Designing a Character Voice That Complements Your Point of View
The writing and editing techniques I use with all my humor pieces
Designing a character voice is something I really love to do. I actually developed a whole workshop around it because I love it so much, and there’s nothing that delights me more than when a piece has a sharp and distinctive voice throughout. Inspired by a section in that workshop, I wanted to put together a post about how I find and develop character voice, using the first piece I got published in McSweeney’s as an example.
As a side note, I built this post by going back into my Google Docs history. It’s interesting to go back through the history to see all the tiny decisions you made while writing a piece and the bigger breakthroughs you had along the way. You may think you remember how the process went, but it’s cool to find out things like, “Oh, I actually took a month off from working on this piece and came back to it,” and being able to see the impact of that.
I wrote this piece back in 2018 when I was deep in a job hunt after being laid off. Clearly I had a lot of feelings about it, which always helps when you’re writing a humor piece.
FINDING THE VOICE
The original title for this piece was, “An Honest Job Description For The Role Of Recruiter.” I started by doing a five-minute brainstorm, and the ideas weren't super heightened at first. For example, one was, “You like to read cover letters and never respond.” Meh. But the seeds of the feeling were there. After another fifteen minute brainstorm, I could see the inklings of a voice emerging. For example, the cover letter joke became, “You like to read cover letters and make fun of them.” That felt more specific and funny.
To remind myself to push more in that direction, I wrote at the top of my page, “This piece has to be way exaggerated so that it feels like it’s written by someone imagining what it is a recruiter does.”
Pushing into this “imagined” direction was key. The piece wasn’t about being true to what the role of a recruiter actually is — the piece was about being true to my feelings as someone who was completely demoralized by the job hunt.
The endless rejection and ghosting throughout my job hunt made me feel sad, anxious, and embarrassed. Imagining this fake entity who was doing everything they could to ensure I remained sad, anxious, and embarrassed led to me crafting a very over the top, evil tone of voice, which was filtered through the cheerful, generic job description language.
CRYSTALLIZING THE VOICE
At my next writing session, I kept brainstorming. I also added clearly defined sections that I’d seen in real job descriptions, like, “Job responsibilities” and “The ideal candidate,” which helped unlock more joke opportunities, such as, “You’ll thrive in this role if you love exclamation points and draining people of all hope.”
This isn’t always possible or necessary, but I noticed something interesting when I went back into the version history, which is that I took a month off from editing this piece. When I came back, things really started to click. I started making big edits that helped sharpen the piece. By the end of that first editing session back, I had jokes like, “We need a recruiter who can crush each applicant’s self-esteem like a squirrel under a semi-truck.” The voice in that joke felt even more specific than what I had before, which helped inform the subsequent drafts.
I did a few more editing sessions over the next few days, and then the piece was pretty much set.
EDITING FOR VOICE
After that, the fun part began: editing for voice. I spent the next week just looking for opportunities to push the exaggerated “evil” tone further. I was pretty much constantly tinkering with this piece, so it’s not exactly true to say there were only four versions. But for simplicity’s sake, here’s how one joke evolved from first draft to final draft.
VERSION 1
“This exciting role is primarily responsible for finding talented, qualified job candidates and then sadistically toying with their emotions until they are broken, exhausted, and have a horrible impression of whatever it is we even do here.”
This was one of the early versions of the joke. It put too much emphasis on the inner workings of this imaginary company, which wasn’t really what the piece was about.
VERSION 2
“This exciting role is responsible for finding talented, qualified candidates and then sadistically toying with their emotions.”
In a later version, I edited it down to simply end at “toying with their emotions.”
VERSION 3
“This exciting role is responsible for finding talented, qualified candidates and then sadistically toying with their emotions until they are a mere husk of their former selves.”
When I was looking for opportunities to push that “evil” voice further, I added this bit about being a husk of their former selves. But that felt like something I’d heard before and it also wasn’t very specific. I finally landed on:
VERSION 4
“This exciting role is responsible for finding talented, qualified candidates, and then sadistically toying with their emotions until their confidence is so low that every time they look in the mirror all they see is a sad, disheveled potato.”
That finally resonated because it felt specific and personal. It put the emphasis more on the demoralizing feeling of job hunting, which ultimately is what the piece is about. It also felt more in-line with earlier jokes, like the squirrel one, which relied on bringing in unexpected details.
Going through this piece and looking for those big and small opportunities to push the voice further helped a lot. I had only been writing humor for about a year or so at this point, and I think this experience informed my process moving forward in a big way.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
When I’m writing, I’m more of a gardener (someone who has to plant a bunch of seeds and see how they grow, and then cultivate things from there) versus an architect (someone who has a plan in their head from the outset and then executes on that plan). Your process might be different, but here are the three steps that really help me when I’m writing and editing:
1) Let yourself write without judgment
Did you just come up with a premise idea? Brainstorm on it, even if it’s just for five minutes. Write down all the ideas you have. You may end up deleting 98% of it, but the 2% there that works could help you unlock the whole thing in an unexpected way.
2) Write your POV or any notes to yourself at the top of your document
Inevitably as I’m writing, I lose sight of what I’m trying to do and go off on a tangent or start writing off-topic jokes. That’s not necessarily bad — who knows, maybe you decide this new direction is ultimately more interesting and you pivot. But often times, I just need to be reminded of what the premise/POV/voice is, and having it easily accessible at the top of my page helps me get back on track.
3) Put each sentence in your piece through your “voice” sieve
Whenever I’m in the last stages of editing — once the piece is set in structure, tone, and content — then I finally get to do the fun part, which is doing that final sweep for voice. Whenever I’m doing this, I have this image in my head of a sieve that I’m putting each individual sentence into.
If I’m editing this piece, then I’m putting each sentence through the “evil” sieve and looking for opportunities to push that voice further, whether it’s in the actual content of the jokes (is this scenario cartoonishly evil enough?) or more often, simply making small word choice tweaks (for example, “You’ll thrive in this position if you love exclamation points and draining people of all hope every last drop of hope” or “We need a recruitergo-getting, soul-sucking individual who can crush each applicant’s self-esteem like a squirrel under a semi-truck”). You may have to run each sentence through the voice sieve a few times, but after you do that, your piece is going to feel a lot more polished and unique.
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Work with me on humor pieces this summer!
I’ve been on a fairly intense freelance copywriting project, so I haven’t advertised my writing coaching services in a while. But my project is coming to an end soon and I’ll have more availability for humor coaching starting the first week of June.
If you want to get into the regular flow of writing and submitting, I have a 4-week package (which doesn’t have to be four consecutive weeks, although it totally can be). Each week, it includes:
Written feedback on 1 humor piece (up to 1,000 words) and written feedback on up to 5 headline ideas for future pieces
1 weekly half-hour call to go over the notes, chat through any ideas, and answer any additional questions you have about writing/editing/submitting
Use it as an opportunity to write four new humor pieces, refine one piece over the course of four weeks, or do a mix of both! Learn more on my website and if you’re interested, fill out this form to tell me more about your goals and your writing journey so far.
About me
I’m a comedy writer and freelance copywriter living in Brooklyn. My humor writing has been published by The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Reductress, and more. I’m the co-author of Jokes to Offend Men, which was named the #2 Comedy Book of 2022 by Vulture. I’m available for new writing projects, writing coaching, and nerding out about comedy, so please reach out and say hi!