Skills: Distinctive Voices

Inventing Characters Read! Journal Word Notebook

Choosing Titles The Fab Four Golden Rules Generating Ideas Stealing Ideas From an Idea to a Plan Planning from a Picture Stories Based on a Passage Stories Based on a Sentence An Example of Good Planning

Describing a Location Longer descriptions Describing a character's appearance Dialogue Distinctive Voices Show, Don't Tell Characterisation: Shown Feelings More Characterisation Techniques Playing with Sentences Playscripts Action Suspense

What is story structure? 1 Exciting opening line 2 Set the scene 3 Talking and describing character 4 Characterisation 5 Suspense 6 Action 7 Cliffhanger Standing Out: How can you stand out from the crowd? Clever Clogs: Non-Linear Clever-clogs: Two perspectives Clever-clogs: Narrative voice Practice 11+ exam titles

Checking your story in an exam Redrafting = improving your story What if I run out of time in an exam? The Grumpy Examiner's Pet Hates

Year 2 into 3 Lemony Snicket After Harry Potter Must-Read Authors Spy Novels Horror Stories Classics Animal Stories Adventure Historical Fiction Myths & Legends Fantasy Family Stories & Comedies

The best stories contain memorable characters.

You’ll always remember Count Olaf from Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, because he’s such a strong character. And who can forget Aslan, Mrs Coulter or Lord Voldemort?

The problem is that you don’t have very long to create a memorable character. Because you are so pushed for time and space, you need to use dialogue effectively – and one of the best ways to do this is to have your characters speak in distinctive voices.

There are three tricks you can use to create a distinctive voice:

At the Falcons School for Girls, we learn about the Victorians in Year Six. Now, the Victorian period was over one hundred years ago. People had a very different manner of speaking:

“Pardon me,” said Lady Goudy, speaking in a beautifully modulated voice. “Would you bring me my son? We really need to be setting off for church.”
“Sorry, M’lady,” grunted Chivers. “’e’s still lying in ‘is bed. I gets up and calls to ‘im, but ‘e don’t move!”

Because there was such a huge gap between the Gentry (who lived in vast stately homes, with dozens of servants, and travelled in their own horse-drawn carriages) and the Poor (who couldn’t read or write, and who lived in filthy hovels), they spoke in very different voices.

Study this dialogue. A rich gentleman is talking to his Cook:

“By Jove, Cook! This soup is simply delicious. Whatever did you add to it?”
“I forgots to tell yer, Sir,” muttered Cook, scratching her chin. “Yer cat crept into kitchen when I was tending the fire, and widdled in the saucepan.”

One trick a girl I taught used was to always make one of the characters in her stories French. Because she had been learning French since Reception, she had a good vocabulary of French words she could use to bring her characters to life. Study this extract from her story, ‘Escape’:

“Who are you?” shrieked the guard.
“Non, non, non,” purred Simone. “You ‘av non need to know my name. In fact, you will forget you ‘av ever zet eyes on me, or I shall have to shoot you with my petite gun.” She pressed the banana a little harder into the guard’s back.
“Don’t shoot! Please!”
“Calm yourself, monsieur!”

See those hoodies hanging out by the bus stop? Imagine a play where one of them was having a chat with the Queen!

HOODIE: All right, darlin’. How you hangin’?
QUEEN: (Frowning) One is feeling lost. I appear to have mislaid my carriage.
HOODIE: That’s wack!
QUEEN: I beg your pardon?

Your go! Write a conversation between the Queen and a zit-faced Hoodie.

Last updated on August 13, 2007