Hi all - back to writing again after getting some hard to find inspiration. That inspiration came with the urging to write my character with a voice that she gets after visiting another world when she's six years old. She's gone for two weeks and remembers nothing of what she saw, but she comes back with a voice telling her in time, she'll go back and save the world. Fast forward about eleven years and my M.C. is 17, entering her last year in high school. She assumes that this year will be the last year before she finally gets to go back to this other world. Herein lies my problem with her 'voice'. I've done some searches on how to write a character with a voice in their head, one that's been there for a long time, but I haven't found much help. There are plenty of examples of when a character first learns about a voice being in their head - the shock of hearing the voice for the first time, but if I don't plan on including how it comes into her head because it's supposed to be like one of those creepy stories where she thinks the voice is a friend, but to everyone else in her life, it's a problem. She can't see what they're seeing. I have a contingency plan for how I can write it if I feel like I can't grasp what I'm trying to do with this voice. I can make her get the voice later in life, perhaps after some magic wears off and it's 'let through' again. I'm still exploring if this is the better option to go, in the end, but I don't think I've read any novel that has a character who has a voice consistently with them that's not horror, and I'm not writing horror. I'm writing YA Fantasy. Hopefully this makes sense, what I'm trying to get at. Let me know if I can clarify anything, of course, or if this has already been answered (I tried searching for a thread, but didn't find one).
I'm not sure what your question is. Do you mean how you should portray the voice in narrative? If that's it, then I'd just use italics, probably. Although I noticed a contradiction in your post - you said the voice is supposed to be like one of those creepy stories where she thinks the voice is a friend while everyone else just thinks she's got a problem, and then you say you're not writing horror. So how do you want the voice to come across? Because if you don't explain where the voice comes from or why and just has her sorta talking to herself (well, to this voice), then it certainly might come across like horror. I think how you write it would depend on just how you want the voice to come across to readers - do you want the readers to trust the voice and be on the side of the MC, or do you want the readers to find the voice disturbing and believe they might be reading about the mind of an insane person?
I think it depends on how big the role of the voice is. It could be in italics, if it is a small role. But for a bigger role, you could maybe even make it a regular dialog.
I think my question is how to write it. I definitely would just use italics for the words themselves, so it's not a formatting question. My trouble is weaving it into the storyline because it's been with her since she was young. I don't know how to introduce the voice she hears properly. I'm not trying to write horror, but it does seem a bit horror-like, I agree. Maybe it's a problem of I don't really know what I want to write here. I'm okay with admitting that and still opening it up to ideas on how having this voice in my MC's head would be most effective. The voice is leading her back to the world she visited when she was six years old, and she would need to hide her being able to hear the voice from others, because they don't support her listening to it. After all, she says she started hearing it after visiting another world, when on Earth, she was gone for two weeks with no real explanation of where she was. For all they understand about the voice, it is a mental issue borne from that time. I think I want my readers to not necessarily trust the voice she hears, but be curious about who is behind it and why it chose my MC to talk to.
To add some realism, make sure there are points where the voice is a problem for her. She is stressed by something else, it carries on insessantly, it tells her things she doesn't want to know, it interrupts her while talking to others and she has to fight the urge to talk back/include what it is saying in her current conversation, etc. Does she alienate herself by screaming "Just shut up!" in crowded rooms? Try a search for something like 'old necromancer gone mad with voices' and you might find some examples.
For formatting, which I realize is totally not what you're asking because you've already decided, I would just treat it like another speaker. I wouldn't use italics, I'd use normal quotes. If you had a character wandering around with a Bluetooth headset on, I'm assuming that you'd use normal dialogue conventions; I'd do the same here. One large question for me would be whether she interacts with the voice, or whether the voice just speaks and she can't speak back to it? Also, is the voice aware of what she's doing, or is it just a sort of blind broadcast? I suddenly find a scene in my own voice: Emily peered into the cupcake case. "I'd like two chocolate with chocolate buttercream, and two Red Velvet, please." The clerk said, "You can get two more for the price of one more--discount for six?" Ilya whispered, "You can't eat six cupcakes. You'll have to be thin when you make the crossing." Emily felt her face set into a frown, then smiled at the clerk's confusion at facing that sudden frown. She told the clerk, "I have a friend who would tell me not to get the six. I would tell the friend to shut up and mind her own business. Let's make it a dozen."
Others in your MC's life are likely to (for good reason) believe that the voice is representative of PTSD from her unexplained stranger abduction at the age of six--why else would a six year old disappear for two weeks and then show up unharmed and either have no memory of where she was or be telling wild stories of alien abduction? The only other explanation of her hearing a voice would be onset of schizophrenia--and late adolescence is typical onset for a first psychotic episode. I suspect that, story-wise, your issue will be less how to present the voice (it would just "out of the blue" begin talking to her), than keeping your character out of the psych unit once she lets on (if she does) that she's hearing "the voice." It makes sense that her friends/family would be freaked out by the voice and see it as "crazy." Don't worry about your character's "voice"sounding natural--it won't because it isn't. Don't think you're going to find examples of how to write it--it's unique. Have fun!
Have you seen the thread about putting your writing through Google Translate and then re-translating back into English? Sometimes the words come back making sense, but at others they are garbled. Imagine a voice like this that speaks mangled English--it would be incomprehensible or enlightening, depending on the translation. For example, putting Chicken's, "You can't eat six cupcakes. You'll have to be thin when you make the crossing," into Xhosa and back produces, "You can not eat six bars. You will have to be young when you fall."
Here. This is been considered the single best representation of a character who hears voices in media. People who have had psychosis said that it was almost too real.
