What voices do you use in your stories?

[Bramblethorn]

All past tense except where noted:

Four stories with a single first-person female narrator. One of these has a small portion in third-person present, as a way of condensing the narrator learning about something she wasn't present for. Another has occasional present-tense asides. Another is part epistolary, with things like emails and chat transcripts.
One with a first-person female narrator, bookended by shorter third-person sections.
One that's about 50% first-person female narrator, 50% a story being told to her by another character in third-person style.
One with first-person male narrator.
One with first-person narrator of unspecified gender, mostly past tense but with a storyline that occasionally runs into the present.
One third-person close from perspective of male protagonist (and, eventually, his remains).

 

[EmilyMiller]

So which story of yours is based on Heart of Darkness?

None!

I’m confused. No you are. Maybe we both are.

Em

 

[gunhilltrain]

None!

I’m confused. No you are. Maybe we both are.

Em

All I've got is this:

Post 43: I wrote: Conrad might be challenging unless you have some ships in it.

Post 44: I did it - with Heart of DarknessSee above.More girlie than Steinbeck. Less girlie than Hemingway. Em

Post 49: I wrote: So which story of yours is based on Heart of Darkness?

So I guess when you said, "I did it," I shouldn't have taken that literally?

 

[EmilyMiller]

All I've got is this:

Post 43: I wrote: Conrad might be challenging unless you have some ships in it.

Post 44: I did it - with Heart of DarknessSee above.More girlie than Steinbeck. Less girlie than Hemingway. Em

Post 49: I wrote: So which story of yours is based on Heart of Darkness?

So I guess when you said, "I did it," I shouldn't have taken that literally?

I put Heart of Darkness into Gender Analyzer.

Mildly masculine apparently.

Em

 

[gunhilltrain]

I put Heart of Darkness into Gender Analyzer.

Mildly masculine apparently.

Em

Okay, now I get it. Millie posted about it in #12. There seems to be several programs that do that. If we're talking about the same one, I tested the free version a few times with some text from a story in progress. It shows me as being slightly towards the feminine end of things. Why? Because it's mostly dialogue with no guns or car crashes? (The narrator is male.) It claims a reliability rating of 70% which seems like the best one could hope for with present-day technology.

 

[gunhilltrain]

There is a copy of Heart of Darkness online. Based on the content (I read it some years ago), it would seem to be strongly masculine. But what do I know compared to some software?

I also got an idea of why Conrad is a bit difficult to read. He goes in for a lot of very long paragraphs. He often has one where I would break it into three or four. But he's Joseph Conrad and I'm not.

 

[EmilyMiller]

There is a copy of Heart of Darkness online. Based on the content (I read it some years ago), it would seem to be strongly masculine. But what do I know compared to some software?

I also got an idea of why Conrad is a bit difficult to read. He goes in for a lot of very long paragraphs. He often has one where I would break it into three or four. But he's Joseph Conrad and I'm not.

I love Conrad. Maybe my second favorite author.

Em

 

[BongoGal]

All my smut has been in first person, and all but one of my stories has had a female POV. Oddly, though, my next two are obliged to be from a first person male POV. (The issue with one of them is that I don't think I'm capable of credibly writing the internal thoughts of a villainous character, in this case female.)

 

[BongoGal]

I also got an idea of why Conrad is a bit difficult to read. He goes in for a lot of very long paragraphs. He often has one where I would break it into three or four. But he's Joseph Conrad and I'm not.

I remain amazed that Conrad didn't become fluent in English until he was in his twenties.

 

[Britva415]

What voices do you use in your stories?

Always past tense.

So far, more first-person than third, but I want to do less of this.

All of my first-person stories have been male voice.

My third-person stories have tended to skew a little more toward the FMC's point of view, but the whole reason I write third-person is to present more than one character's point of view, and since most of these stories have two real characters... You do the math.