f***ed.

Big difference, right?

This tells you just as much about the point of view character as it does the situation she’s in, because we see this world through her eyes. It shows what’s important to her and why.

Look at the specific words and phrases used here:

• because I know it might be my last.
• trudge up the wide staircase of the stone fortress I call home
• My chest heaves with exertion, my lungs burning
• This is what six months of intense physical training has given me—the ability to barely climb six flights of stairs with a thirty-pound pack.
• I’m so f***ed.

All of these are how the point of view character feels about climbing those stairs on that day, and unlike the non-point of view version, you get a much better sense that what’s waiting at the top of those stairs is not good.

The facts are the same. It’s still conscription day, she’s still climbing six flights of stairs, and she’s still out of breath. The only thing that changed is who’s telling us about it.

That’s voice.

Which is why when your point of view is weak, your voice disappears.

The details are chosen by what you think the reader needs to know, not by what the character cares about. And that creates distance between character and readers, so they get information instead of experience.

And the tricky part?

A weak point of view isn’t always obvious. Like my stripped Fourth Wing example, it’s often technically fine. It just doesn’t feel like anyone’s living behind the words.

A few signs your point of view might be keeping your voice from showing up:

• Your descriptions are just inventories of what's in the room, not what your character notices or how they feel about it.
• Your character sees, hears, and feels a lot, with tons of filter words between the reader and the character.
• Emotions are told, not shown. "She was nervous" instead of a nervous person's thoughts and judgments.
• The language is what you’d use, not what the character would use.

If any (or all) of these sound familiar, don't panic.

Not taking advantage of your point of view is one of the most common issues I see in manuscripts.

The good news?

You can totally fix that. Just look at the scene through your character's eyes and ask:

• What would this character notice first? What would they miss or ignore?
• How do they feel about the world around them?
• What specific words would they use to describe it?
• How do their opinions color what they see?

Then edit with that character’s perspective.

And the voice you've been looking for will appear.

New Workshop

If this made a few lightbulbs flicker for you, join me for my free online workshop, “It's Not Voice, It's Point of View,” on Thursday, November 5th, from 7:00 - 8:30 pm EST.

You can register for it here.

And if you'd like more tips like this, sign up for my Narrative Nuggets list. It's story-based writing advice delivered right to your inbox, and as a thank you for subscribing, you'll get my 25 Ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now PDF for free.

Do you struggle with Character Voice, Point of View, or both? Did you have any lightbulb moments while reading this post? Please share your struggles and a-ha moments down in the comments!

About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author and founder of the popular writing site Fiction University, where she helps writers improve their craft and navigate the crazy world of publishing. Not only does she write about writing, but she teaches workshops across the country, and her blog has been recognized as a Top Writing Blog by Writer’s Digest. She also spins tales of adventure for both teens and adults, and firmly believes that doing terrible things to her characters makes them more interesting (in a good way). She loves talking with writers and readers, and encourages questions of all types—even the weird ones.

by Ellen Buikema

The seven main types of conflict in fictional stories are Individual versus:

• Fate
• Individual
• Nature
• Self
• Society
• Supernatural
• Technology

Each type of conflict illustrates a struggle between forces that move the story forward. These conflicts are important in storytelling as they are essential for character development as well as driving the plot.

The Conflicts Defined

Individual versus Fate

• Characters deal with destiny.
• Explores themes of free will versus what is predetermined.
• Examples in literature: the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel in The Shining; Geralt of Rivia and destiny in The Witcher series

Individual versus Individual

• A struggle between two characters, frequently the protagonist and antagonist.
• Examples include battles, disputes, or rivalries.
• Examples in literature: Javert and Jean Valjean in Les Misérables; Dorothy and the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz.

Individual versus Nature

• Characters face challenges from natural forces.
• Examples include survival against natural disasters, weather, or wild animals.
• Examples in literature: Martin Brody and the great white shark in Jaws; Pi and the tiger in Life of Pi

Individual versus Self

• This internal conflict occurs when a character struggles with their beliefs, emotions, or thoughts.
• Frequently involves moral dilemmas or personal growth.
• For example, Star Wars and the inner conflict between good and evil. Anikin gives in to evil—the dark side—to gain power. His son Luke takes the good path—choosing goodness over power—restoring balance to the galaxy. In Hamlet, Hamlet struggles with the morality of avenging his father's death.

Individual versus Society

• Characters confront cultural expectations, societal norms, or laws.
• Examples include stories about rebellion against traditions or oppressive systems.
• Examples in literature: Atticus Finch and his community in To Kill a Mockingbird; Offred and the Sons of Jacob in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Individual versus Supernatural

• Characters face otherworldly forces: ghosts, elementals, ghosts, goddesses, gods, or monsters.
• Examples include horror or fantasy stories with characters who encounter supernatural entities.
• Examples in literature: Eleanor Vance and The Hill House in the horror story The Haunting of Hill House; Diana Bishop and her unwanted powers in the fantasy/supernatural A Discovery of Witches.

Individual versus Technology

• Characters struggle against technological forces or tech advancements.
• Examples include battles against machines or moral dilemmas posed by scientific breakthroughs.
• Examples in literature: The Murderbots and the people/corporations who use them for security purpose in The Murderbot Diaries; The onboard computer HAL and the astronauts en route to Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey

Understanding these types of conflict can make stories more appealing. Readers love conflict.

Lack of Conflict

Consider a hero. This individual is given a goal and warned that the road to get there will be hard. The hero, gifted in all ways, swats away each challenge confronted with, easily slaying all monsters in the path, reaching the goal. Huzzah. Well, that was anticlimactic.

If the story isn’t compelling, why bother to read it?

Consider the same hero. Don’t make the road smooth. Give it lots of twists, turns, bumps, and pot holes. Natural conflicts.

Try applying all seven main types of conflict.

Fate

The hero’s destiny is to save the village from a shapeshifter whose goal is to enslave the villagers.

Individual

Shapeshifter and hero know at least one of each other’s weaknesses, but it’s the same one. Both are enamored of the same person. A healer who lives in the village.

Nature

The shapeshifter lives in an area surrounded by plants that the hero has allergies to, and is located in difficult terrain.

Self

The hero is conflicted, one - the shapeshifter is the brother of an old friend, and two – the hero planned to leave the village for a better, more comfortable situation.

Society

The hero has always adhered to the society’s rules but the shapeshifter feels above all rules. The hero must decide whether to bend or break rules ingrained from a lifetime to achieve the goal of saving the village.

Supernatural

Being an empath, the hero feels but does not see the elemental spirits that live just outside the village, on the way to the shapeshifter's lair. The elementals are often tricksters.

Technology

The shapeshifter’s lair is sheltered by a cloaking technology unknown to the villagers. The hero must learn how to pierce the cloak to enter the lair.

Consider genre when choosing conflict types.

If you’re writing a romance, individual vs. individual and/or individual vs. society are typical types of conflict. For horror, individual vs. the supernatural, individual vs. technology, and/or individual vs. nature works well.

Individual vs. self fits in any genre.

Whatever your genre, it’s important to decide which conflicts matter most to your story. For example, if you’re writing romance that takes place in a haunted Airbnb you may discover that the individual vs. individual conflict matters more to your story’s goals than the individual vs. the supernatural. So, you’ll spend more time writing the love angle than the spooky vacation rental.

But, if you’re writing a horror story that has a bit of romance in the subplot, you may end up spending more time exploring the person vs. the supernatural conflict than the person vs. person. It’s your creation, so you get to decide which way to go.

Final Thoughts

Take a look at your story and find the types of conflict that appear naturally. Consider the following:

• Who or what is threatening your character? Why?
• What is your character’s main goal, and what happens if the goal is not attained?
• Does your character need to choose between two or more things? If yes, what is the internal and external reaction to these choices?
• How will the character change over the course of the story?

* * * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written Parenting ... A Work in Progress, non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Top Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

One of the most common problems I encounter as a developmental editor is something I call author blind spots. These happen when writers know their characters, worlds, and stories so intimately that they forget how much of that knowledge never actually makes it onto the page.

Sometimes, the author simply knows too much.

They know their characters' childhood traumas, their complicated family histories, and the exact moment a friendship turned into a rivalry. They know the political structure of their fantasy kingdom, why two neighboring countries have been at war for centuries, and what really happened to the protagonist's missing mother.

They know things that never even make it into the manuscript. And that's where the trouble begins.

Because while the author has spent months, sometimes years, living inside this world, the reader is arriving for the first time. They don't have access to the character biographies, the elaborate timelines, or the dozens of conversations the author has imagined but never written.

They only have what's on the page. And sometimes, what's on the page isn't quite enough.

When Knowing Too Much Creates Author Blind Spots

One of the most common issues I encounter during developmental edits is a character whose behavior makes perfect sense to the author but leaves the reader scratching their head.

Perhaps a protagonist refuses to trust someone who has repeatedly demonstrated loyalty. Or a character reacts with disproportionate anger to an otherwise innocent comment. Maybe a romantic relationship shifts from antagonism to affection without the emotional groundwork necessary to make that transition believable.

When I flag these moments, the author often has an immediate explanation.

"Well, she's afraid of abandonment because her father left when she was seven."

Or, "He doesn't trust her because she reminds him of someone who betrayed him years ago."

Those are perfectly reasonable explanations. There's just one problem. None of that information is in the book.

The author has been writing with the benefit of knowledge the reader doesn't possess. What feels like a natural progression to the person creating the story can feel abrupt, confusing, or even contradictory to the person reading it.

And readers can't connect the dots they haven't been given.

The Difference Between Mystery and Missing Information

This is where things get tricky, particularly for writers working in fantasy, mystery, and other genres where withholding information is part of the storytelling.

You absolutely do not need to explain everything. In fact, you shouldn't.

Readers enjoy uncertainty. They want to speculate about motives, question loyalties, and discover secrets alongside the characters. A little confusion can create wonderful tension.

But there's a difference between making readers wonder why something happened and leaving them unable to understand what is happening.

Consider two scenarios

In the first, a character refuses to enter a particular room. Their hands tremble whenever they pass the doorway, and they become visibly uncomfortable when someone mentions the room's former occupant.

The reader doesn't know why, but they recognize that something important is happening. The mystery is intentional, and the author has given them enough context to become curious.

In the second scenario, a character refuses to enter the same room, but there's no hesitation, no emotional reaction, and no indication that the refusal matters. Three chapters later, their unwillingness becomes central to a major confrontation.

The author knows exactly why the character avoided the room. The reader, however, may feel as though an important piece of the story has been left out. They are pulled out of the story trying to wonder what they are missing.

The difference isn't how much information the author reveals. It's whether the reader has enough information to understand the significance of what's happening.

You can withhold answers without withholding context.

When the Author Knows Too Much About Their World

This problem isn't limited to character development. Fantasy and science fiction writers are particularly vulnerable because worldbuilding often involves creating far more information than will ever appear in the finished novel.

And that's a good thing. A well-developed world should feel larger than the story taking place inside it.

But sometimes writers become so familiar with their world's rules that they forget those rules aren't obvious to everyone else.

A character might make a dangerous bargain with a supernatural creature, for example. The author understands that breaking such a bargain carries terrible consequences because they've established an entire magical system around these agreements.

But if the reader hasn't been shown or told enough about those consequences, the character's fear may feel exaggerated.

The opposite can happen, too. A character uses magic to solve a seemingly impossible problem, and the author knows the ability has existed all along. Unfortunately, the reader has never encountered it before.

Instead of feeling impressed by a clever solution, they may feel cheated.

The solution isn't to dump three pages of magical history into the opening chapter. It's to establish the information readers need before they need it. A warning from another character. A small demonstration of a magical limitation. A seemingly inconsequential consequence that becomes much more important later.

Often, a few carefully placed details can accomplish more than an entire paragraph of explanation.

How to Recognize Your Own Author Blind Spots

The difficult part is that these gaps are often invisible to the author. You've read the manuscript countless times. You know what's coming. You remember scenes that existed in earlier drafts, even if you've since removed them. You may even remember conversations between characters that happened entirely in your imagination.

Your brain automatically fills in the missing information. Unfortunately, your reader's brain can't.

Here are a few ways to catch those author blind spots before they become problems.

1. Question the motivations behind major decisions.

When a character makes an important choice, ask yourself what the reader knows at that exact moment. Not what they'll learn five chapters later, and not what you know from your character notes.

What information is actually available to them?

If the decision depends on knowledge they don't have, consider whether you've provided enough emotional or situational context to make the choice believable.

2. Look closely at emotional transitions.

Relationships rarely change overnight without a reason.

If two characters go from distrust to friendship, or attraction to love, look for the moments that earn that progression. Sometimes authors have imagined an entire relationship developing between scenes, only to discover that the reader has witnessed very little of it.

You don't need to document every interaction, but the important shifts need to happen where readers can experience them.

3. Pay attention to what your critique partners ask.

If a beta reader asks why a character did something, resist the urge to immediately explain it. Instead, ask yourself why the answer wasn't apparent from the manuscript.

That doesn't necessarily mean you need to spell everything out. Sometimes the reader has overlooked a detail. Other times, the explanation exists only in your head.

The distinction matters.

4. Watch for explanations that begin with "Well, what happened was..."

This is one I encounter frequently during developmental edits. I'll question a character's reaction or a plot development, and the author will respond with a wonderfully detailed explanation of the circumstances leading up to it.

Sometimes that explanation is more compelling than what's actually on the page.

When that happens, I encourage the author to look at how some of that missing context might be incorporated into the story itself. Not all of it. Just enough to give the reader the same opportunity to understand the character that the author already has.

Knowing Too Much Isn't the Problem. Forgetting What Readers Don't Know Is.

The goal of developmental editing isn't to make every motivation explicit, eliminate ambiguity, or explain away every mystery. It's to make sure the story provides readers with what they need to remain invested. Sometimes that means adding a line of dialogue. Sometimes it means moving a revelation earlier. Sometimes it means strengthening a character interaction so an emotional shift feels earned.

And sometimes it means recognizing that a brilliant piece of backstory you've been carrying around for three years never actually made it into the manuscript.

Writers should know more about their stories than their readers do. That's part of what gives fictional worlds depth and characters complexity. The trick is remembering that readers can only experience the story you've written, not the one you've imagined.

So beware of your author blind spots when you're writing.

So, writers, have you ever had a critique partner or beta reader tell you about an author blind spot?

About Jenn Windrow

Jenn Windrow once attempted to write a “normal” book—and promptly bored herself into a coma. So now she sticks to what she does best: writing snarky, kick-butt heroines, broody supernatural men, and more sexual tension than a vampire in a blood bank.

She’s the award-winning author of the Alexis Black novels and the Redeeming Cupid series, where the undead never sparkle and the drama is always delicious. Jenn moonlights as a developmental editor, helping other writers wrangle their wild plots and tangle-free prose.

When not arguing with her characters or muttering about Oxford commas, she can be found binge-watching trash TV, wrangling the slew of animals that live in her house (husband and teenagers included), or telling herself she’ll only have one more cookie.

You can find her at jennwindrow.com or lurking on social media where she pretends to be an extrovert.

Photo by Serge Taeymans on Unsplash