I’ve found that the biggest hurdle I always face when starting a story is finding the right POV, or once I pick a POV, I struggle to find the POV character’s voice (even when I choose an omniscient narrator/ non-character narrator). So my question is this: does anybody know of any good writing exercises to help me “meet” my characters and learn their voices? I’ve never been one of those writers who have characters telling stories in their head (I’m much better at plotting), and I want to get better at that part of writing.
A good old fashioned imaginary interview is a good place to start. You can do it in your head as an imaginary conversation and just take notes on the important stuff, or you can write it all out like an article. But the questions shouldn’t be biographical details you may already know, it should be conversational stuff. Imagine you’re a magazine reporter doing a feature on them (or on something connected to them, like their hometown or hobby).
The other thing about voice which I am only just starting to realize is that it’s not as much of a heavy lift as we usually expect. It’s very subtle; things like how often they expand their contractions, or if they call it social studies instead of history.
If you’re talking about accents and things like that, reading books with accents has helped me with that. Redwall and George Macdonald romance novels are really great with accents. I like to use Scottish accents because they sound authentic and personal to me.
