Can You Hear Me Now?
It might be a scream, a whisper, an insult, or a humorous comment. It’s what causes me to listen and understand the emotions it needs to convey.
It’s a writer’s voice.
If I can’t hear it, chances are I’m not going to like the book.
I recently attended a writer’s conference and listened to a publisher explain her definition of voice. It rang true and clear, so I decided to share my thoughts on this element of writing that is often a challenge to define.
When I began studying the craft of writing, my focus was on the plot, mainly because I hadn’t a clue how to construct one. I hadn’t given much thought to voice until I picked up a novel by an author I’d never read before. It was his fourth one and it had landed him on the bestseller list. I’d heard so much about the book I was prepared not to like it. At first, I thought it was the story and characters that grabbed me and whirled me along for more than four hundred pages. When I finished the book, I rushed out and bought his first three. I struggled through each one and only completed them because I was curious to learn how this author developed his craft. Then, I realized that it was his voice that captured my interest in novel four. It was also clear to me that I was unable to hear that voice in his first three novels. Maybe he was still struggling to find it. Who knows? Since then, I’ve read everything the author has written, and he’s now one of my favorite contemporary writers.
So, how do you define voice? What I gleaned from the publisher’s talk was that voice is the emotional thread that connects the writer to the reader. It’s the writer’s unique style of expression, which adds a personal element to the story that character, plot, and setting can’t do alone. Consider F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. It’s an extraordinary story of love, loss, hope, and betrayal. With these opening lines, “In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in the world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’” Narrator Nick Carraway is telling me a story as naturally as if I were sitting in a room with him and we were chatting over a cup of coffee. That natural ease draws readers in and keeps them turning the page.
Every book I keep has earned its place on my bookshelf because the writer has connected with me on a deep level. Without that connection, even if I finish and enjoy the story, that book will most likely end up in my giveaway box, and I will probably not wait in anticipation of the writer’s next one.
I highly recommend reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories and novels to improve your writing voice. He was a master of voice. When I read The Great Gatsby, which I do often, I hear Nick Carraway telling me an extraordinary story of love, loss, hope, and betrayal during the Jazz Age.
Think about Harper Lee’s voice in To Kill a Mockingbird. Her method and style of telling a story of social injustice and prejudice by having Atticus Finch fail to save the innocent Tom Robinson was so much more powerful than finding him innocent and allowing him to go free. Who doesn’t relate to some sort of injustice inflicted upon them? Who hasn’t felt that pain and learned from it? That was the connection for me. I learned something by listening to Lee’s character’s voices.
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