What is voice?
Put your hands down. I don’t mean that, and you know it very well. In that sense I got a voice, and it’s bad.
This is the thing, everyone knows what voice is in a singer, or even a speaker. You hear it. It comes through. You know who is singing-speaking. Unless you hear very badly or the connection is awful, you don’t need to have your spouse tell you “Hi honey, it’s me.” You know.
To an extent voice in writing is similar. I don’t know when I became aware of it, but I can’t have been much more than eleven or twelve. I think the first “voice” I identified was Clifford Simak’s. I’d picked up a collection without looking at names and halfway through a story I went “Hey, this is familiar.” It is also almost impossible to read Heinlein without recognizing him. There is a tone to his writing.
I don’t agree, btw, that he has only one character, either in the juveniles or in the grown-ups. I think in Number of the Beast he was making a joke about being accused of it. There is no mistaking Kip for the main character of Star Man Jones.
But there is a TYPE of character Heinlein has – a type of character that, btw, makes him the essential American SF writer – he writes underdogs who make good. Rags to riches. Little boys – or girls – that could, against all odds, come whichever army.
However, that’s not voice. That’s style. Heinlein’s voice was a quirky, conversational tone, that made even long explanations of back history or how things work seem palatable. It was liberally peppered with slang some of which I recognize as early twentieth century and some of which might very well have been his own creation, who knows?
Simak’s tone is more leisurely and somehow has an undertone of pensiveness.
Bradbury’s voice cannot be described. It’s wildly poetic, but there’s more than that, and you’ll know it when you see it.
In the same way that a lot of writers can use British humor, but the mordant bend over again over the joke and give it just one more one liner, is pure Pratchett.
So what is voice? How do you know when you’re writing full-voice or in the voice you should write?
I once bought a book on voice. It advised me to cut out all modifiers and all extraneous words. While that might have been the AUTHOR’S voice, it sure as heck wasn’t mine. Or at least not mine for every possible book. Now, I would advise cutting out “practically” and “almost” and “just about” and other “begs” unless in dialogue. This includes “seems” “appears” “Possibly” unless you’re in the characters head because all of those make you sound diffident which, as we’ll see below, is a bad thing.
So, how do you know voice, and how do you know if you’re writing in the right voice?
I don’t know. It’s a mystery. But I’ll give you the three clues I have, and which seem to work.
First, Kris (Rusch) and Dean (Wesley Smith) once told me you won’t know if you’re writing in your true voice, and your true voice will seem blah to you. Why? Because that’s natural to you. So it won’t seem like anything special. You’ll just write. It will be fast, it will seem too easy. And it will be your true voice.
Second, once at a conference panel, Dave Weber said “The important thing in voice is confidence. You can feel the confidence with which the writer is writing the world. For the time you’re reading, you should feel like the writer is an authority not to be questioned. The problems should only occur to you afterwards.” I’ve found he’s right. If you have no confidence, you should fake it while writing.
Third, Pratchett said, “The secret to success is to be yourself as hard as you can.”
So the best advice I can give you, for voice, is to write it as yourself, as hard as you can and to have absolute confidence in your ability to do it. I know this is harder than it sounds – trust me, I know – but you must trust yourself and the way you tell a story, and then write it as much like yourself as you can.
The funny thing is you won’t be able to see it for some years, but if you leave it sitting, then come back and read it, you’ll see it. It will be like clarion calls. And your readers will hear it too.
According To Hoyt 
Started a trend #AccordingtoHoyt on Twitter.
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Brava! I *love* your voice. Maybe I should say ‘voices’. Because I do enjoy the way you speak, also. (Who can forget ‘pirate sheep’?)
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Thank you. That helps a lot. I’ve been worried about voice, in the back of my mind; but with no idea how to tackle it, I’ve been ignoring it, just tackling the easier work of putting my ideas on the page.
It may also explain some compliments I got in my non-fiction work. When I wrote my software design book, my editor praised my voice. I didn’t know what she meant by that, nor how much she meant that as a compliment. I just wrote what I taught in my classes, the way I taught it. And friends who have read the book tell me that they actually hear me speaking when they read it. It sounds like I unintentionally stumbled into a good technique.
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Thank you. I am amused by my non-fic editors and readers who praise my “readability,” because what they are reading is overflow from my fiction writing. Same voice, just different topics and some gentle pruning to conform to the dictates of the genre. A while ago I tried writing the rather stilted, formal academic style I kept reading in class, and finally gave up. The pain of writing it and the pain my professors had in reading it were not worth the effort.
Andre Norton’s Witchworld voice always intrigues me because it seems “silver” for lack of a better adjective. Misty, silvery, you get the close-up details but everything else is vague and shifting. In contrast, the voice in the Beastmaster books is sharp and clear.
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Interesting.
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Thank you.
I had been reflecting the other day that Pratchett was the first author that really managed to successfully play with words in a way similar (but not identically) to Lewis Carroll. There is a mischievous wit and unapologetic pleasure with the, at times, absurdity of the English language. I also considered that this is not something easily done, which is why so few can get away with it. Voice, yes, in some cases so distinctive that, no, you do not have to ask yourself who is speaking.
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I had an English professor who talked about voice a lot. She could tell if you were playing in “someone else’s sandbox.” I guess I already had a distinctive voice that came through on academic papers. She introduced me to the writings of Northrup Rye because I was already dabbling in mythic elements.
I just write plain fantasy now. The mythic is deep in my brain and comes out out to play often. It was a shock to me after I went back to read some of my writings that I write elements of horror. I only have a few horror writers that I read. I have a couple of Stephen King’s stories that I like, but not all of them. Yea – a shock… I hated the period where Dean Koontz wrote the same story over and over. It was about the time he had a great success with Watchers and his time travel one. It seemed like he was under pressure to come up with the same stuff. Now – I get a kick out of his Odd stories. ;-)
Anyway, I learned to write by taking out the adverbs. I try to put in a few because it can feel stilted to me if it is not in there.
Cyn
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I don’t know whether every author’s voice is distinctive, or just every successful author … there was a time when, given a short story by any of the Classic SF authors I grew up on, I would be able to identify the writer, possibly even the editor of the SF Mag in which it first appeared. It is there in the sentence structure, word selection, tempo and rhythm of the writing, the way in which some authors will walk right up to a verb and the way some others sidle around it, getting a sense of its size and shape before grabbing ahold of it.
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The comment about seeing your own voice as “blah” is absolutely true and something more writers should pay heed to. The problem comes in when writers can’t see their own voice and try to change it so it stands out from what they naturally do – such things come across as awkward, and they make the reader wonder if there’s anything genuine ion the prose.
Be who you are and readers will notice.
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“in the prose.” I’ve got to stop hitting “post comment” BEFORE I read for correctness. :-P
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I’m not sure if this is something I should admit (shifty eyes)– but you are all my imaginary friends on the Internet, right? I can switch voices. If I read enough of an author I can “mirror” their voice in writing. Not a very *useful* superpower, but sometimes I use it to add a flavor to my own voice–say, if I want to give a E.R. Burroughs flavor to a story, More of an imitated accent, really.
I try to be aware of my own voice so that I don’t give it to ALL my characters. It’s like singing harmony (sorry, Sarah) where you have to listen to the other singers to stay in tune, but keep singing your own, different notes.
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Oh I can do the same thing. I wrote a Sherlock Holmes story in HS once that got thrown out of the running for the literary mag bc the English Lit teacher was convinced it was an ACD plagiarism (blind judging of entries).
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I THINK I can too. I don’t know. Read Soul of Fire and Darkship Thieves. I don’t think they’re the same.
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I have not read extensively enough of Sarah Hoyt to say I know what is the Hoyt voice.
There are similarities in the Magical British Empire and Witchfinder. Still, this could be explainable by the romantic fantasy aspect, which I have not read any quantity of, as much as having a same author, although maturing. (No I don’t mean ageing, I mean getting more polish, showing more finesse, and having something more in the story telling.)
The two Dyce mysteries are definitely yours. I cannot exactly put my finger on why. Possibly the nature of the humor and the love. (Such as the way you describe E with all his glorious toddler faults …)
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E is a composite of the boys. They drove me totally insane, and I adored them. … uh, same thing now they’re young men, actually…
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E is hilarious, and I just finished the Magical British Empire books. After reading them I wonder how you can say you don’t write romance.
Really I often think there are only 3 real genres; Romance, Mystery, and Action/Adventure. All the other so-called genres are really just subgenres of these three, and most books can be classified in at least two of the three above genres.
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Trust me, if you read “real” romance you’d know I don’t write it. I’ve actually been playing with it. I have a series called Beauty’s Daughters which was never sold and I thought I could do as short novels but OMG it’s difficult to write a story line where romance DRIVES it. I’m sure it can be done, but it’s a learning curve.
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Exactly – romance is harder than it looks. ;-) I have a friend who writes Harlequins. It would drive me crazy actually. I also use romance elements, but I don’t write “romance-driven” stories.
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I’m sure it can be learned. Each new genre is difficult. In mystery I had to get used to the “Oh, they talk so much!”
:)
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lol – which is why I like stories with mystery elements and not full-mysteries. I like a balance of the elements – instead of all dialogue or in the case of romance – flirting and sex. ;-) It was quite a shock to my system when I read my first soft S&M romance. ARG – I liked the earlier days of romance.
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Also – I read a lot of romance when my brain was gone (during chemo). It added a few good emotions and escape from the pain.
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I read romance when I’m fried. This is not a bad comment on romance — it’s more that for now at least I don’t DO it so it gets to be “just for fun.”
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Odd – my only experience reading “under the influence” was when I had lockjaw and was going through Percodan like M&Ms. All I could read then were Heinlein and Niven.
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Yes, but writing taints your reading. You read like a writer. And I read Niven and Pournelle and Heinlein like going to school.
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Understood – when my friend started writing romance again, she convinced me to read more of it. I do it rarely and when I need a real chick-lit fix. Fluffy, like petting a teddy bear. ;-)
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RES my problem with reading sci-fi (it was Douglas Adams) under the influence is that I became the character. Really!!!! The hubby wouldn’t let me read it during those days after I became the “holistic detective.” ;-) True story.
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There are worse Addams characters to channel. What if you’d acquired an urge to recite Vogan poetry?
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When I’m writing, I often become my character. It’s kind of like Glory Road when Isthar was taking the personality overlays.
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RES 42
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I don’t notice becoming my MC, but when I am writing the villain I notice some bad traits. ;-)
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Probably true, about the full extent of ‘real’ romance I read is Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunter series. To an extent your Magical British Empire reminded me of them with the sex removed (of course removing the sex from her books would make them all novellas instead of novels).
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Oh yea – Kenyon is about 2/3rds sex ;-) and it gets very strange. Should I admit that I have read her?
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Research. It is a sad, dreary and depressing part of the authorial game, but it must be done. It is a sacrifice made for one’s readers, bless ’em.
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She has started a YA series, I haven’t read any of them, but have wondered what they would be like. Since as you pointed out the greatest portion of her other books would be unacceptable as YA ;)
Hey, it is fine for you to admit to reading them, I’m a guy and I admitted it ;)
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Umm.. RES exactly what my friend’s husband says about the sex scenes in her book. ROFL
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*snort – it could be a very bad, very sad experience. At least I wasn’t channeling Spock.
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This is one of the main reasons people advise a “once through” system — revise only at editorial direction, and that reluctantly. Every revision pass, every once-through, eliminates a few more of the quirks and unusual bits that go together to make voice, pushing the work in the direction of bland standard no-origens language. Substantive changes, “make it didn’t happen”, yes; and, certainly, get the spelling and grammar correct — but the more you can do the first time through, and the less you have to massage afterwards, the more your individual voice will show up in the result.
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Thank you, Sarah. Those are priceless observations.
On a slightly related note, one of the things I find baffling when I write is the difference between the narrator’s voice and the main character’s voice. A friend of mine took a writing course, and, both of us being rigid rule-followers, we locked into a “rule” about not skipping around in different people’s heads in a given scene. (Even though lots of my favorite writers do it, and I gather there’s the omniscient narrator, but still). This “rule” meshed nicely with the notion that the viewpoint character had a voice. You wouldn’t give a sales clerk the same voice as you would give an English professor. This concern landed me smack dab in the middle of what was a slavish adherence to a point of view so deep it might as well have been first person. And, I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t do objective narration. It all started when my friend pointed out that if the main character wasn’t drinking the coffee, you couldn’t mention that it was hot, because he would not know it himself. I’m working on something now where I have two main characters. I diligently keep their points of view separated. The language for the engineer is different than the language for the lawyer, depending on whose head we’re in. But there’s no narrator, it feels like. I’m using third person, but it’s all based on the POV of the view point character as if the character were narrating first person.
If the above isn’t a mess of babble, I’ve always wondered if anyone else deals with this issue?
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Travis Taylor taught me to avoid “head jumping” but neither of us is so slavish about it as to use different languages for the different heads except insofar as the characters are speaking. I think of it like a movie sequence, where you’re shooting over the shoulder of each character alternately at the other character. It isn’t necessarily always in their heads (though I do a lot of internal dialogue and stream of consciousness), but it is that camera looking over their shoulder at the other person.
Does that make sense, or help?
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I think so. Do you think of what the camera “sees” as the narrative voice, so that it is separate from what is going on inside the head of the POV character? I ask, because my friend’s workshop taught her that you don’t even describe scenery or plants by name if the character wouldn’t know the name. That felt very confining, but I tried to do it that way. I felt like I wound up with the limitations of first-person in a third-person narration.
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It strikes me that to strict an adherence to the principle of “stick to what the character would know” is flawed. There is also what the character infers: coffee is hot because the drinker sips at it gingerly, blows gently across the surface, holds the cup in a way indicating heat, steam rises, etc. There is also what the character assumes: I saw Joe draw the coffee from the coffee-maker and add cream to it, therefore the coffee is hot. Of course, what the character infers and assumes can be erroneous: it is a classic comedy routine to have a character apparently draw a mug of hot coffee then suddenly dash it on a second character only to have the mug revealed as filled with confetti. Writers can indicate a good bit about their POV character by manipulating these elements of inferring, assuming and erring. (Watson and Holmes being a classic demonstration.)
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It needn’t be comedy. What the POV character knows, infers, or assumes can definitely be part of the plot, even integral to it. This is part of what lies behind the science of information-passing. The only thing you really can’t do in “tight third person” is tell the reader something the character doesn’t know — although you can (and often should) tell the reader the same things the character learns, and expect the reader to infer, assume, or conclude something the character doesn’t “get”. If you take that very far it’s comedy, yes, but it can also be that (tragically) the POV character fails to note something, and that impacts the story.
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So it has a name! Tight third person it is. Is there a way of shifting out of it which is not jarring? Is there a way of avoiding it without indulging in head-hopping? Sorry for all the questions, but there are clearly a lot of good brains to pick here. I have nothing against it, per se, and enjoy reading it because it makes me feel closer to the character, but it makes scene setting feel difficult.
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The term arose on USENET, rec.arts.sf.composition, and how well accepted it is outside that (now moribund, mostly) group isn’t obvious. Alas, I don’t think anybody ever developed a full taxonomy, even one with fuzzy-on-the-edges terminology.
IMO “tight third” is adopted not because it makes for the best story, but because it’s one of the easiest rules to apply: If the POV character can’t see it, it doesn’t exist until and unless Unseen Forces come around to bite him in the butt.
Most long-lasting narrative, from Austen through Dickens, is written as narrative; the narrator may be implicit or explicit. The narrator has access to data the protagonist does not, and can offer it to the reader. Denigrating that as “head hopping” is a mistake, an attempt to apply a rigorous rule to an amorphous enterprise.
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Definitely didn’t mean to denigrate the offering of data to the reader as “head hopping.” I’ve been trying to figure out how to offer data that the POV character may be paying no attention to while trapped in tight third person. I do switch scenes when changing points of view.
Many writers I like don’t follow the rule against head-hopping. I gather that is called the objective narrator? I did have a slightly disgruntled reaction: why do they get to switch points of view and I don’t. It’s clearly, however, very difficult to do successfully, because when others do it, the reader can get very confused.
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head hopping is normal in Romance. They expect it.
On telling the reader things the character doesn’t know, I call this “the fan dance.” It’s used a lot in mystery. Say your character sees a knife lying on the ground. You mention it, briefly as in “there was a knife on the ground” and then you bring on something that’s a massive distraction TO YOUR CHARACTER. Like “OMG is that Ken’s tie-pin? What was he doing here?” AND THEN you follow up with an intense action scene. So, you gave the reader the info, and then you did the fan dance, so they never realize what you showed. Go read some old fashioned mysteries, and you’ll see just that. And, guess what? There’s no rule against using mystery techniques in other circumstances.
I hate both omniscient narration (unnatural) — aka “the eye of G-d” — and camera eye. Of the two I hate camera eye more. If I wanted to watch a movie I’d do so. The advantage of reading is to be able to get in the characters’ heads however briefly, to BE someone else, not just watch. THIS is of course my opinion. I’m sure other people feel differently which is why there is so much camera-eye in the world.
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There are basically two kinds of head-hopping expected in Romance, so far as I have seen.
The first one is switching tight-third-person (or semi-tight third person) viewpoints between the protagonists, usually at chapter breaks or at least at scene breaks (* * *). The second is closer to omniscient viewpoint, in that the camera generally follows a person… or a location… and hops into someone’s head (or emotions) whenever they’re thinking something interesting enough to bother. (My mom wrote one of the latter. It’s very fluffy. I can link it if anyone cares to see the technique in action, but it is a First Novel kinda thing in a lot of ways.)
And, of course, there’s the version that intersects, where the camera will follow one or the other of the protagonists, and when they’re together will pick out thoughts/emotions of both of them without shifting scene (or even paragraph!) to do it.
I think tight(ish) third person, switching viewpoints at breaks, is the predominant fashion in Romance these days.
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O.K., this is from a film based on a Broadway musical, the scene is part of the romantic story line and there are several voices demonstrated. The camera serves as a ‘God eye’. Smitty (the girl in the green dress) is the narrator in the song. The ‘he’ and ‘she’ get to voice their thoughts courtesy of the structure of the song:
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So, you gave the reader the info, and then you did the fan dance, so they never realize what you showed.
Yes. I remember the first time I figured out a Sherlock Holmes before the end. It wasn’t very far in that all the necessary facts were given, but they had been all rather understated, put out as if flavor. Whoopee!
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There is only one rule and it cannot be broken, although lying editors will tell you otherwise: If it is against the rules and it works, it isn’t against the rules. That’s how the novel was born.
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I prefer a loose third person myself or as Ric explained the implicit narrator. It is not actually head-hopping. Interestingly Norah Roberts was the one who broke that arbitrary rule. She would look into her character’s heads sometimes in the same paragraph. (Oh yea, I heard the rule that you should start a new scene when you head-hop.) Love how the rules are not always essential to story.
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Well, just think how many more books she would sell if she followed the rules ;)
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You can have … insets with distant third person for other heads. Just don’t hop mid chapter or section.
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I try to keep it true to the character I am writing. ;-) I do use different scenes if it is going to be a long time in one head. So yea, I am careful with it as I am with most tools.
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No, it need not be comedy, it is just that comedy employs it so openly. Shakespeare used it all the time — what happens in Romeo & Juliet if not characters drawing wrong conclusions? At a lesser level, most of the first few Harry Potter books rely upon multiple instances of characters drawing wrong conclusions from observed events.
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Maybe a better rule would be to stick to what the character perceives or could perceive. Then, even if the 19 year old would be unlikely to know the difference between liriope and azaleas, the narrator could still mention their presence. [By this reference I do not mean to impugn all 19 year-olds for their lack of horticultural knowledge–just one in particular.]
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My characters have distinctive voices within my voice, if that makes sense. They just do.
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Yes, it makes sense. Your characters’ voices are there even in third person. Then, the Sarah Voice is how someone doing a blind taste test would pick you out from others.
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I embrace it, to some extent. I’m not sure how well I manage, but if I have more than one viewpoint character, I want to try for imagery that they’d think of, or words they’d use.
I’m sure there’s an underlying “Beth Voice” in there, but I can’t see it easily, and if I could, it would be “meh” to me. But I try for the veneer of character-voice because that’s part of what makes the writing interesting.
[And if you want to make your own judgments on how well I did, I think you can click on my name, go to “Herb-Witch” on the Smashwords page, and there’s a 50% sample of the book.]
Nothing wrong with having a chameleon overlay, so long as you do it well and not awkwardly, yah?
And then there’s the story that I wanted to tell and COULD NOT until I dragged one of my characters out of the back of my head and said, “You, you’re the storyteller. Tell me this story!” And then it flowed.
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Very interesting. I’m going to go look you up.
This raises the question of how you have authorial voice if you have character voice. Going by what Sarah said and your “meh” reaction, I suppose it might be something the writer can’t perceive and I should stop worrying about it.
I can sure perceive it in Heinlein, however. There’s both a frankness and worldliness to how he writes that appealed to me at 13 and still does decades later.
Also, I’ve often wondered about Heinlein’s slang. Did he make up “old son”?
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I have the vague sense that “old son” is a Britishism, although I would be hard put to produce any support for the belief. Heinlein’s naval career and reading predilections would have exposed him to many varieties of English slang.
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Now that you say that, it’s ringing a bell. Faintly. I think you’re right.
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I think you’re right — I’m pretty sure I recall it from Dick Francis.
However, I also recall it from my uncle, who would be mortified if he realized he’d used it. He despised England and the English at a level only approximated by my father’s attitude toward the Japanese. This is probably because he was posted in East Anglia, building taxiways and hardstands for the Army Air Corps and RAF, as punishment — his previous assignment was Hawai’i, where he ended up being one of the people who carried the can for having the airplanes parked too close together one fine Sunday morning.
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Here’s where most people hear it: Kenny Rogers, in the song The Devil Went Down To Georgia (after the Devil had played his piece), “When the Devil finished, Johnny said, ‘Well, you’re pretty good, old son, but sit down in that chair right there, and let me show you how it’s done.”
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EARWORM!
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Whoops. Wifey just reminded me that it was Charlie Daniels, not Kenny Rogers. Ah, well. I listen to music for background noise more than for itself as a piece of art.
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Ah, I was going to mention that, but your wife beat me to it. Yeah, I heard it growing up to, and nobody I knew then had even heard of Heinlein; as far as I know.
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Did Heinlein make up “old son”? Oh, heck no. That’s definitely old Southern/Hillbilly slang. I have heard it where I grew up, and I guarantee that it was not a result of an influence by Heinlein. I am certainly not the best at picking out slang, to notice its use, but I can’t remember any slang he used in anything I have read, that I have not heard myself, since I figured out that the Loonies in MIAHM were using Aussie slang (and after I had watched Steve Irwin a few times).
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You are definitely telling the story from your characters’ respective perspectives. (Say that three times fast!) Gotta go now. Need to see what happens with these alchemists.
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Hee! I hope you enjoy!
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That’s exactly what I meant. I have the character voices — I think — but there’s an underlying Sarah Voice.
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