I have finally freed up some time to work on a genre of writing that’s best for me. I want to start writing and have a few questions for voice, I have read it takes hours and thousands of pages of writing before starting to really find your voice . I don’t have a problem with putting in the work but I also don’t want to just blindly go into it and have no target . Am I just waiting for this aha moment or is it sculpting a picture to captivate . I read an unhealthy amount and just want to hear what you have to say ! Thank you .
Don't make it a specific goal to try to find your voice. That's like trying to find your style as a visual artist, or your personality. It isn't something you have any control over or can actively do, it just becomes evident as you go forward. It'll rise to the surface little by little and let you know what it is. Just write and have fun doing it. Study and learn a few things now and then, but mostly just have fun. Were you asking a question about dialogue and inner monologue in hardboiled fiction (or intending to)? You say you've read a lot, has much of it been hardboiled? Personally I've seen a lot of film noirs, and recently I bought a few books of hardboiled and noir fiction but have only read a little bit of it. But my sense is that generally there's little or no inner monologue. I think the vast majority of hardboiled and detective fiction is written in objective POV, with no real access to anyone's inner thoughts or feelings. Though I'm sure there are exceptions, especially in some of the more recent neo-hardboiled (if that's what it's called, like neo-noir). Here's an omnibus of hardboiled fiction @ Archive.org: The Hardboiled Omnibus by Joseph T Shaw I was a bit stunned to see the first story was penned by Lester Dent. He was the main author of the Doc Savage pulp stories I used to read as a kid, which were very much written in a hardboiled style. So it does make sense. He probably wrote a bunch of it. I read the first couple of pages of it, and don't see any inner monologue or even indirect inner thoughts, like 'He couldn't remember ever seeing her with such a shrimp before.' That would be indirect inner monologue, done in third person past tense, whereas direct monologue would be in first person present—'I don't recall ever seeing her with such a shrimp before.' But that said, there are a lot of authors in that genre and a lot of variety. I'm sure some of them did use inner monologue, direct and indirect both. My advice would be to read a bunch of it looking for things like this. Though I had read so many Doc Savage books in the past, I didn't remember that they were written in objective with no inner monologue. I didn't think about stuff like that, or probably even know about it, back then. You want to learn to read like a writer, to pay attention to how they do the things they do.
I'm 11 pages in now, and here's the first part with any interiority to it at all: "Walking as if he did not feel as if he weighed more than a ton" is definitely interior, but very shallowly. But strangely, in the very next phrase of the same sentence, we're back outside of his head: "Seemed to think of a possibility which pleased him." 'Seemed to think of a possibility' implies (rather it definitely means) we're outside of his head completely again, with no access to this thoughts or feelings. Strange. I've noticed similar lapses in a few other stories of a similar type (hardboiled or noir). Very brusque like that, with no transition—just instantly in a character's head to some degree for a moment, and then instantly out again. It seems to fit the general brusqueness of the prose.
Funny I read that as outside looking at body language rather than inside a character's head. It reminded me a lot of the visuals from Maltese Falcon.
"Walking as if he did not feel as if he weighed more than a ton"—I'm not sure you can see that from the way a guy walks. Maybe. I think sometimes the hardboiled and noir writers cheat a little, because it's pretty hard to write in strict objective. I only noticed one more example of inner access, and it was equally abstruse and almost unnoticeable. I really like the way Lester Dent writes. Now I'm reading Raymond Chandler's The Man Who Liked Dogs in the same book. 9 pages in, and I just ran across the first hint of any kind of interior thought or feeling, again handled very distantly: He stood up with the broken end of the chain and the dog came up on his feet obediently, went out through the swing door into the back part of the house, at the man's side. I moved a little, out of line with the swing door. Jerry might have more shotguns. There was something about Jerry's face that worried me. As if I had seen him before, but not very recently, or in a newspaper photo. "Jerry might have more shotguns" is internal monologue, done in 1st person present tense, because the story is in first person. His thoughts are presented directly, exactly the way he's thinking them, with no dialogue tags (of course, it would seem pretty weird to tack on an 'I thought' after each one). I'm a little surprised to find that, but it still sounds like a tough guy's thoughts. But for the rest it switches to past tense. Not sure why. You don't think in past tense, unless you're thinking about something that happened some time ago. It's like we've switched from direct inner monologue into narration done after the fact. It would have flowed a bit more smoothly if it just remained in past tense the entire time—"Jerry might have had more shotguns." Ok, now that I've written it, it actually snarls up the flow. Maybe that's why Chandler switched to present tense briefly, just to make the words more smooth. Style is everything in hardboiled and noir. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but hey, that's the way I roll.
Ok yeah, that's what it is. Only the one line—"Jerry might have more shotguns" is inner monologue. The rest is his first person narration, just as he was doing before. So back to past tense. It's like he didn't want to mention being worried in inner monologue because it would be too direct and make him seem weak or frightened. So he went back to narration for it, which is more distant and closed. He's just telling us he was worried, after showing it with the previous statement ("Jerry might have more shotguns").
Overthinking is a skill that will keep you awake at night but the navigating waters away from the rocks is where overthinking or creating careful paths you will master that. The information given above is impressively helpful I appreciate your thorough advisory index, I can now at least start to cut through these briars and hopefully come to a clearing without a lot of unnecessary off path movements and learn to talk to myself in a way that other people don’t say . Shew! He sure has spent way to much time by himself .
Well they're gonna say that anyway. A writer basically is someone who spends way too much time alone, thinking those deep thoughts. Normal folk will spend all that alone time playing video games, watching movies, or on the cell phone.
I guess it goes without saying, but if you want to write hardboiled or anything like detective fiction or mystery, you should do a search for Objective POV. Read a few aticles, watch a few videos about it. You might also try a search for some variation of Writing hardboiled fiction. Looks like there's several articles about it. I would also recommend the introduction to the book I linked above. Incidentally Black Mask—the magazine where this new type of detective fiction was first published, is all over Archive.org.
I’m going through the crafty writers on my audio library card . Starting with Raymond Chandler . I really enjoy “Farewell my Lady” . I read alot and I really enjoyed that book. I wasn’t aware of the sources on black mask although I did read about it but haven’t pulled the thread on it yet . Objective POV is new information I appreciate the key to that door .
Another thing you might want to look into is the flat character arc. K M Weiland has written an incredible series of blog posts (which she develops into books) on various character arcs, and it's very helpful to get a good handle on first what a character arc entails, and then look into the particular type you plan to write. Creating Stunning Character Arcs, Pt. 1: Can You Structure Characters? For hardboiled PI type stories it's often a flat arc, where the character remains unchanged because he already understands the truth about the crime world he exists in and is able to effect some change on that world itself (rather than it affecting him). For many noirs and other kinds of crime novels it's more generally a negative or a fall arc. I wonder if I can find that article again? Some time back, when I was getting into noirs, I read a bunch of good articles about them, and at least one detailed the differences between a PI story (like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe) and the rest. The detective (gumshoe, private eye, usually not actually a police detective) has a code of honor that makes him invulnerable to the fall arc that gets most noir MCs (main characters). * * * Ah yes, we're in luck. I wrote about it in this blog entry: Getting a fix on what Film Noir is. I did a few other entries on film noir around the same time, some with links to good articles. I believe they're all on this page of my blog: Steaming Mess-O-Xoic page 4.
