Tell me about Voice. Its importance. How do you use it? Examples?

I don't think there is a concrete definition for voice any more than there's a concrete definition of beauty. But I think you know it when you see it.

Voice gives characters depth and shows aspects of their personalities that you don't need to tell. Voice can show regionalisms, political opinion, background, social status, attitude, and so on.

Here's a try at a paragraph with less voice vs. one with more voice.

Paragraph #1 (less voice):
Maggie walked to the store, pulling her scarf over her nose against the cold as she went. At the last minute, she sidestepped a bum on the sidewalk who she hadn't seen until she was almost upon him. She looked into his rheumy, pleading eyes and looked away again quickly.

Paragraph #2 (more voice):
The store was too damn far from her apartment, in weather like this anyway. Was a pack of ciggies worth it? Damn straight! Maggie pulled her scarf up over her nose. "It's too cold to spit!" her mother would've said. A sudden foot appeared in her path and she skidded sideways to avoid it. The dirty-booted foot led to an equally dirty man and when her gaze met his she thought of home. In his rheumy eyes lived the same despair as the jobless men at the trailer park where she grew up. Their hopelessness and how they were only one step away from here. She jingled the coins in her pocket and looked away before she was tempted to give them to him. After she used her meagre coins to buy the ciggies, she'd give him one.

I don't know if that's any good, but I think the second paragraph has a lot more voice and we learn way more about Maggie without having to actually "tell".

Voice isn't something that one simply adds. It's just there--the flow, the rhythm, the tone of the prose. If you're having trouble finding your voice, my main suggestion is to turn off the TV. The spoken words we hear on TV are artificial and generic. Watching too much of the stuff dulls the ear and gets in the way of hearing the voices in our heads. Learn to sit quietly and think about your characters. Voice should come out of your characters' life experiences and the world they inhabit.

I once wrote a novel that most people, fellow AW members as well as agents, say has a wonderful voice. It just so happened that I wrote the book during a period that I was so broke I didn't even own a TV. Even now, I try to limit my time spent sitting on the couch.

Voice is the sound of the POV character, or the narrator in omniscient fiction. It is the way his speech patterns, thought patterns, even emotional patterns inform the prose. Caro gives a good example in third person above. A couple of famous examples of voicey fiction in other modes:

The Catcher in the Rye (first person)
Vanity Fair (omniscient)

Voice is not something you add on top. It should be organic and inseparable from the work, just like you can't speak without using your own voice. Voice in fiction is, when I read this, do I get the sense that there's a real human being with a real personality who's speaking to me?

It's possible that your experience in writing nonfiction has taught you to edit out the individuality of your voice.

I picked Nick Burd's "The Vast Fields of Ordinary" off the shelf--it's a very good book, but not the kind of book that smacks you in the head with being stylistic, but the voice is strong.

I spent a good part of my senior prom drawing DH + PS in a giant heart in the last stall of the Cedarville High boys' bathroom. It covered the entire side of the stall and took two red markers and almost an hour to complete. Every now and then, groups of guys would come in and piss in a line at the urinals and talk about how they were gonna get lucky with their dates, but for the most part it was just me and the marker stink and the muted sounds of crappy hip-hop coming through the walls.

When I was done I went back to give it all one last look, to tell it goodbye and head home for the night. My black tuxedoed and frilly dressed classmates were standing around the dark gymnasium, their voices striving to rise above the thumping beat of the music. I was wearing a powder blue tuxedo that I'd found at a thrift store just three days before. The prom theme was "Out of This World," and there were silver cardboard stars hanging from the ceiling and a twelve-foot tall green blow-up alien behind the table where the punch and cookies were all spread out. Principal Dugan was drssed like an astronaut and making the rounds, saying hello to students who inevitably rolled their eyes or flicked him off as soon as he passed.

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Our narrator (his name is Dade) tells us almost nothing about himself, but I'm starting to get a sense of who he is. He's somewhat closed-off with his feelings. He doesn't tell us who PS is or what's up with that heart he's drawing--not yet. He tells us about the marker stink. He's got some cynicism, and to an extent he's projecting that cynicism onto his classmates, which is why he reports the other promgoers rolling their eyes or flicking off the principal. His outlook is almost anthropological. He certainly doesn't see the other boys as part of his tribe. He'll wear a powder blue tux from the thrift store, but he's way above being impressed by the prom decorations.

There's a lack of affect here too. There's a thin layer of suffocated despair.

There's an exercise in one of John Gardner's books--something like "Write a description of a barn as seen by a father whose son has just been killed in the war. Do not mention the son, or death, or war." It seems a little ridiculous, and probably it is, but--that's voice.

I'm a recovering non-fiction writer myself, so I know how you feel. There is something called "narrative non-fiction" and that has VOICE.

To increase the voice in your fiction, you need to think about how you or your characters speak in real life, how they think, the words and symbols that mean something to them.

Try writing as you speak -- shortcuts, slang, colloquialisms and all. Do you talk to your friends in a textbook tone?

Or if you're writing first pov, pretend to be that character and write the way THEY think in their heads, the way they relate to their friends and family, with all the color, emotions, speech patterns, etc., included.

I agree with those who said voice shouldn't be added on top, however, I think rewrites are certainly a time when you can strengthen your characters' voice. I don't think anyone's suggesting to write without any voice and then add it after. However, by the time I get to The End, I generally have a stronger sense of my characters than I did at the beginning, so going back to strengthen the voice at the start to better match the voice at the end is part of what my rewrites are for.

It's the character's voice--to a degree. Even in third person limited, the narration should be guided by what your viewpoint character perceives and how she perceives it. It's usually not as intense as first person, but the voice is still there.

This is from "Tripping to Somewhere" by Kristopher Reisz.

It was after ten on a nothing-better-to-do Thursday night. Hanging out at the gas station, Gilly sipped a Diet Coke and listened to Sam recount the three-way battle she'd gotten into with her mom and stepdad.

Sam crashed on her brother Josh's couch a lot, escaping the ground-glass angers at her own house. She had a key, but Josh's roommate was a thug-wannabe full of crude words and wormy stares. Sam didn't trust him alone, so she went to the Texaco where Josh worked and waited for him to get off at midnight. If she called, Gilly always came up to keep her company.

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It's more subtle but you still get the "ground-glass angers" and "nothing-better-to-do Thursday night." And you get a certain cadence and rhythm to the prose. Sam and Gilly are poor white girls from Alabama, and they talk like poor white girls from Alabama, and that's reflected in the prose--"came up to keep her company" instead of "came over."

It's much easier to add in voice if you write in close third person, so that the description and narrative is from the character's voice. Voice also comes in small bits; it's not something that has to hit you over the head. Here's an example from Cinda Chima's The Wizard Heir: "The fog hung over Booker Mountain like a raggedy old coat." I'm not sure I have the wording exact because I've just misplaced my copy, but it's an example of voice. The POV in this chapter is from a young, poor girl, and the use of 'raggedy old coat' fits right in with that.

underthecity said:

Or is it the author's voice in the narrative?

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It's a blend really. You really can't avoid telling, and that will be the author's voice, but it will also be there character's voice through word-choice, observations, reactions. Consider this:

As the Edward and the boy walked into the library, there was a godawful racket to the right of them. Edward jumped, looking around, seeing a pair of boys standing next to a fallen shelf. Across the floor were delicate shards of the school's prized possession of African clay-work. Edward groaned; my god, he thought, that's four hundred years of history destroyed.

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As Mike and the professor walked into the library, there was a humngous crash behind them. Mike turned around, and saw that snarky Billy and Harry standing next to a overturned shelf. He laughed inside, the right idiots, had pulled down those odd looking vases that gave you the creeps if you looked at them the wrong way.

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Bad examples, maybe, since they were written on the fly for this. But hopefully they'll show that Edward and Mike will use different words to describe the same thing, and so will the author writing through the POV of the two characters. And that's part of voice.

This is why my "voice" is first person. There is a natural flow that I get when I write in that POV that is what makes the stories I write have voice. I can't for the life of me write good third.

(Incidentally, I had no idea I even had a voice until I queried and on the phone call with now agent, he told me I nailed the voice. I was like, Really? I did? I hadn't even tried!)

In my mind, voice is something that develops with time and words. It's one of those things a bit difficult to define, but if you went to the bookstore and opened five books by the same author, you would feel it. The stories and characters will be different, but the writer's voice will be the same. In my opinion, it goes far beyond the characters' patterns of speech. It's the flavor the words as a whole, so to speak.

That's just my two cents. Take it or leave it.

dgrintalis said:

In my mind, voice is something that develops with time and words. It's one of those things a bit difficult to define, but if you went to the bookstore and opened five books by the same author, you would feel it. The stories and characters will be different, but the writer's voice will be the same. In my opinion, it goes far beyond the characters' patterns of speech. It's the flavor the words as a whole, so to speak.

That's just my two cents. Take it or leave it.

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We should have defined which kind of voice we were talking about. I'm not sure which underthecity was asking about. You're right, there is a writer's voice as well, and I wish there was a different phrase when talking about character voice. It gets confusing if we aren't talking about the same thing.

dgrintalis said:

It's one of those things a bit difficult to define, but if you went to the bookstore and opened five books by the same author, you would feel it. The stories and characters will be different, but the writer's voice will be the same.

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I can't say I totally agree with this. While it's true that an author writing the same types of books will have the same voice, I think the actual world of the piece dictates the voice. An author may write five criminal thrillers with different characters but the same voice, yet his contemporary love story will have a markedly different voice.

One thing that is confusing everyone, is that what y'all are describing isn't voice at all.

Voice is a concept of grammar. There are two possible voices, active and passive, and they describe how the verb in a sentence relates to the subject and object of that sentence.

I think what you're trying to get at here is style, or stylistics. This is a branch of linguistics, and that is where y'all ought to be researching.

Voice is that which, if someone familiar with your work were to open to a random page of your novel and reading a single paragraph, and without knowing anything about the characters, story, or plot, would make they say instantly, "This is ____'s writing!"

underthecity said:

Thanks, this has been helpful, especially Carogirl's two examples.

Voice, outside of dialog, is what is concerning me at this point. And one problem I think I'm experiencing is having voice within the narrative. Obviously each scene has one character's POV, third person limited, and the narrative should also be told in the character's voice? Is that what I've done wrong? Or is it the author's voice in the narrative?

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Imagine someone you know really really well. You know what they're probably thinking about a situation, you know how they react to things, you know the way they talk. So if you were to place them in a situation, say...they're stuck in the life with a dodgy-looking guy, you'd know exactly how they'd react. You as a writer in third limited are a vessel for their thoughts.

Your voice (AKA style) in that second query letter sounds very false, TV-advertising style. It doesn't ring true as being someone's voice. I want to feel that there's a person speaking to me, telling me about this great book.

James D. Macdonald said:

One thing that is confusing everyone, is that what y'all are describing isn't voice at all.

Voice is a concept of grammar. There are two possible voices, active and passive, and they describe how the verb in a sentence relates to the subject and object of that sentence.

I think what you're trying to get at here is style, or stylistics. This is a branch of linguistics, and that is where y'all ought to be researching.

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We're talking about narrative voice, as distinct from the grammar concept of voice. Style is part of it but, IMO, not all of what narrative voice refers to.

James D. Macdonald said:

One thing that is confusing everyone, is that what y'all are describing isn't voice at all.

Voice is a concept of grammar. There are two possible voices, active and passive, and they describe how the verb in a sentence relates to the subject and object of that sentence.

I think what you're trying to get at here is style, or stylistics. This is a branch of linguistics, and that is where y'all ought to be researching.

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I can only speak for myself, but I use the term 'voice' when I'm referring to a writer's 'style', completely separate from active/passive voice in grammar. Underthecity, I'm sorry if what I posted confused you.

I'm also confused and would ask the readers who said the chapter lacked voice to clarify the point. Is the writing style boring? Given some of the examples in this thread, perhaps a lack of voice means a lack of attitude. The point-of-view character may be too bland. Give him opinions and more personality. That's how I would describe the difference between CaroGirl's two paragraphs.

James D. Macdonald said:

One thing that is confusing everyone, is that what y'all are describing isn't voice at all.

Voice is a concept of grammar. There are two possible voices, active and passive, and they describe how the verb in a sentence relates to the subject and object of that sentence.

I think what you're trying to get at here is style, or stylistics. This is a branch of linguistics, and that is where y'all ought to be researching.

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Usually when I hear something described as having "no voice" I don't think of grammatical voice but stylistic voice. I'm curious how you can grammatically have "no" voice? I know of active and passive, but none? (Being serious, hoping for a learning moment )



Anyway, like everyone's said, voice tells you things about the character or narrator. It's what allows someone to look at a page of writing without any identifying marks on it and name the author. It's the same kind of thing with the dialog, where each line should be distinct enough that even if you don't have a "X said" tag, you can tell who is saying it.

Example:

Say your character is ordering a drink at a bar...

(1) She snaps her fingers at the waiter, cautious of her fresh manicure. "Sen-yor!" she says, and finally he turns. Doesn't anyone in this country speak English anymore? "Martini, Belvedere. Extra olives."

His stare is somewhere between shock and disbelief.

She pulls a crisp ten dollar bill from her wallet and holds it up. "Comprendes?"

(2) He set two fives on the counter. One was taped together, sloppily, in two places. The other was a folded accordion that took the bartender several tries to recognize as legal tender.

"How drunk can you get me on that?" he asked.

The bartender looked him over. His cheeks were hollow and pock-marked and his eyes were just hollow, set so deep in his skull they almost disappeared. His coat was brown, but the bartender doubted it had always been that way. What hair remained on his head fought its way out from under his hat, colored a faded yellow like the rainwater-stained ceiling he hadn't slept under in some time. "Not drunk enough."

(3) What on God's green earth you need eighty beers for? Eighty of 'em! Reading 'em off I'm seeing all sorts of crazy names, like New-Castle and Stella. Hell kind of a name is Stella for a beer? Damn girl's name and they're giving it to a beer? But the barkeep's staring, been staring for a good minute, wants me to order or get off the damn stool, let someone else in.

"Jeeyyy-sus," I say. "I just want a Bud."



Not the greatest examples, I whipped them up very quickly, but in each you can see a different character without my directly telling you anything about them.

I also aimed for them to be different POVs. 1 and 2 are both in third, but 1 is a bit deeper than 2. 3 is obviously in first.

Mad Queen said:

I'm also confused and would ask the readers who said the chapter lacked voice to clarify the point. Is the writing style boring? Given some of the examples in this thread, perhaps a lack of voice means a lack of attitude. The point-of-view character may be too bland. Give him opinions and more personality. That's how I would describe the difference between CaroGirl's two paragraphs.

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The writing isn't necessarily boring. If it's a very fast-paced novel with lots of action, a lack of voice sometimes doesn't matter. The tight plot is enough to hold the reader's interest. But in my mind, a piece without voice is indistinct from all others. It has no flavor, no oomph. The words simply lie flat on the page rather than standing up and demanding to be heard.

Fillanzea said:

Voice is not something you add on top. It should be organic and inseparable from the work, just like you can't speak without using your own voice. Voice in fiction is, when I read this, do I get the sense that there's a real human being with a real personality who's speaking to me?

It's possible that your experience in writing nonfiction has taught you to edit out the individuality of your voice.

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Echo this, for emphasis. I'd add that it isn't so much an absence of "voice" as a flattening, a suppression of it. Writing always carries "voice"; the real question is the effectiveness of it in any given piece.

If you want some good examples of major writers whose work most definitely conveys characteristic individual "voice":

Flannery O'Connor
Kurt Vonnegut
Ernest Hemingway
John D. MacDonald
James M. Cain
Joseph Heller
Carson McCullers
Philip K. Dick
Ray Bradbury
Pete Dexter
Tony Hillerman
John Straley

caw