Speak Up! — Avoiding Hesitant Characters and Using Your Words to Assert Meaning

Receiving my pages back from my mentor this weekend, one thing that jumped out at me through her insightful comments was the occasional and sometimes not so occasional slip from a strong, assertive voice to a more tentative, hesitant one. Instead of my character saying something in a strong, positive manner, the language I chose made it seem almost as if they didn't really want to speak of their feelings,  or they weren't quite sure what they thought. But certainly, this is not a good way for my characters to come across, and not an effective manner for establishing a strong, engaging story for the reader.

When reading a story, it is important for the characters to come across as people who have a consistent voice, know who they are (to some extent), and convey their emotions in a clear manner. Of course, this does not mean that all characters always know how they feel or what they want, or that a character can't be inconsistent if that is what an author intends. But even so, creating characters who only half-way say what they mean or never fully say what they are trying to convey doesn't make for a strong reading experience, or for a character who will last well beyond the last page turn of the book.

I think part of this tendency comes from our own hesitation as writers sometimes. I know that in working through this first draft of my current novel, I'm not always sure exactly what I want to say or how I want to say it for every line. But we don't want the characters to reveal whatever hesitation we have as writers. We want them to stand strong, defined on the page, and confidently owning who they are. Even if you have a character who is completely lacking self-confidence or is desperately unsure of who she is, you still need her to assert herself as unconfident, perhaps not by saying so, but by simply using the words she speaks to convey a decisive point. This may sound a bit confusing as we are getting into the line between us writers (or creators) creating and controlling these characters and the characters sometimes creating and dictating their own paths, but still — the point is that each of our characters need to assert something. Whether its fear, joy, trepidation, anger, or insecurity, no character can do this half way. At least not an effective character.

Words like "probably" and "possible", the passive voice, and phrases like "she could feel" instead of "she felt"are all good indicators that perhaps a sentence needs to be reevaluated and made stronger. Having another person read through your work and look for these things is a helpful tool for identifying your own hesitant writing since we all know that we miss things when we read our own work. And, remembering that this will be something you can make better again and again as you work through your revisions is something to keep in mind. We all struggle with making our words convey exactly what we want them, too. So it's certainly not just you, and it's not just me. 

But when I think about the books that affected me the most, or the books for which I admire the prose or the strength of character, all of them have this same element in common. Their words assert meaning. And their characters' words clearly convey who they are, uniquely, consistently, and with no shame. So as we work through our prose, and develop our characters, let's keep this in mind: write characters who are not hesitant to reveal who they are, even if they are only revealing insecurities. And don't be afraid to rework that sentence over and over again, until the right words shine and are just as powerful as you had hoped.