I’m still looking for a way into a new novel. So, here’s my plan for today: experiment with voice.

Starting with Voice

I’m reading Finding Your Writer’s Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction by Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall. While I don’t like every exercise they suggest, there are some interesting ones.

For my purposes today, Chapter 25 is entitled, “Working with Short Forms to Discover Your Story.” They suggest you write a short piece, just a paragraph or two, each emphasizing a different aspect: character, plot, images, or tone. This should tell me/might tell me what sort of approach to use to the novel I’m planning.

• For voice, they give an example from Sandra Cisnernos’, House on Mango Street, talking about a Hispanic neighborhood entirely from a character’s viewpoint. “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared.”
• For plot, there’s a short story by Augusto Monterroso and a prose poem from Danhil Kharms, which they describe as a “tiny Russian novel in a paragraph.” “Once Orlov ate too many ground peas and died.”
• Short examples of prose imagery from Portugese writer Ana Hatherly are called “tisanas” and feature outlandish imagery that takes surprising leaps. “Once upon a time there was a landscape where there were never any clouds. To make it rain it was necessary to wash the horizon with feathers. (from Tisana #87)
• For tone, they offer a paragraph from David Ignatow called, “I’m a Depressed Poem.” “You are reading me now and thanks.”

It is interesting to see how the voice of each of these is dominated by what interests the writer the most.

Actually–I have two or three ideas for a new novel, so I may do this for each of the ideas, and see what voice emerges that excites me.

Starting a new novel is hard work!

I’ve been thinking about the narrators chosen to read various books-on-tape . As I revise my current novel project, I wonder–
who be chosen to read my current WIP? I need suggestions!

The Voice Problem

One of my favorite fantasy titles is Lirael by Garth Nix, the the first book in the Abhorsen Trilogy.

This week, I listened to the audio version of Lirael, as read by Tim Curry. Curry has read about 77 other things listed on Amazon, including many of the Series of Unfortunate Events–Lemony Snickett.

I love Curry’s voice and his reading. But, I can’t imagine him reading my WIP. Wrong voice.

Suggest a Narrator

One thing that an editor said on a previous version of this story is that she wanted more of a regional flavor to the narrative voice. I’m trying to imagine listening to my story on a books-on-tape and can’t quite hear the voice.

This has a Texas/South/Southwest sort of flavor. It’s an animal fantasy, with a sort of epic feel. It doesn’t have to be a male voice, it could be female.

Who would you suggest as the narrator for such a story? Whose voice has a sort of epic quality, yet that Texas twang?

I wonder–if I had that voice firmly in mind (in ear?), would it help me find/explore/play with the story’s voice better? Any suggestions?

NOTE TO LIVEJOURNAL USERS ABOUT COMMENTS: When you comment on my postings, please come to MY website to comment. If you comment on your Friend’s Page, I’ll never see the comment. It stays on that Friend’s page and I never see it. But I want to read your opinion!

As Always, It’s Easy to Stay Connected

• Darcy Pattison Writing Workshops. Sign up now for the May-June Novel Revision workshop.
• Sign up for Revision Notes Occasional Newsletter.
• Sign up for Revision Notes feed.
• Sign up to have Revision Notes delivered to your email inbox.
• Or, if you’re on LiveJournal, you can add Revision Notes Feed to your Friends page with this URL: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/revisionnotes/

This is an attempt to summarize and organize the comments on my posting last week about voice. Thanks to these writers for making comments: Janni Simner, Joni Sensei, Sarah Miller, T.E. Wymer, Lori Van Hoesen, and Linda Urban. Apologies, if I’ve misconstrued anything. Read the full discussion.

Voice: A summary of comments

1. What is Voice?
   • Define. Definitions of voice are fuzzy.
   • Describe. It’s easier to describe voices, but not much easier:
     Use categories of personality (witty, reserved, observant), narrative tendency/style of speech (mimicry, colorful language, precise speech) .
     Stripped away prose–straight to the point, powerful sentences that create lasting images (ex. Kate DiCamillo in The Tiger Rising)
     Imagery driven with personification (ex. Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt)
   • Distinguish among. We distinguish narrative voice (for a certain piece) v. authorial voice (for a canon of writing)? (Does George Clooney always sound like George Clooney, or does he change with each character role?) (Or to reverse that, does Ebenezer Scrooge always sound like Ebenezer, regardless of the actor playing that role?)

     Narrative voice: word choice, attitude, tone, what the character notices, narrator’s voice.
     Authorial voice: transcendent. Complexity v. sparsity of prose, imagery, symbolism, challenge to the reader, provocativeness.

2. The Appeal of Voice
   Do certain voices have a universal subjective appeal? Why do some people like a voice, but others don’t like that voice?
3. Learning/Teaching Voice
   • Can narrative voice and authorial voices be taught?
     Some confidence that narrative voice can be taught (planned and structured), but some skepticism that authorial voice can be taught (gut issue: the best thing that most writers can do is get out of their own way). Structured/intuitive, craft/gut–back to this terminology again, but with the twist that some types of voice must be intuitive/are by nature intuitive and can’t be taught?
   • When, in the writing process do you begin to focus on voice?
     Lori uses the first few drafts to explore voice intuitively. In revisions, she focuses more on voice. Could that be reversed and a story begin with voice?
   • Practice and Play

     Write dialogue between vastly different characters: Ex. Biker chick, Pollyanna
     Do the same with a common topic: talk about how tired you are. Ex. of characters to use–single mother, 5 year-old child, 90 year-old man.
     Do Improv acting on that common topic from the differing POVs, then write again.

   • If you begin voice in a structured way, can it then become intuitive or more natural?
4. Special Problems
   • Multi-voice Project
   • Historical project (or ghostwriting) where you have diaries, letters, interviews, etc. and must recreate the voice found there.
   • First person projects–how to deal with the differences of narrative voice and authorial voice.

More concerns? More to think about?
I’ll be out for a day or two, but will summarize again when I get back.

When you approach the topic of Voice of a novel and how to produce a pleasing Voice for fiction, especially as you revise, I think a helpful attitude is to think of the approaches as a continuum.

The Approach to Voice Continuum

The continuum runs from a Craft Approach (very left-brained, structured craft oriented skills that can be learned ) to an Emotional Approach (very right brained, dig deep into your soul and be yourself).

I’m trying very hard here to think of a name for the second approach that describes it in a fair manner: Gut Approach, Be Yourself Approach, Live Your Character Approach, Dig-Deep Approach. All of those sound faintly derogatory to me and I don’t mean that at all.

Likewise the first approach has equally dissatisfying monikers: Hack Approach, Formula Approach, Grammar-and-Editing Approach.

I don’t even like the right-brained, left-brained approaches, because those have unwelcome connotations, too. It’s just the continuum of ways you can approach Voice from structured to loose.

The problem is that when both extremes get criticism, there’s nothing left and voice becomes that nebulous thing that no one can talk about, they only recognize when they see it. And that isn’t helpful, because it gives writers no way in to make revisions. It gives us no tools, no strategies, no goals.

In other words, I’m going to teach about Voice and Scenes this fall and I need help in deciding how to discuss Voice. I’ve surveyed the land in front of me and see this continuum and how different teachers/writers might fall on that continuum. I just need ways to describe the continuum without choosing sides.

How would YOU describe the ends of the continuum? Which approach do you like? Any books to recommend on how to improve Voice (or Scenes), especially any that definitely take one approach or the other?

As you Wish

Are you a fan of the Princess Bride movie? My daughters can quote that move backwards and forwards. J actually went looking for the screenplay online, downloaded it and studied it. Now, she and her friend use quotes from Princess Bride as a shorthand for things.

Well, I love the scene where the Princess is about to marry the evil Prince. It’s a solemn moment, and then the minister starts to speak. “Deah-wy Be-wuv-ed.” His scrambling of the “Dearly Beloved” line is hilarious. It’s a great example, too, of a twist in a story. Expectations set up, then blown apart. Here, it’s not a plot twist, but a small element that is used for humor.

I’ve been thinking about twisted voices this week, which is a good exercise in “Brute Thinking,” forcing two concepts together. I keep thinking of using an inappropriate or unexpected voice for humor, for shock value, or to distinguish a character. It points out that there are both big and small elements that can be twisted in a story (expectations met in unexpected ways) to keep the interest high.

I also found examples of voices described as “twisted.” Usually, these implied dark, forbidding characters, or characters in extreme circumstances.

Describing Voices

If you haven’t seen/heard NPR’s Vocal Impressions series, you should. Listeners to National Public Radio are asked to describe voices of well known people. Here are a few samples. Go back and look at all five in the series and then send in a description for number six!

• Phyllis Diller: The sound of an aluminum beer can rubbed on a rusty cheese grater — James Green
• Elvis Presley: A barn full of straw burning at night visible for 20 miles — Denny Dowdye
• Celine Dion: A Siamese cat stretched immodestly over a black leather couch — Markus Schafer
• Bobby Short: Sadness and beauty walking hand in hand on a cobblestone street on a foggy night — Denny Dowdye

For Vocal Impresions six, you’re asked to listen to Rodney Dangerfield, “Mama” Cass Elliot, Samuel L. Jackson, and Paul Robeson.

How would you describe the voices of your characters?
Any other examples of twisted voices?

Last chance in August to –
Sign up for the RSS feed for this blog.
Sign up for the ocassional newsletter .

Patricia Sargeant on the importance of the writer’s voice. (Scroll down to her advice for other writers.)

Author Grace Paley died yesterday at the age of 88. Here’s an excerpt of her comments about the way your cultural roots affect your writing voice.

Cynthia Morris offers a checklist for evaluating your writing voice.

This RSS feed will make sure you get the latest posting on Revision Notes.

The ocassional newsletter will feature my speaking schedule, recent publications and more.

From their fantasy novels–can you name the author of each opening line?

Do you recognize their voices? (All published since2003)

1. Getting dressed was always the hardest part of the afternoon.

2. Jack woke before dawn and listened to the cold February wind lash the walls of the house.

3. Rain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain.

4. Miri woke to the sleepy bleating of a goat.

5. Sailing toward dawn, and I was perched atop the crow’s nest, being the ship’s eyes.

6. The queen waited.

7. “What was that?”

8. Xing Xing squatted by the water, silent and unmoving.

9. I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrifying nightmares, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can’t make your body move fast enough.

10. My cousin Duke’s troubles on the river started the day he dangled me off the wagon wheel bridge.

To receive the answers send an email to NameThatAuthor@darcypattison.com. You’ll get the answers from the autoresponder.

Read more about how authors create distinctive voices.

Why History Textbooks Put You to Sleep

Ever wonder why history textbooks put you to sleep?

You might think that formal v. informal text vary based on the level of vocabulary and complexity of sentence structure. Some of that may come into play, but it more than that.

Rhythm patterns in formal texts are the key. Rhythm moves at a slower pace, with stresses widely spaced. The pitch changes are less abrupt and not as wide.

If we think about the continuum of how frequently a text has stressed syllables, on one end is poetry, which compresses stresses so that every second or third syllable is stressed. On the other end of the continuum is very formal texts, with stresses so widely spaced that–well, it puts you to sleep.

Contemporary fiction falls more toward the poetry end of the spectrum, with more variety and stresses closer spaced. High fantasy, historical and some literary fiction would move toward the middle of the spectrum.

Where does your current WIP fall?

One way that I play with voice is to mimic the style of another writer.  For this exercise, I write a section without worrying about voice.  Then, I take a couple of books I admire that I think might have a voice that would work for my story.  I try to imitate their style.

That is, I try to match their sentence structure EXACTLY.  If they start with a prepositional phrase, followed by a subject, verb, dependent clause, and it runs 23 words, then I try to match that structure.  I specifically try not to copy ANY words; I’m not copying, but imitating their voice.  (In actual practice, I don’t always match it exactly, but I try.)

This often tells me things about my own voice.  I tend to write shorter sentences, though, nothing like the fabled short sentences of Hemingway.  I use a lot of contrasts, relying on “but.” It helps me to understand what I’m doing and evaluate if it’s what this story needs.

Here’s an example from the opening of a WIP, entitled Horizontal Yellow.  Following are two imitations: 

 Horizontal Yellow: My Original Version 

     Davide pressed his nose to the cold glass of the window and let his gaze unfocus, let the mile after mile of Texas flat lands whiz by without really seeing. Father had the car heater turned low, as usual. Davide wiggled his toes inside his Christmas cowboy boots; he was pleasantly surprised the boots kept them so warm.
     Thump!
     “Wha–?” Father yelled and threw up a hand to protect his face.
Davide whipped his head around, barely in time to see some kind of bird flip from the front of the car onto the windshield. Thump! The bird was gone.
 (My first attempt at voice for this story)

Horizontal Yellow:  Imitating Elske by Cynthia Voigt 

       Davide struggled, but boredom wore him out, hour after hour, like a warrior who pressed an attack without ever stopping. From the early morning traffic of Greeley, Colorado where he and Father lived to the late-afternoon lonely roads of the Texas high plains, Davide’s boredom grew, and with it his anger. His eyes unfocused, refusing to see the endless fields whizzing by. The road ran on into the hazy horizon and the asphalt never wavered from a straight course. The sky was empty, an unwavering pale winter blue. Davide’s anger, too, across that boring day, never wavered.
(In the style of Elske, by Cynthia Voigt)

Horizontal Yellow:  Imitating Ghost Horse by Janni Simner 

      The fields whizzed by.
       Davide stared out the car window, watching each field disappear behind him. The fields didn’t have growing plants because it was January, but rows of turned earth that had dried into clods. The sky was pale, brushed with a watercolor blue. The horizon shimmered far ahead, distant and indistinct, as if the flat Texas prairie had moved the finish line.
       Davide wiggled his toes inside his Christmas cowboy boots. “If this is Texas,” he announced, “I hate it.”
( in the style of Ghost Horse, by Janni Lee Simner)

What observations would you make about the voice of each version? 

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed.
Sign up for my ocassional newsletter.

L says: “Do you think an author’s ‘voice’ is easier to establish when the novel is written in 3rd POV omniscient than in 1st POV?

Just asking because in the writing of my current WIP I felt that I had to find and stick with the MC’s voice, and now in the polishing - revising stage I find that my ‘voice’ comes in from time to time- I think. [Mostly in some of the narration- where I’m trying to balance the ‘tone of voice’”

“Author’s voice”

I’m not sure what you mean by “author’s voice.”  Do you mean the narrator?  If there’s a narrator, s/he can have a voice that comes through, showing some personality, too.  But usually, it’s clear that there is a separate person as a narrator.

I think, instead, though, that you are referring to the overall voice of a piece of writing.  Voice refers to the overall effect of the writing in the story, that lets the reader know something about the personality behind the writing.  Authors vary this voice for each particular piece of writing.  And part of what you are talking about is consistency of that voice.   You’re finding difficulty knowing how to edit for consistency:  would that be an accurate summary of the problem?

Main Character’s Voice

Writing in the voice of the main character is one common way to approach voice.  It sounds like you’ve found ways to make this story very personal to the main character.  That’s good.  If you choose to write in 1st person POV, then it should be a distinctive voice, never heard before.  Quirky tics, individual vocabulary and phrasing, an opinion about everything.

This voice would need to come through in the dialogue, narration, action–everything.  It establishes the “tone of voice,” which I look at as the narrator’s attitudes toward everything. 

It’s interesting that you say “my voice comes through.”  By that, I assume you mean that your natural way of talking/writing and your attitudes?  If so, then, take yourself out of the Main Character’s story.  It should all be filtered through the lens of the MC.

But I wonder about the “tone of voice” that worries you.  Are you trying to establish a certain feeling or mood in the story?  Or a certain attitude towards someting?

All of this demonstrates the difficulty of talking about revision!  What is voice?  What is tone of voice?  How do we distinguish between them when they are so enmeshed in the words we’ve chosen?  How do we edit for voice consistency?  I’ve been trying to talk about this on the Voice Friday postings, but it’s not clear cut as we’d like it to be.

1st v. 3rd

1st person is such a common choice today.  At the Phoenix retreat, 14 out of 20 people were writing in 1st person.  I wonder why that is–any ideas?

I’ve always considered 1st person to be the second choice I consider for a story. There needs to be a reason why it should be told in this person’s voice. Overall, in the mss I see, the 1st person stories tend to run together, without a distinctive voice. If you choose this option, my advice (and opinions vary widely) go way out and be wild, at least in the first draft. Make it wildly distinctive.

Third person omniscient is an odd choice, too, (though it works in Harry Potter) because the author can dip into anyone’s head at any time. Usually readers want to identify with a character closely, and this head-hopping makes it harder. It does reveal motives of everyone across the board, so in that respect, you understand the story better.

I usually prefer a close third person in which the camera is firmly in my main character’s head. Events unfold with the character closely involved in everything.

I don’t think any POV is easier than any other. Some writers prefer 1st and find it more natural; others prefer 3rd. Shrug. For me, it’s not a matter of which is easier, but which helps me tell this particular story in the more dramatic, tension-filled, emotional way.

 L, I probably didn’t answer your question, because I needed you sitting beside me to ask for clarification. 

But I think , this discussion points out two things: first, it shows that we all (myself included!) need better understanding of terminology of our craft.  It’s frustrating that when I ask a group of 100 writers to describe the voice of a piece of writing, we are all silent because we don’t have the vocabulary to do so. We have all been told that voice is so hard to describe, but an editor “knows it when s/he hears it.” That puts voice at the whim of our unreliable intuition, puts it out of our reach in revising.

But there’s a second thing, too. Obviously, something is bothering you about sections of your revison and you’re right to be careful about it.  Sometimes, putting a finger on what exactly is going on is hard–even when we do know the terminology.  Writing isn’t an “exact science,” but a craft; sometimes, understanding DOES comes in an intuitive moment.   When I’m in a situation like this where I know something is wrong, but I don’t know what, there’s nothing to do but keep trying to figure it out and not let it slide. That doesn’t mean that intuition is the only tool I have to work on voice, though. I can approach it in a controlled way, while still allowing for intuition to show up and support the work I’ve done!

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed.
Sign up for my ocassional newsletter.