Do You Hear Harry Potter's Voice?

People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media... Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

When you read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, do you hear Harry's voice? Hmmm... Bob Hruzek's brilliant question piqued my curiosity, too! The brain opens or closes that possibility and here's how...

Serotonin... Serotonin's a hormone of well-being. When serotonin floods your brain during an enjoyable experience, you open the door to optimal creativity. Reading's a pleasure to you and as you relax and read a book you enjoy serotonin secretes through your brain. You taste Rowling's sense of adventure and intrigue so you're very motivated and can't wait to get into the story. When you look at Deathly Hallow's thickness you almost feel delighted that there's so much more this time around. Serotonin sets the stage for you to experience flow, as you tunnel down into Harry Potter. Flow... involves all your senses... the capacity to imagine the setting, and hear the characters. Do you experience that, at times, as you read? And, especially before you've seen a movie or heard a book on a DVD?

Cortisol... Unpleasant or stressful experiences cause cortisol to flow into the human brain. This literally shuts down your ability to think clearly and process information well. In this case, you lose the advantage of top brain performance -your senses and creativity. If reading's somewhat challenging and books simply do not hold your interest and you're required to read one, you can see it brings immediate stress. You'd lack motivation. Distractions would divert your attention you'd find it hard to concentrate. Unfortunately, folks who're stressed or unmotivated would not hear characters' voices or picture them in their minds... But, even that can change...

Good news is that motivation can create magic to take readers to new worlds, to lift folks over past stress and failure, worlds that include hearing a character's voice. And the more people're motivated the more they can accomplish... So if Harry Potter hooks young folks especially, it may be the starting point for change!

As people gather ideas, speculate and invent they tap into highest cognitive processes of the mind... providing power to hear a character's voice...

Author's art and craft... Art in writing depends on stepping out of author's voice, Brandilyn Collins believes as do many other writers, and letting a character assume her own voice. A great author does not tell the reader, but from description and dialogue a reader develops his own interpretation of a character. So the Harry Potter voice I hear in my head sounds very different than the voice in yours, Bob [assuming neither of us has seen the movie]. If an author tells more than she shows, the art is not there and you likely won't hear the voice. Interestingly, the voice the author hears will be very different than the one you hear because each of us imagines it!

Interestingly, Terese Fowler, a published author in the UK shows how sentence length affects character's voice.

We can't literally "hear" the written word, but there is a perception of sound input when we read; thus there must be a characteristic voice. It isn't like the audible voice, however--we don't "hear" the pitch of the author's voice when we read; there's no nasal quality or raspiness, nothing like what we use to identify a caller on the phone, for example. Rather, it's an element of how the author crafts the sentences, the paragraphs, the chapters, the entire work.

An easy example is Hemingway, who is known for his brevity. Short sentences. Simple rhetoric. Ordinary vocabulary.

Versus James Joyce, whose stream-of-consciousness work in Ulysses, for example, epitomizes the extreme opposite of Hemingway. Joyce's writing voice leans poetically complex; Hemingway's is stalwart.

Character Development...Lead characters like Harry are fully sketched out for readers. You know their tastes, warts, dreams and desires. They take on a reality for you that bit players don't. You're likely to develop voice for Harry because you "know" him. Since, you don't know much about a bit player, you're less likely to develop a voice for one.

I have a theory that if you put your self in a character's shoes, you might go so far as to use your voice as that of the character...if the sex matches. What do you think?

Bob, when you're hooked by Deathly Hollows, you use your imaginative juices. I sense you, Lisa and others will hear Harry's voice -- the one you invent!

What a fun question to answer, Bob, as Part Three of the Question Train Series.

Thoughts...

Readers' are welcome to post questions for the Question Train...