Writing 201: VOICE

December 9, 2009

A while back, I posted about a sort of Writing 201, that the nuts-and-bolts of writing was fairly straightforward and teachable, but the more advanced things like voice and hooks and pace were more difficult. I decided to string together a series of posts on these topics (yes, always thinking of you), and decided I needed someone smarter, more talented, more experienced, more successful, and you know, better looking and nicer, to help me out. So I called upon my good friend Erica Orloff, better known here as The Divine Miss O. We’ll be having a series of conversations on these topics over the next week or so.

Today’s topic is “voice.” How many times have you heard an editor or agent say, “I was immediately attracted to the voice of the book?” Never? You don’t get out much, do you? A lot. But for all that talk, it’s sort of tricky to figure out what exactly what “voice” is and how to develop it.

After Erica and I finished this conversation, I was thinking (in the shower this morning) that it reminds me of the movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance” with Matt Damon and Will Smith. That part of what Matt Damon’s character needed to find (or re-find, as the case may be) his “authentic golf swing.” I think this applies to writing and especially to “voice.” So think about it. Here we go.

Mark: Let's start with voice. I'm not completely sure how to define it. Or more accurately, how do you separate "voice" from "style"? In my head I think there are separations, but they clearly overlap. It comes down to word choice and a lot of subtleties related to mechanics--sentence length and complexity, do you use short declarative sentences or more complex sentence structure, sentence fragments. I think that can be defined as style, but style needs--in my opinion, anyway--to be appropriate for each type of story, while I think voice tends to be more individual to the writer.

Erica: VOICE to me is where style meets character.

One VERY SIMPLE sentence, but to me it speaks volumes. As writers develop, they eventually grow into a natural style. Read my blogs for a while, and you notice I am tangential. I use ellipses a lot . . . as I move and wend my way through my own thought processes. I used all caps and italics to emphasize FEELING because that's who I am in real life. I'll start sentences with "and." I will start like a stand up comic, in essence beginning a post with something like, "So I walked into a bar and . . ." You get the idea. So when I write fiction, my natural voice comes out, often in dialogue. My characters will have the same sort of emotionally pithy, punchy "feel" to them.

But the other half is the style of the AUTHOR has to meet the character. Not all my characters are me. In fact, there are usually just twinges of me here and there. So it's taking my natural style and the way I OBSERVE the world and communicate it, and pouring that into the soul of my character to see how they then will observe their circumstances, be in their circumstances, and then communicate it.

Simple, right?

Mark: I think so, too. I'm a fan of ellipses because I think it's better than "um" and I think that it reflects either that the character is thinking or, perhaps, debating what and how to say something, which can suggest prevarication (okay, lying). I like that, though, where style meets character. But you're also suggesting it's where style meets characters meets the author's personality, too, right?

I was thinking about this, because we both like Mike Lawson, and I just finished reading HOUSE RULES by him. Mike and I pretty much play on the same tennis court: political thrillers with an element of espionage and terrorism and politics. But he's much lighter than I am and his voice is very different, which also has to do with what we're each trying to do. For example:

From HOUSE RULES:

"If Mahoney called later in the day to see if he was back in D.C., DeMarco planned to lie to the inconsiderate shit. He'd tell him he'd been on his way but a massive accident on the bridge from Key West to the mainland had caused him to miss his plane, or that all the flights out of Miami had been delayed because security was so tight, or that...

"Aw, screw it. He'd make up something when the time came."

From my novel, THE DEVIL'S PITCHFORK:

"He sat in the Explorer in the 7-Eleven parking lot, watching what looked like three gang members shoulder through the front door. Baggy jeans hanging off their asses, Baltimore Ravens jerseys, red doo-rags on their heads. He hoped they weren't knocking the place off. He didn't have time for crap like that. He made his next call on his cell phone."

What we're doing, we're both writing in the 3rd person from the point of view of the main character, and I think we use some similar techniques. But, to me, anyway, the voices are different. The attitude is similar, the approach is similar... but I think the voice is different. At least I think so.

If you buy that, how do you develop "voice?" I think it's tough to do consciously. I think you have to read and read and read and write and write and write. And it eventually develops. Like you say, where the style meets the character (and the author).

Erica: What I get from your two selections is Mike's character's sardonic wit, and your character's instant assessment style . . . and weariness, perhaps, though they are both essentially analyzing situations and using language to give the same sort of "can handle any situation" feel. I would expect BOTH characters to be able to think on their feet. I would trust both to save the day.

I don't know if an author's personality necessarily fits in (though sometimes, definitely). Look at books like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. The narrator is autistic. Mark Haddon is not. He had to sustain the mask of this narrator for the length of the novel--tricky no doubt. But I think most authors end up finding their groove of a voice where they hit their sweet spot.

How to develop it? I think you see its development over time. I think you write that first book that feels like you hit your sweet spot--and then when it's time to write the second, third, fourth (manuscript or published novel) and you have to come up with a new character. You know it can't be the same character over and over . . . and yet you have to find that sweet spot again. So I think you start to find it. I have a comedic voice--Freudian Slip could not be any more different from Spanish Disco--but I know when I slip into the patter between characters that I find my rhythm. I'm not overly descriptive. I rely on the characters to tell the tale. I have a darker voice that has a a deep, almost depressive quality to it, and the darker books (Invisible Girl, The Roofer) have narrators who see nothing but destruction around them and continue to push on, accepting that "it is what it is"--and very much are observers. They can walk into a room, hear what someone has to say, and intuit (perhaps in a decidedly female sense) the underlying lies or, more accurately, the untruths we tell ourselves.

Both those voices developed over time, but I can say my darker voice was there at 16 and 17 in my short stories. The truth detector is part of who I am--or like to think I am anyway.

Mark: The only thing I think I would add for now is that I have a couple different voices and it's related to character. My nonfiction voice is very straightforward, journalistic, but authoritative. It has to be (and confidence may be an element to voice that all editors and agents and readers respond to, whether consciously or not). But I wrote a novel called HOT MONEY and the character is not just confident, he's self-consciously arrogant, funny, charming, wry. Sometimes I think the most accurate way to describe voice is the voice used in a book is the voice of the author if the author was that character. So if I were Derek Stillwater, there's his voice; if I were Austin Davis, that's his voice; if I were Megan Malloy, that's the voice. But there's an element of acting and make-believe to it, too. But it's tricky to write about a character that has nothing in common with you at all. Not impossible, just harder.

Thanks, Erica. The floor is now open for discussion!

P.S. I have shut off comment moderation temporarily. If I get a lot of spam it'll go back on.