#194 - Choosing the voice
It's not just about how characters speak, but why they use that voice.
Dialogue isn’t just a tool for sharing a character’s distinct traits. It can give a window into the world and the systems around that character, and how they choose to conform to (or rebel against) those norms.
In the clip above, Maggie Mae Fish digs deep into Sorry To Bother You, its critique of cultural scripts, and includes additional clips for context about how code switching is a performative tool for survival. Dylan O’Connor brings Atlanta into the conversation about Sorry to Bother You, finding connections in how they show performative whiteness or blackness as tools of an economic system that demands conformity.
For a direct example of a business having a specific voice, the bank Monzo has an online guide explaining the way it wants all employees to speak to customers.
Tia Levings points to the book Fascinating Womanhood, a guide pushing women to use a submissive, childlike voice (and which was used as a tool to encourage women to stay in abusive relationships). Jess Piper explores the weaponization of the “fundie baby voice,” and how the “bless your heart effect” is used to mask harmful intentions. debuk adds another layer, considering whether criticism of “fundie baby voice” is an extension of misogynistic ways women have their voices policed.
In episode 635 of Scriptnotes, John and Craig spend time on dialect, and the specifics of depicting a character who speaks English as a second language. It’s not just about grammatical fluency, but emotional and societal influences.
Bridging the topics of code switching and speaking in multiple languages, Jim Clarke analyzes the snippets of Cityspeak from Blade Runner:
My first idea was to put a mixture of genuine Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Hungarian, and Japanese into Cityspeak,” Olmos said […] “Then I went to the Berlitz School of Languages in Los Angeles, translated all these different bits and pieces of Gaff’s original dialogue into fragments of foreign tongues.
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What’s a Write Sprint?
John wrote up an explanation, but here’s the short version: Set a timer for 60 minutes, close down all distractions, and do nothing but write until that timer goes off.
Sometimes that’s all it takes to get some momentum going with your writing: You set aside this time for writing and nothing else, so you’d better use it!
Shout out to Elyse Moretti Forbes and Aimee Link for sprinting with us last week!
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Liam Thompson experiments with spending a week without modern conveniences and relying exclusively on 80s technology.
What else is inneresting?
DaveScripted dissects Villanelle’s introduction from Killing Eve as an outstanding example of introducing a character through a self-contained scene.
Raquel Laneri talks to Lyn Slater, author of How to Be Old, about discovering a new personal style as you age.
Adam Mastroianni critiques John Horgan’s The End of Science, suggesting doomsayers should be held to higher standards if we’re going to take them seriously.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
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