 20 years of Master Class to Masterpiece |
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VOICE Voice is a story element that editors, agents, and other readers tout, yet may find it challenging to define. Here is a potpourri of definitions and reflections. How do they apply to your story?Overview from Claudia Pearson, M.A. in Children’s Literature; workshop alum: “I believe there are two kinds of voice. The first is the character’s ‘voice’ (speech), which must be consistent with the personality, geography, education, and social position of that character. People sometimes confuse this voice with what editors and agents call the writer’s ‘voice,’ which reflects the way a writer uses words, the ordering of words, and selection of words for their sounds and for pacing.” QUESTIONS TO EXPLORE WITH FACULTY
Excerpts: Exclusive Interviews with (2009 Agent) Stephen Fraser: The Writer’s Voice Voice [is] an authentic originality that is the writer’s own. Voice is really the “sound” of the character, both in words and thoughts. Sometimes voice is inseparable from the author’s own writing voice, much as it’s hard to separate the character from the actor playing him or her in a movie. When publishers speak about wanting a strong voice, I believe they mean the sound of the writing must be original, not derivative or banal. For example, you can’t mistake Francesca Lia Block for Cynthia Rylant; Gregory Maguire for Meg Cabot.... Teens, especially, detect false notes in voice. If it doesn’t sound authentic or believable, they will drop your book. However, if you get it right—and you are consistent—they will follow you anywhere. • Read our entire web interview. (2009 Editor) Erin Clarke: The Voice of a Novel Voice is a combination of plot, setting, characters, dialogue—all of the elements that make a book. If I connect with the voice of a novel, I’ll want to keep coming back to it again and again. I’m looking for a voice that will dazzle me with its imagination and necessity. Voice is what I hear in my head while reading. Like most editors, I’m looking for something that will literally sing off the page. At the most basic level, it should be accurate to the story the writer is telling—a story about a high school football star should sound completely different from one about an overweight girl who is addicted to vintage clothing. But beyond being true to the story, [a voice should] stand out from the rest of the pack in its originality. It should feel necessary (I have to publish this story, I would be doing a disservice to readers if I didn’t). Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief is a good example. There have been so many stories published about the Holocaust, but the voice of this book is unlike anything that has come before in its ability to tell a very dark story while maintaining a real sense of hope. It is also unforgettable and lives on long after you finish reading it. • Read our entire web interview. (2008 Agent) Edward Necarsulmer: Plot and Voice I’ve seen a lot of great voices lately, but one really needs a well-constructed plot to complement the voice—i.e., to make that voice matter... I don’t need a platform as much as a good story with a strong voice, and a plot where something actually happens. (2008 Editor) Anne Hoppe: A Distinctive Narrative Voice Voice is the difference between the way Hemingway and Faulkner write individual sentences. You would never mistake the vocabulary, sentence structure, ordering of details, and use of language of one for the other. Does your text sound like anyone could have written it? Or are the sentences, their nuances, their order, unique to you and you alone? Personality should come through in even the most mundane passages, just by your use of language. OTHER SOURCES Orson Scott Card, Character & Viewpoint (Writer’s Digest Books) When it comes time to speak the words of the story, whose voice will the reader hear?... The very fact that you’re writing down the words rather than speaking them will make the style more formal. The fact that you write more slowly than you speak, that you can see your words as you [write], changes the way you produce and control your language. It’s another voice.
Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writers’ Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction (Modern Library)
[Like voice,] style is the unseen something... Writers often talk about “finding their voice”...But it is a little misleading to speak of the “voice” in the singular. Yes, [style has] a kind of synthetic unity, but most styles are in fact composites of many voices. Some are lifted from the writer’s own voiceprint... ... The only way to find [one’s voice] is among, and through, the voices of other people and other writers... Love of the other voice, style, sound...may lead you to some equivalent in your world... help you find your own voice... What you do with any language must sing with some excitement that is yours and yours alone.  Voice and Character
A voice can be exactly the lever you need to lift a story into existence, functioning in very much the same way that the story leverages a character into life. A character’s voice is the sound of her or his identity. It is the sonic fingerprint of personality. There are few better ways to capture the essence of character than to pin down the cadences and catches, the music and mannerisms, the whole resonance of how that figure speaks... Once you’ve captured a character’s voice [and heard it in your mind’s ear], you can talk to that character. You can interview your character—and the whole story may come blurting out. ... It is possible to use your character’s voice in much more than dialogue. A voice can color the world... [the] merger of the “voice of a novel” with the voice of a character is one of the form’s most potent techniques, and only fiction has it.
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