Kairos Progress.

Hi frams! I know it's been an eternity since I updated After Hours. My apologies. Come to find out when you're doing a massive overhaul of a manuscript while also trying to balance your actual day job, writing a once-weekly blog sort of falls by the wayside. :) 

The rewrite of the Kairos manuscript was finished in early June and submitted to Wattpad to share with their partners. I know there's a couple of different parties interested in the manuscript so hopefully I'll have more details on that soon. 

Overall, I'm very pleased with it. The rough draft was 104,000 words. The rewrite is 94,000 words -- exactly 10,000 shorter. My beta readers tell me that despite the shorter length, the story feels longer and more complete, so I'll call that a win. I had to cut a few characters along the way, which makes me sad, but don't worry: At my heart, I am an immensely lazy writer. Just because they're gone from the first book doesn't mean they're gone for good.

The television deal has also been advancing. I have signed more contracts than I could ever care to count. A few weeks ago, I put together a look book for Kairos. For those unfamiliar, a look book helps people in charge of making a TV adaptation of a piece of work know what the tone, look, and feel is supposed to be. Mine included seven(!) pages of my favorite quotes from the rewrite, my favorite quotes from Wattpad readers (way harder than it sounds!), and a list of casting choices. I am super out of the loop when it comes to who's who in Hollywood, so I gathered up physical descriptions of each character instead.

I've started on another book, called The Seam Sorceress. It's a young adult southern gothic fairy tale. I know I've still got Toto and A Sip of Magic on the back burner. Don't worry, they're not forgotten either. The Seam Sorceress has just been sitting on my heart a lot lately. It's hard to focus on any other story right now, so I figure I might as well get it out of my system. 

It's also time to start thinking about the sequel to Kairos, I think. At least, I'm starting to get to the point where I can think of a sequel without wanting to stress vomit. I think that's a good sign. 

On Developing Character Voice: Character Voice 101.

I could probably write an entire book on developing character voice, but for today I'm going to touch on the absolute basics.

Character voice is not, contrary to popular belief, necessarily how a character sounds. As writing is not a sound-base medium, telling a reader that your romantic lead has a "husky" or "sexy" voice is probably not going to be inherently helpful in the long run. Instead, character voice is the lexicon, slang, and verbal tics your character uses in dialogue. 

In my opinion, it is the strongest tool a writer has in their arsenal for developing a character. This is how you make a character stand out. This is how you start the illusion that your book was not just written by a single caffeine-addled person at a computer, but instead it is a glimpse into a very real and very complete world populated by very real and complete people. 

I could start by telling you to examine your own lexicon and verbal habits, becoming more cognizant of your narrative voice, but that's not how I started, and I think self-examination is actually an incredibly hard process. We're writers. We use a lot of words. Instead, I'm going to show you the Lady Cheaterly way: Starting with accents. 

Accent Writing For Dummies

The first step in writing a character with an accent is to listen to somebody with that accent. Listen to them a lot. If you can, find a movie or YouTube video that has somebody with that accent talking and run it in the background while you write. Go to sleep with it on. Whatever works best for you. 

The next step is to totally ignore the accent. 

Totally contradictory, right? Not necessarily. 

A lot of amateur writers think that an accent revolves around spelling out the accent phonetically. Not only is this not the most evocative way to write an accent, it's also the most distracting for the reader. Some examples, featuring Ye Olde Generic Southern Accent:

Writing the accent phonetically: "Wahl howdy suga lips, ain't yew jest a sight fer sore ahhs? Yew fixin' to stay fer a while?"

Writing the accent like a sane person: "Well howdy sugar lips, ain't you just a sight for sore eyes? You fixing to stay for a while?" 

Which one did you read quicker? Was it the second one? Did you find in the first example, you got hung up on every word that was spelled phonetically with the accent? Did the phonetic spelling bring anything to the reading that the second version didn't? 

Your readers are looking for literally any reason to put down your book. They want to go watch Netflix, they want to move onto another book, go check Insta, etc., and if they have to spend more than a half-second deciphering anything you wrote, they are out of there. So say it with me: Do not write out accents phonetically.

Instead, focus on the turns-of-phrase of an accent. This is much harder, but results in much happier readers and much more believable characters. 

Going back to the above example--did you notice how the speaker says "fixing to stay a while" instead of "planning to stay a while?" That's because "fixing" is a long-standing part of the southern vernacular. "I'm fixing to go to the store," "he's fixing to start a fight," etc -- it is an expression of someone planning or perhaps wishing to do something in the near future. 

It is immediately southern. You could take all of the other colloquialism out and just leave it like this:

"Well hello there. It's been a long time since we've seen each other, hasn't it? Are you fixing to stay awhile?" 

That word alone is enough to code the rest of the sentence as "American south." 

This is why it's so important to listen to someone with an accent talk a lot. As you immerse yourself in the accent, you'll pick up the distinct dialect, verbal tics, and grammar that makes an accent an accent. It's so much more than how the words are said. 

Although, a word of warning: Listen to an accent too long and you'll probably pick it up. Whenever I write for Oleander in A Sip of Magic, I sound Irish for an entire week.