By
Jeffrey Blount
I
was a freshman in college, working diligently at my first attempt to craft a
novel. I was having difficulty finding
my voice as a writer as well as the voices of my characters. My English professor, being quite proud of my
efforts, set up a phone call for me with a friend of hers who was a published author.
I held my pen at the ready, hoping that
I’d be able to write fast enough to capture all of the knowledge he would be
handing over. Nervously, I laid out my
literary issues. He responded by saying,
“Listen”
One word and then nothing, in the resulting silence,
he let me begin to come to grips with the message. Little did I know, this one
word would be the most important piece of literary advice I would ever receive. It was extraordinarily important to the
success of my recent release The Emancipation of Evan Walls.
As a son of the South, I am familiar with many
of its songs. One particular song was
the language of the people in the community in which I was raised. I was setting the story in a small, rural
town in the late 60s and early 70s. I
wanted to reflect that time in the voices of my characters. So, I remembered my lesson. If you want to
know what conversations in a bar sound like, the author told me when the phone conversation
resumed, you go in, buy a beer, sit down and listen. Don’t talk to anyone. Just listen.
And not just to the words. Hear
the joy and the pain. Hear the comfort
and the doubts. Words are more than just
sounds.
In my case, I couldn’t go in and just
listen. Many of the voices I treasured had
passed on. Many had simply changed with
the times. So, I looked inward. I sat and remembered situations from my
childhood and soon the voices returned, and I heard them. Many people call what I wrote dialect. Some thought I shouldn’t use it, because in
the present it might play into stereotypes of African Americans. But according some linguists, it isn’t a
dialect but a separate language. It was
my language. My heritage and I wanted to
represent it. So, I heard my
great-grandmother tell her stories and felt the emotions tied to her voice. I heard my great aunt say, “Chile, please!” when
someone made her laugh so hard she had to beg for mercy. I wrote outwardly from those voices, creating
my story from them. And I am proud to say that I listened well. The language, or music of my youth as I like
to call it, rang true to readers and added so much to the story. Author, Christina
Kovac wrote, “…the dialogue is superb.”
Author Viga Boland wrote that I was a master at “…revealing characters
and their motivations primarily through dialogue.”
These days, I give the gift of “listen”
whenever I am asked for writing advice. But
not only do you need to listen to the world around you, you really have to hear
yourself. Writing isn’t just about
crafting, it’s about the opening up of our souls and reflecting upon it. Listening to it and then finding the courage
to put that on paper.
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