Voice

DwayneA said:

Exactly what does it mean when a story has "voice"? What do I do to give it one?

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A voice, in my uneducated opinion, is the manner of speaking that either an unnamed narrator (for 2nd and 3rd person) or first-person narrator uses to tell the story. The voice should be consistent with the character, or, whichever way you think is most effective for conveying a particular piece.

If the voice is so noticeable that the reader's focus is constantly drawn to it rather than the story's plot, that particular element of the story has failed to do its job. It should merely flavor the story in an unobtrusive way.

"Carl was the one they were after; wasn't no other person who could pay for the sins Sheriff Paulson's boys found splattered across that southern Kentucky bedroom."

This has kind of a southern feel. But try what I would call the "wrong" voice for this story.

"Sheriff's deputies were searching for Carl. They had found his wife, Chelsea, stabbed to death in the upstairs bedroom of his southern Kentucky home."

Eh, still tells the story but not as effective in my opinion, especially if this is 1st person.

That's the best way I can explain it at the moment, perhaps someone more educated on the subject will come along and make this clearer...

Have you ever read a book and thought, even if the author's name weren't on this cover, I would know who wrote it? That's because you know the author's "voice," the way they use language that's just a lil' different somehow, an individual writing style.

Eh... that's my best try at an answer. Sorry if it falls short.

Voice is how you tell your story. In a way that's different from everyone else.

Try to put more emotion into your writing by using colorful descriptive phrases and stronger verbs.

Fun example time -- which do you prefer?

Hank was a big guy who didn't know his own strength. He had an appetite like a horse and he was pretty rude to people. They were frightened of him because of his size. Me, too.

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I always hated Hank. The big dumb ox didn't just enter a room, he crashed in. Meal times, you had to get to the table first or pig boy would gobble everything down. Queues meant nothing to Hank, he just pushed in front of everybody. And no one said a damn thing, 'cause they were too scared. At night I dreamed of ways to flatten the bastard. A wrecking ball ought to do it.

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-Derek

As the others have said, I've always taken "voice" to mean the personal style, attitude, worldview, and tone in which an author writes their story. Most of Stephen King's stories, for example, have a particular voice. Would you read a book by JK Rowling or Jane Austen and think that it was written by Stephen King? Probably not, and vice-versa.

If you copy another writer's particular style, you're often copying their voice. (Though not always, as some writers are good at trying different styles, though often the same voice will shine through.)

Voice is one of those things so intrinsic to writing that it's hard to put a finger on. And it's hard to consciously develop one. It just tends to come to you with time and experience.

DwayneA said:

Exactly what does it mean when a story has "voice"? What do I do to give it one?

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Voice? How do you define voice? I’m not sure; but I do know that I recognize good voice when I read it.

You can go google for it, and depending on your search parameters, you can pull up tens of thousands of hits. I’ve read hundreds. For me, the definition is still somewhat illusive.

There’s skills sets a writer acquires and hones during their writing lifetime - characterization, pacing, plotting. They use these skill sets to manipulate words and tell a story.

Voice, I’m beginning to believe is the rhythm and cadence that gives those words a tonal quality to the inner ear

I think you can find great examples of voice by reading Mark Twain. He does Huck Finn in the river dialect of a young boy with little education. He does The Innocents Abroad in his own voice, totally different. I'm sure you can think of dozens of others.

Some people suggest voice is born of experience. True or not, it certainly can be enhanced by experience. The idea of "write what you know" frequently leads to writing that flows with the emotions of a swift river (rather than a dry creekbed). It can have the calm of a deep pool followed by the acceleration of a sharp bend, or the constant chatter of a gravel bed, even the pounding fists of boulder-strewn rapids. These kinds of inner sensations of the writer, built on things like knowedge, understanding, sympathy and empathy, can permeate the writing to give an undercurrent of emotion that brings the prose alive, brings the river into being rather than just being there. That's voice. One can gain the same inner perspectives through research, but it comes as much more natural in most writers when aspects of it have been experienced.

Just as voice can inhabit the backwaters of the story, so does it come to the reader in the narration and the characterization of the main players of the story.

TrickyFiction said:

Have you ever read a book and thought, even if the author's name weren't on this cover, I would know who wrote it? That's because you know the author's "voice," the way they use language that's just a lil' different somehow, an individual writing style.

Eh... that's my best try at an answer. Sorry if it falls short.

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That's how I understand it too. I didn't even think about voice until an agent and several editors said I had a poetic voice. There are some authors whose voice you recognize no matter what they choose to write about or how varied their characters. You just know it's them because of their unique way of using language. Unfortunately that uniqueness can be lost when new writers think they have to fit into some kind of writing mode made up of rules. If you give yourself the freedom to tell your story the way you want to tell it and don't selfcensor then your voice will come through. It's as simple, and as hard, as being yourself.

DwayneA--I posted a piece on voice in my LJ today. It's aimed at this group I belong to that takes turns posting, and they write for kids, but maybe it would be useful anyway.

http://dawtheminstrel.livejournal.com/206459.html

Voice is the narrator's presence in the mental ear of the reader. It creates mood, a relationship with the reader and a sense of the narrator's persona.

Despite the folklore, not every writer's voice is a unique signature any more than every actor's voice is unique. Skilled writers can adopt whatever voice they choose for a story, and vary it within the story if they want. Voice really belongs to the story, though some voices are evocative of some writers.

Features of your story's voice include diction (what words you use), syntax (how you string your sentences together), cadence (the rhythm of the words) and colourful elements of style like simile, metaphor, hyperbole, metonymy and synecdoche, alliteration, assonance and rhyme.

Some writers think that they have a 'natural' voice, but it's really their 'default' voice --the one they've acquired unconsciously. You can vary it by trial and error, or you can even adopt another writer's voice just by copying the text they write until it feels natural. With practice, you can learn many voices, and can learn to fit a voice to a story, just as actors can.

My 'natural' (default) posting voice sounds a bit dry and professorish because I first learned to write non-fiction as a young scientist -- but it doesn't have to be that way. Here are some of my main points over again, said this time in a Chandleresque voice so you can see the difference:

What's different? Nearly everything! Sentence-length, diction, syntax, rhythm, the use of hyperbole and metaphor to colour. Voice can give us a very different mental picture of the narrator, yes? It also changes how we feel about the subject.

Hope that helps.

Ruv Draba said:

My 'natural' (default) posting voice sounds a bit dry and professorish because I first learned to write non-fiction as a young scientist -- but it doesn't have to be that way. Here are some of my main points over again, said this time in a Chandleresque voice so you can see the difference:

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Actually, I'd argue the "Chandleresque" in the paragraph is stylistic variation within the parameters of your voice. You'll have to try a lot harder (multiple edits probably) to make a "voice-transition".

Examples:

You're still using logical connectives, rather than rhetorical ones. "But Joe Average is wrong," would - for example - be more likely "Well, Joe Average is wrong." See the difference? Conjunction (logical) vs. expletive introductory phrase.

The "mostly" in "Mostly, there are two kinds of writers..." is also telling. I doubt Chandleresque prose would bother with such qualifications, going for stylish effect rather than truth.

And so on. The more homework you do, the more hints you can take out of the work, and there are master forgers out there. In the end, though, it amounts to role playing.

"Voice" can refer to two types of things:

Author's voice: which would be an unconscious list of speech habits, that may or may not push through in texts. You'll have to analyse an author's collected works (and letters and diaries...) to get at that.

Narrator's/Character's voice: which would be a conscious effort to create speech habits for a fictional persona.

But a voice is always the property of a "person", not of a text. Variation of syntax, diction, etc. on the textual level would be "style". A voice needs to able to accommodate plenty of styles. But at that point, it all becomes fuzzy: certain speech habits that characterise your voice may not trigger in all context, and where speech is highly formalised (say in reports) voice may disappear behind the strictures of stylistic convention. [There are pretty much always hints left, but you'd need to look for them to notice them.]

So your voice, in fiction, has to contend with two things:

1. Style (social conventions of appropriateness, goals you set yourself...)
2. Character (don't impose your own speech habit on a character who isn't you)

As an exercise, try to imagine what clues Chandler would leave behind that he's Chandler, should he try to imitate Ruv.

Your examples of my voice intruding over my Chandler attempt are valid, Dawny, but they're not evidence that one has a 'true' writing voice. I can't ever recall writing 'But' or 'Mostly' at the start of any WIP sentence, f'rinstance -- yet by your argument I should. All you caught was me using a 'teacher's voice' from habit while trying to pretend I was Chandler.

Getting rid of old vocal habits is a practiced knack. James N. Frey suggests copying 1,000 words a day from your favourite author for weeks to get a feel for his voice. I didn't do that for my example -- I didn't even drag a reference copy of 'The High Window' say, from my bookshelf. I was mainly trying to illustrate how changing voice changes persona, mood and approach to subject -- I think it demonstrated that. If I posted in that other voice all the time, people would surely think quite differently of me. I'll still maintain that this is voice and not style, because the same voice can change style (from formal to informal, say) just by tweaking diction or syntax -- yet readers will still consider it the same voice speaking.

What I think you're talking about with 'author's voice' is something to do with veracity of identity, which is perhaps beyond the scope of the original question. In drama and music 'voice' means something different from actor, author or musician -- it's not who they are but what they do. A conductor doesn't say 'she is a fine soprano voice' (because she may also sing alto), but rather 'she has a fine soprano voice' -- i.e, he's assessing the singer's capability. Perhaps what you're talking about is some sort of signature that may run through the many voices that an author may adopt. (My abuse of commas could be seen as a signature for instance.)

In my not-very-spare time I'm an avid blues guitarist and sometimes my guitarist friends argue about who is best -- the musician who can sound like Jimi Hendrix or BB King, or the guy who just sounds like himself. My belief is that if you can listen critically and have control of your performance you can do either -- play 'Red House' the way Hendrix felt it, or play it the way you feel it. Strong art is built on capable and flexible craftsmanship. Weak art is built on narrow and unquestioned habits.

As an exercise, try to imagine what clues Chandler would leave behind that he's Chandler, should he try to imitate Ruv.

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Since his only conceivable reason for copying my posting-voice would be parody, I'd expect that his signature wry cynicism would be all through such an attempt.

Ruv Draba said:

Your examples of my voice intruding over my Chandler attempt are valid, Dawny, but they're not evidence that one has a 'true' writing voice. I can't ever recall writing 'But' or 'Mostly' at the start of any WIP sentence, f'rinstance -- yet by your argument I should. All you caught was me using a 'teacher's voice' from habit while trying to pretend I was Chandler.

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Actually, I didn't think of position at all. Interesting point.

Also, I'm not arguing for a "true writing voice"; it's just that I'm used to seeing voice applied to "people" (characters/narrators or authors) rather than texts.

Getting rid of old vocal habits is a practiced knack. James N. Frey suggests copying 1,000 words a day from your favourite author for weeks to get a feel for his voice. I didn't do that for my example -- I didn't even drag a reference copy of 'The High Window' say, from my bookshelf. I was mainly trying to illustrate how changing voice changes persona, mood and approach to subject -- I think it demonstrated that. If I posted in that other voice all the time, people would surely think quite differently of me. I'll still maintain that this is voice and not style, because the same voice can change style (from formal to informal, say) just by tweaking diction or syntax -- yet readers will still consider it the same voice speaking.

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And I was mostly trying to stem a bubbling confusion inside, because voice and style run together at some point. But the singer analogy pretty much shows the drive of the metaphor "voice". An opera singer will have the same vocal apparatus whether she sings an aria or a lullaby to her kids.

Perhaps what you're talking about is some sort of signature that may run through the many voices that an author may adopt. (My abuse of commas could be seen as a signature for instance.)

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Yes, a signature. Only, I might add, the word "signature" has associations of deliberation, which what I'm talking about does not have.

In my not-very-spare time I'm an avid blues guitarist and sometimes my guitarist friends argue about who is best -- the musician who can sound like Jimi Hendrix or BB King, or the guy who just sounds like himself. My belief is that if you can listen critically and have control of your performance you can do either -- play 'Red House' the way Hendrix felt it, or play it the way you feel it. Strong art is built on capable and flexible craftsmanship. Weak art is built on narrow and unquestioned habits.

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That's not the point. Some guitar styles tongue) come easier to you than others; you may be better at emulating Hendrix than King, for example - or differently put, you may have to practise more for King. Why?

At this point, I'll emphasise that I did say "word habits" not "word nature". Your voice determines what you can sing, and if you can't sing it you'll have to work at your voice - i.e. change habits. But whatever you sing at any one time uses the very same voice. You do not have two sets of lungs; you do not have two brains.

It's way more likely that things that come easy to you intrude on things that come harder to you than the other way round. The discription of what requires effort and what not is voice. The description of what a text requires of you is style. (Or maybe not; so much my quibbles get lost in pointless semantics...) Thus I was able to point out logical conjunctions and the qualifier. Use voice for the requirements, and you lose the distinction.

Art can fail, too, if the artist bites off more than s/he can chew.

Since his only conceivable reason for copying my posting-voice would be parody, I'd expect that his signature wry cynicism would be all through such an attempt.

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Hehe. Well, considering he's dead...

No, that was meant as methodology. Looking at yourself through others' eyes, rather than looking at others through your own. What you take for granted may become visible. Indirection often works for me to break my tunnel vision.

Dawnstorm said:

An opera singer will have the same vocal apparatus whether she sings an aria or a lullaby to her kids.

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I think that you may be be using the term 'voice' for vocal aparatus instead of what it can produce. And perhaps my use of 'capability' has only confused things.

But the meaning is correctly identified against the product rather than the creator -- as you can tell by consideration of what can happens in choral music, plays or dialogue written by multiple authors. Many plays use the same actors in multiple roles -- sometimes the roles are even called 'First voice', 'Second voice' etc... and they're meant to be seen as distinct. Choral music may see one singer singing two voices (though not simultaneously), and when multiple authors co-write dialogue (as they often do in TV and movies) then they need to agree on the voice of each character -- who actually writes each line of dialogue may be moot.

I'm just sayin', this level of analysis/debate may interest y'all but I'm none too sure if it's going to help the OP. Basic questions often require basic answers.

-Derek

"I'm just sayin', this level of analysis/debate may interest y'all but I'm none too sure if it's going to help the OP. Basic questions often require basic answers."

Yep, agreed.

This book discusses style and voice in an entertaining and informative style--it's well-written with many examples:

The Sound on the Page: Great Writers Talk about Style and Voice in Writing
by Ben Yagoda
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060938226/?tag=absolutewritedm-20

Author's site:
http://benyagoda.com/

dpaterso said:

Voice is how you tell your story. In a way that's different from everyone else.

Try to put more emotion into your writing by using colorful descriptive phrases and stronger verbs.

Fun example time -- which do you prefer?




-Derek

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That was a great example of show versus tell! Well, your post with the text that didn't appear when I quoted you!