Example 9.  Shifting distance (reader orientation) in a scene.

George Wheeler was close to the center of the line of Yankee soldiers that charged the hill at Manassas.  George, on foot, barely came to the knee of the lieutenant on horseback who urged him into the line of fire.  Ahead, puffs of smoke drifted up into the air from the guns of the enemy George could not see.  He fired his rifle without aiming at a clump of bushes and felt the hot metal of the gun in his hands.  The heat of metal was different than the heat of Bobby’s skin when he died, flushed with the fever from an infected belly wound.  He pondered Bobby’s death for an instant, distracted from the ever-increasing closeness of the enemy.  The lieutenant spurred his horse forward so he was more exposed than any of the other line officers.  The lieutenant’s head jerked back; George knew the lieutenant was hit, knew the lieutenant was dead, and knew they were leaderless for the moment.  He turned and ran.

G.  Voice

Voice is everything a character, or a narrator, says, thinks or feels in a story.  Once voice is established for a character, only certain words and phrasings will augment a specific character’s voice.

Lines from five different characters

1) “There is nothing you could ever say that would deter me.”

2) “I’m cool.”

3) “Liar.  No one will believe you.”

4) “May God forgive your transgressions? Praise God.”

5) “Make my day.”

Each of the preceding lines has a different voice.  Any one of these examples says something about the character.  One line spoken by a character in a story must easily fit into all that has been thought and said by that character, and readers require consistency in this regard throughout the story.