This year I’m participating in Stephanie Orges’ Voice Week 2013, go check it out. Here is my first voice.
Voice #1
There is nothing here that I can eat.
Come on I thought you would eat a salad
I looked at that salad, it is all iceberg lettuce and factory processed carrots, I need real food, not fried food and starches.
The sodium alone will make me swell up like a balloon.
Its not that bad
Just water, bottled water, please.
The thought of eating anything in here is making me ill.
You need to eat better if you want to stay healthy, fresh fruits, nuts, bright leafy greens, organic only.
Look at that girl over there, I wish I had her body, so thin.
Take me home.
There is nothing but garbage here.
©The Autobiography of Mr. Perfect, 2013
The Autobiography of Mr. Perfect 
The lack of punctuation in the italics, though distinct, makes reading it a little tricky. Still, it has an interesting effect.
A very intriguing voice, this. She (maybe too much of an assumption, but the character is envying a girl), seems very health-conscious and self-pitying until that last line, which makes me wonder about possible eating disorders. A lot of possibilities to unpack!
Well then. That hit home.
I love the subject matter–so rich, but more than that, it’s something many writers shy away from even as it needs so badly to be written about. Your use of those short phrases was so stark and well-done…very nice job.
Hmm, sounds like an anorexic girl? The stream of consciousness, the back-and-forth in her mind makes for an excellent voice.
I took a little liberties with the assignment, I strayed from the single event and instead centered on a central theme of hunger, each voice this week deals with hunger in different ways, and at the same time arrives at that point of hunger for very different reasons. Yet, I’ve tried to tie each piece to the next with a tag line that is shared by both characters. My final piece ties back to the first. I did try to keep it near 100 words so that requires some brevity and lack of detail, but I absolutely love the spin you’ve each put on these voices. Makes me think…
Finally all of these voices are from people I know, so it was easy to just write down conversations as I remembered them, so I’m not sure that counts as a true exercise.
Thank you for reading and enjoy the remaining posts. I’ve dynamically linked the first and last phrase so you can jump between my separate streams of consciousness. Of course the last link back to the beginning won’t go active until Friday.
Ray (aka) Mr. Perfect.
“Finally all of these voices are from people I know, so it was easy to just write down conversations as I remembered them, so I’m not sure that counts as a true exercise.” And yet, it adds a whole layer to each piece, too. Wow… that makes me take a step back.
Great idea to have them interlock!
I love the idea of interlocking them. Like others, I found the stocatto voice a little challenging but I LIKE that. Maybe I wouldn’t if it was a novel-length piece, but here it gives so much more of the character. 100 words can flow or judder – this judders and that fits the mental dialogue that’s going on for this character.
And no, I don’t think characters based on real people nullifies the exercise at all.
Our inner dialog often flows that way, disjointed and seemingly stilted, but that’s because it is supplemented by the sensory stream that washes over us, we fill in with sight smell and sound without giving voice to those stimuli unless they rise to a crisis level. In a long piece some of that is needed to set the tone and feel, however to perfectly replicate it would make a very long story and would rob the reader of the joy of placing themselves into the moment. There is always an artistic balance. I wish I has spent more time on this, but as often is in real life overworked pieces are like an overworked pie crust, tough and chewy, losing the lightness and delight of a flaky crust. Thank you for commenting.
Absolutely. Like I say, this comment was meant to be a compliment. I liked what you did because, as you say, it works as internal dialogue
Thank you
A very interesting voice, indeed. I really like the run-on, grammar-less italics, which show how little attention this character is paying to the world outside her own head. Nicely done. 🙂
I saw this as a girl dealing with an eating disorder. She wants to eat “healthy” but even healthy food isn’t appealing since her desire to lose weight is paramount
I like how you’ve tackled this, I initially thought this was a health-conscious person, but the lead-up to the last line (and including it), I decided against that and think it’s the voice of a person suffering from a food disorder..really subtly done, great job. 🙂