# Just Voices (Under 400 words)



## JustRob (Jun 12, 2017)

I was considering an example of how the mind works to include in a book that I am contemplating writing when the voices started a conversation in my head, so I listened in and this is what I heard.


“Watson, that man we met yesterday – what was his name? It will come to me, I’m sure. Yes, it began with a ‘C’, I think, and had a double letter in it. Cumm... Cumm... Cutt... Cott... Oh, what was it now?”


“Come cut what cot, Holmes? I don’t remember the chap. Are you sure?”


“Yes, I’ve got it now Watson. Schofield! That was it! Schofield. How could I have forgotten that?”


“Forgotten it, Holmes? How could you have remembered it? I thought you said that it started with a ‘C’ and had a double letter in it. There isn’t even a letter repeated anywhere in ‘Schofield’ and it hardly starts with a ‘C’ either.”


“Ah, but that was still enough to remind me, Watson. I recalled that it started with the _sound_ of the sea, but then the ‘C’ came after, not before, so it wasn’t the sound of a wave striking the sand on a beach but that hiss as it draws back again, so Scho-field. As for the double letter, it was that very fact that, as you rightly point out, there isn’t a single repetition of one within the name that I was reminded of, not what the name contained but what it didn’t.”


“Ah, I see, like the dog in the night.”


“The dog in the night? Was that named Schofield as well? What a remarkable coincidence, and how astute of you to remember such a detail.”


“No, I was referring to your ability to comprehend how your remarkable mind works, knowing exactly how you remembered his name.”


“Oh no, Watson, I have no idea at all how it came to me. You wanted an explanation, so I gave you one. I must have been thinking of someone else entirely originally.”


“But Holmes, your explanation made so much sense.”


“Oh Watson, when will you realise that sense and truth are but casual bedfellows?”


It’s okay. I think they’ve gone now and I can continue with my own thoughts. I wonder who they were. Now, where was I?


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## Shemp (Jun 12, 2017)

A good example of complex thinking.    It'd work a little better, for me, if Schofield was met last month, or last year, instead of just yesterday.


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## JustRob (Jun 13, 2017)

The thing that I like about this piece (Well, there must have been something or I wouldn't have posted it.) is that it represents three levels of reality. Holmes and Watson are obviously fictional but then there is also a first person narrator. If one regards that narrator as also being fictional then the complex reasoning can be assumed to be something that the writer worked out in advance. In that case Holmes's claim to have come up with his explanation spontaneously and the narrator's claim that the voices just spoke their words spontaneously in his mind can both be regarded as fiction.

In fact there was no fiction. This was pure pantser writing on my part. I simply wrote what the voices in my head said without giving it any prior thought. To my knowledge I chose the name Schofield entirely at random and then contrived the explanation for it afterwards, just as Holmes claimed, and the clues previously given about the name were actually nothing to do with it ... or maybe they were. There was no fictional narrator, just myself posting a message. I initially stated that I was considering an example of how the mind works and then spontaneously created one. Like Holmes I have no idea how my mind conceived this piece and in what order. That is the nature of pantser writing. All we can do as writers is review it and wonder at the apparent sense but, as Holmes states, the truth is quite another matter.

This is also an example of the reader's experience depending on the context. As I posted this in a fiction forum for critique the reader is more likely to view it as fiction with a fictional narrator. If I were to post it elsewhere as a personal message the reader might see it as factual and comment differently. We live within models of reality within our own minds and truth is ultimately subjective even though the sense may be shared with others. I find the psychology of reading as interesting as the mysterious processes involved in writing.


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## Shemp (Jun 13, 2017)

I'd never heard the term pantser writing before, but I understand the inference.    I suppose that I'm a pantser, too.    My attention span is so short, I have trouble following the plot of a ten minute cartoon.    No way I could plot an outline for a book.   I'd just start writing, and see what happens.    Like, by slapping a couple of sentences around your piece, and turning it into a short story.    Then, I'd see if I could build on that, to make it a novel.   For example.......



The case had gone cold. As cold as the frigid temperatures found at the mountain chalet, owned by the suspected murderer. No one had witnessed the victim leaving the home, and there were no signs that a body had been buried, anywhere on the property.   Very puzzling.   The detective absently drew on his pipe, lost in thought.


“Watson, that man we met yesterday – what was his name? It will come to me, I’m sure. Yes, it began with a ‘C’, I think, and had a double letter in it. Cumm... Cumm... Cutt... Cott... Oh, what was it now?”


“Come cut what cot, Holmes? I don’t remember the chap. Are you sure?”


“Yes, I’ve got it now Watson. Schofield! That was it! Schofield. How could I have forgotten that?”


“Forgotten it, Holmes? How could you have remembered it? I thought you said that it started with a ‘C’ and had a double letter in it. There isn’t even a letter repeated anywhere in ‘Schofield’ and it hardly starts with a ‘C’ either.”


“Ah, but that was still enough to remind me, Watson. I recalled that it started with the _sound_ of the sea, but then the ‘C’ came after, not before, so it wasn’t the sound of a wave striking the sand on a beach but that hiss as it draws back again, so Scho-field. As for the double letter, it was that very fact that, as you rightly point out, there isn’t a single repetition of one within the name that I was reminded of, not what the name contained but what it didn’t.”


“Ah, I see, like the dog in the night.”


“The dog in the night? Was that named Schofield as well? What a remarkable coincidence, and how astute of you to remember such a detail.”


“No, I was referring to your ability to comprehend how your remarkable mind works, knowing exactly how you remembered his name.”


“Oh no, Watson, I have no idea at all how it came to me. You wanted an explanation, so I gave you one. I must have been thinking of someone else entirely originally.”


“But Holmes, your explanation made so much sense.”


“Oh Watson, when will you realise that sense and truth are but casual bedfellows?”

"And, I suspect that the truth is, the killer buried the body not on his own property, but rather concealed it within the nearby mountain _snow field_.   We must hurry to find evidence of tracks, before the next snowfall!"


Haha get it?   Schofield/snow field?

Just goofin' around

Good luck, moving forward


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## lucario719 (Jun 13, 2017)

This seems more like dialogue in a play rather than a book. not that there's really a rule on book dialogue, but basically most book speech usually allows the reader to infer what a person means and how they feel since they they have the whole "transcription" in front of them, whereas in a play you only hear each line once.


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## JustRob (Jun 14, 2017)

lucario719 said:


> This seems more like dialogue in a play rather than a book. not that there's really a rule on book dialogue, but basically most book speech usually allows the reader to infer what a person means and how they feel since they they have the whole "transcription" in front of them, whereas in a play you only hear each line once.



When I write I am merely the scribe recording the words spoken by my characters. The scenes play out in my mind and apparently they then play out in the reader's, so I have been told by a specialist in literature and plays, his particular speciality being the works of Shakespeare. When he read my novel he told me that in his mind he "saw" it playing out much like the works that he studies and instructs others on. If I also perceive my characters' thoughts and feelings then my narrative conveys those, but here it was simply a conversation overheard, so I had no idea what was in their minds. Their words were just that and I have to deduce their meaning just as any other reader would. 

Maybe the strangest aspect of pure pantser writing is the compulsion to report what one first senses accurately without embellishing it initially. Doing that too soon could erase the inspiration not yet recognised. Lisa Goldman, who promotes and directs plays by innovative new writers in London, encourages this approach, calling it automatic writing, which happens also to be a term used by investigators into the paranormal for something more extreme but possibly of a similar origin. 

Structuring a written work to fit better within the established conventions is something that I joined WF to explore, but in fact I have found this automatic writing to be far more interesting as it seems to embody the soul of a story, especially when that story contains many tightly interconnected motifs. I was reticent to make substantial changes to my original novel not because I thought that it was well written but because I didn't want to destroy its reason for existing. For a pantser writer one task is to discover why a conceived story exists, whereas for a planning writer they start with a defined objective and then attempt to achieve it. 

In the case of a piece of impromptu dialogue like this the next step would be for me to search my mind to determine what the characters were thinking to say what they did, but the chances are that I wouldn't change that dialogue, only extend its context. In reality we don't get to go back and revise what we say but only to justify it or restate it differently. If the dialogue were in any way flawed then I would expect the characters to provide a remedy themselves for the sake of realism, which may well be what happened here. Maybe in my mind I spontaneously realised that the conversation was heading the wrong way and steered it in another at the last minute but, just as Holmes stated, I have no idea how it really happened. I was evidently thinking about something else at the time, as the dialogue implies.

Some of us are true followers of the pantser way. We feel the farce within us and allow it to guide us. If you read my novel carefully you can see the mistakes that I made while writing it and how they are resolved within the story without my having removed them. A more experienced writer would no doubt rewrite whole swathes of it, but that would create a story with quite a different character, a piece of literature rather than a record of realism. While the planning writer has to devise conflicts for his characters to overcome, the pantser writer simply leaves his characters to overcome the natural conflicts arising from his erratic story line. The planner does not understand this way of working but then neither does the pantser. The only difference is that the latter has faith in it which pays dividends.

Please note that I seldom defend what I write here, only the way that I write it. Others evidently work differently. Each writer needs to discover what works for them personally, not what may have worked for others, although the latter may give them useful ideas.


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## Thaumiel (Jul 5, 2017)

This piece has been nominated for Writer and Story of the Month June 2017. If anyone reading this wants to vote, please go here.


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## Phil Istine (Jul 8, 2017)

I became quite lost reading this piece - but then realised how I sometimes remember names.  So it gave me a little chuckle at myself.


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## JonathanD (Jul 13, 2017)

> Oh Watson, when will you realize that sense and truth are but casual bedfellows?


I chuckled at this, bravo you made my night!


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## Noelle (Jul 29, 2017)

Sounds like the way my mind turns when I'm out walking, two of my characters back and forth in dialogue.


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## JustRob (Jul 29, 2017)

Noelle said:


> Sounds like the way my mind turns when I'm out walking, two of my characters back and forth in dialogue.


Yes, walking does seem to stimulate the mind, or maybe free it. Once we have created characters and know them sufficiently well they do seem to take on a life of their own inside our minds. Some people say that one shouldn't listen to the voices in one's head, but a writer welcomes them and invites them to feel at home there. This is why I don't believe that one can work out every detail of a story in advance without actually writing the key scenes. We just can't tell how characters will behave in any situation until we give them the opportunity to do so.

I have never regarded myself as an entirely free-thinking writer able to write whatever I please. I am always just a scribe limited to reporting what I witness within my mind. Some writers apparently fail to maintain consistency and continuity within their stories because they are consciously assembling them rather than allowing them to play out naturally in their minds in this way. If the story hasn't played out so within a writer's own mind then there is little hope that it will do so in the reader's.


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## Avid Daydreamer (Sep 5, 2017)

This blew my mind in the best way possible.

I'm not sure I've seen writing like this but I'm officially a fan. Thank you for expanding my horizons.:torn:


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