I am in no way a professional.
I don't have a fancy education to back up writing (that is reserved for
mathematics), but I do know what I like to read and I do know when I read
something that doesn't quite jive for me. So WELCOME to my CRITIQUE
PARTNER SERIES! It is minus the partner, because I don't actually know
any of the writers whose work I am reading, but here I will offer my advice.
Much of my advice you can find everywhere else on the internet.
None of it is professional. All of it is...I can't think of
anything to finish this sentence with. I liked the whole "Much of
it, none of it, all of it" thing I had going on at the start of each
sentence, but I'm far too lazy to spend time thinking how to end that sentence,
especially when this is only a blog developed for my personal enjoyment. Tally
ho!
#6 Critique
Partner Series – Author’s Voice
Women are
supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need
exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their
brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation,
precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged
fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making
puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering
bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them,
or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has
pronounced necessary for their sex (Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre, Chapter XII).
Why you may ask—or maybe you don’t—do
I begin this week’s post with a quote from Jane
Eyre? Those who know me also know
this is my favorite novel. They know I
have read it nine times and that throughout high school and college I continuously
chose to write papers on it. And those
who know me even better, they know I incorporated a passage of it into my
wedding vows. But as much as I love Jane Eyre, I do not love this passage.
Wait! Before you shoot me and claim all sorts of
feminist claims, and before you hate me forever, listen! It’s not that I don’t like the message. It’s a very fine message. Power to women and all that.** What I don’t like is that this passage is about
Brontë and not
about Jane. Think of where we are in the
story: Jane has just entered
Thornfield. She barely knows Mr.
Rochester. She’s seen so little of
life. In fact, Jane is just too naïve at
this point in the novel to be this angry. Brontë breaks into Jane’s character.
She has a message for her readers, and she uses Jane as the podium to
relay that message.
It’s going to happen. As writers, we pour so much of ourselves into
each page that, eventually, part of ourselves seeps into our characters as
well. The trick is to make certain when
we do it, we do it true to the character.
I know, I know. It’s presumptuous
of me to speak of Literature (with a capital L) in this way, but if Brontë had just waited until after Jane spent
some time with St. John—enough that Jane could get good and suppressed—I’d say,
“Go ahead! Preach away, sister!” It wouldn’t stand out to me as Brontë’s words.
I wouldn’t feel as if I’d been swindled into reading propaganda.
Be aware of your own voice when you write. If you have a message, go ahead and write it,
but only write it if your character is ready for it. Only write it if it fits in with what your
character thinks. If you don’t, readers (I)
will humph and think thoughts like, “Does Brianna really feel this way about the
rebel attacks in Alpha Centauri, or is that how you feel?”
**I admit one of my papers was about how Jane needs a man in her
life, only she needs one on her own terms.
My question for you:
How do you feel when you recognize the difference between a
character’s thoughts and the author’s?
Does it matter to you?
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