Introduction to preparing to write about Characterisation and Voice

1. Preparing to write about characterisation and voice

2. Introduction to characterisation
and voice.
When writing about characterisation and voice you will
still need to refer to themes and ideas.
Focus on the characters who express or embody those
ideas.

3. Preparing to write about
characterisation and voice
There are areas or types of character to focus on when
writing about characterisation and voice:
•relationships between characters
•heroes or villains
•male or female characters
•tragic or comic characters

4. Characterisation
 Think about what the set of characters in your text
are like.
 Look at what characters say (dialogue) and what they
do (action).
 How are they described.
 How they are seen by other characters?
 Consider what happens to them at the end of their
story.

5. Voice
 Voice means how we hear characters speak in
dialogue..
 how what they say makes them seem like living,
breathing people.
 It also refers to the voice of the author or narrator.

6. Identify the voice
….of a text ask the following questions:
•How is the story told - what writing techniques are
used?
•What is the feeling or attitude of the narrator?
•Do we get a clear sense of the narrator as a character
in the story, with attitudes and feelings, or are the
characters the only real people in the story?

7. Identifying character contrasts
 look for contrasts or contradictions - between
characters AND within each character.
 all effective characters have more than one side to
their personality.
 Look at how the relationships between characters
change over the course of a text.
 Think about what brings certain characters together
and what drives them apart.
 look at changes within a particular character. These
changes will often be the result of a conflict within
the character that you'll notice early on in a story.

9. Typical contrasts within a character
•A person who thinks or talks too much then finally
learns to act.
•A person who acts impulsively then finally learns to
think.
•A sociable character who finds time to explore and
understand themselves as an individual.
•A loner who comes to learn the value of friendship.
•A victim who finally manages to stand up to a bully.
•A strong leader who cares about the consequences of
their actions or who listens to the voice of others.
•A character who sacrifices something important to
pursue a goal of their own.

10. Typical contrasts between
characters
•Characters who :
think versus characters who feel.
talk versus characters who act.
•Sociable characters versus solitary characters.
•Predators who prey on people versus prey people who become
victims.
•Characters who lead versus those who care for others.
•Characters who want one thing versus those who want another.

11. Writing techniques that create
characters
Novels, plays and poems don't simply tell you what a
character is like, they show you by:
• describing what characters do
• reporting what characters say
• showing you what characters look like, what
they are wearing, or the objects they are surrounded
by
• using imagery and metaphor to express aspects
of their identity

12. TIP 1
When you are writing about characterisation, don't just
describe what characters are like. Always give evidence, and
always give a range of language techniques the writer uses.

13. Identify writers techniques:
Examples of writers techniques :
•possessives
•repetition
•metaphor and form
•punctuation
•ambiguity
similes
•imagery

14. Tip 2
The type of person represented in a character will always
illustrate an aspect of the story's key themes.
Characters are not just people - they represent ideas.

15. Conclusion on Characterisation and Voice
 All novels, short stories, poems and plays are about people:
Even if they seem to be about something else, they will be
about people - for example a text that seems to be about
nature, may actually about the way human beings destroy
nature, or are made small and unimportant by nature.
 Texts explore ideas by throwing opposing themes together so
always look at how characters contrast. Look at how they are
described and whether their words match their actions.
Consider whether they 'sympathetic' (we are supposed to like
them) or unsympathetic (we're not).
 Above all, you need to listen to what characters say. Look
closely at the dialogue to see how characters reveal
themselves though their own particular idiolect.