Guest Post: Elements of Voice

Today I'd like to welcome Laurel Garver to the blog. She writes the blog "Laurel's Leaves" and is the author of the recently released novel, Never Gone. (NG has just made it to the top of my Kindle TBR list, and I can't wait to read it.)

Elements of Voice

Sometimes the term “voice” is used interchangeably with “style.” What I’d like to talk about is not that sense of “authorial voice,” but rather how to develop character voices that are distinct from one another. If you write from multiple points of view, this is an essential craft to learn. But it’s also helpful for making sure that your fiction isn’t one-note and that the characters around the protagonist seem just as unique as he or she does.

Diction 
How do the characters say what they say? This will reflect their levels of education, local dialect and to a degree their temperament. A morose Oxford graduate will have a different manner of expressing himself than a scrappy graffiti writer from the Bronx.

Here are a few examples from my novel Never Gone. Can you guess which is the teen from New York, which is her middle-aged British uncle and which is her grandfather from central Pennsylvania?

-- “Your mother ain’t right in the head, seems to me. When you love someone, you can’t throw it away. You hang on with every ounce of strength. Right?”

 -- Cecily bubbles with fake cheer, no doubt trying to make up for being such a grinchy wench to me lately. She tells a dorky story about crushing on Ollie Mawbry, and her little horse-riding escapades to spy on him. No surprise he ignored her. Guys don’t exactly dig stalker chicks.

-- “It’s good of you to take an interest in Liza’s pony,” he says. “She’s always banging on endlessly about him. It’s hard for us to be enthusiastic anymore.”

Notice the use of cadence (speech rhythm) and key terminology. You immediately get a sense of place from “ain’t” and “banging on.” You get a sense of age from “right in the head” and “stalker chicks.”

Developing varied diction comes from doing lots of research. A few places to start: Keep a log of overheard conversations and transcribe speech from YouTube videos. Beware of taking your cues from TV, film or other novels, because those writers may not have worked from life. Go to the source as much as you can.

 Associations 
These “tip of the mind” thoughts are a huge part of character voice because they tell a tremendous amount about a person in just a few words. Think of the word-association games psychotherapists use. When your character hears the word “home,” does he think “fried chicken,” “fear,” or “fantasy”? Any one of these answers gives a window into an intriguing story. Associations can be a shorthand way of showing what kind of past experiences the character has gone through, what he values, and what forms of culture shape him. Associations show up in the way characters describe things, and especially how they make comparisons, such as similes and metaphors.

Here are a few associations at work from Never Gone:

--Images burst in my mind like sudden sun through stained glass. (association of a church-goer)

--“Crikey,” Uncle says. “We’re in Dante’s eighth circle of hell.” (association of a reader of classics)

Attitudes 
Attitudes are essentially value judgments made about elements of the world around us--what is good or bad, valuable or worthless. Attitudes most often come out when a character is confronted with something new, unusual or unexpected. The fireworks display is awesome or lame; the new teacher is nice or mean or airheaded or so cool; the flat tire is infuriating or just typical of my hopeless life. Look back at my first examples and you'll see strong expressions of attitudes. Danielle's grandfather finds fault with how her mother grieves. Dani herself is exasperated with her aunt's attempts to be cheerful. Dani's Uncle appreciates what he sees as her patient forbearance of his child, who he judges as repetitive.

Diction and associations will play into how attitudes are expressed, but by golly, all characters should have them. A character that never expresses an attitude will come off as emotionless, or perhaps on the autism spectrum. He’ll see fireworks and say “chemical explosions are causing light effects in the sky.”

Getting to know your characters beyond just age and occupation will help you develop distinct voices that engage readers and make your story come alive.

Which elements of voice come most easily to you? How might research help you create more distinctive voices for your characters?

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Laurel Garver is the author of Never Gone, a novel about grief, faith and finding love when all seems lost. A word nerd, Indie film enthusiast and incurable Anglophile, she lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter.

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Writing Voice: Getting Through the Squeaky Stage

Yesterday, I was discussing voice with a writing friend. She’s just begun a new novel and was anxious because she didn’t have the voice down. I reminded her of my favorite quote about first drafts, “A first draft is a celebration of everything that can go wrong on a page.”

But then, we began to discuss voice in more depth. She mentioned that when she writes short stories, the voice is always there at the beginning. And as I thought about it, I realized that when I write shorts, I always start with a voice. But when I write a novel, I never start with a full-formed voice (although with sequels it’s easier because the voice is already established).

Then the ten thousand dollar question is “Why.” What’s the difference? I think because a short story is so focused around the narrative voice, everything (plot, character, etc.) flows from that voice.

But novels are altogether different. Even the simplest novel, is a series of “clashes” between character, plot, tone, and voice. Not only are the characters refined as they bump up against each other, but the characters are sharpened by the plot. And the plot is honed by the tone and voice, which in turn influence the characters. And not until you get all of these ingredients into the cauldron of the novel, does the magic elixir of voice finally rise to the top.

I’m not saying that there isn’t some sort of voice at the beginning. I think you do start with an immature voice—you have to. After all, the voice helps to control where the story goes. But I think when you start a novel with a “little boy’s voice.” It’s squeaky and cute, not what you want to end up with, but it communicates and sets the arc of the story.

As the novel matures through revision, the voice changes. It takes on nuance and inflection. It deepens, much like the little boy whose voice goes through puberty to become a wide ranging tenor or rumbles in a bass profundo.

What about you, writers? Is this your experience of voice? Or do voices come to you fully formed and mature? (If so, I’m really, really jealous.)

Say It Ain't So

Lately, I’ve been getting lots of nudges about my sequel. Usually, the nudges involve throat clearing, pleasant smiles, and words like “So is the sequel almost done?” Those sweet questions encourage me on so many levels. One, it means you liked the first book. (Yay!) And two, it means you’re eager to read the second. (WooHoo!) The nudges help me finish the book when all I want to do is hit my head against a table or throw darts at the manuscript.

But as a reader, I’m sure you can’t imagine what’s taking so long! After all, I finished the first draft a long time ago. The only thing that’s left to do is editing. So here’s a peak behind the curtain at the three stages of editing.

Stage One: Substantive Editing (Also known as Rewriting)

After I finish the first draft and celebrate, I start editing everything that I know is wrong with the novel. Plot holes, increasing/decreasing the roles of certain characters, etc. A lot of writers, me included, leave notes for themselves in the first drafts. Stuff like: “This is horrible, fix it later.” “What happened to character X—he hasn’t shown up in six chapters?” “Set the groundwork for this plot twist in an earlier chapter.” “Does this even make sense?” So all that gets fixed first.

Once the major things are fixed, I work on voice. Making sure that each character’s speech and actions makes sense. Miranda’s words and actions can’t sound like Mark’s. In first drafts, I’m always tempted to use words that I like. But if they aren’t words that Mark would use, they have to change. Then, I check narrative voice (the voice that I choose to tell the story in) and work on consistency and tone.

After I’ve finished all of this, I send the novel to my beta readers. These sainted people are my writing friends who scour the text looking for all the big things that are wrong. This means several sets of experienced eyes are reading the text for plot holes, believability, etc. And guess what? One of my betas found a big issue. Something I couldn’t believe I’d overlooked. Thankfully, even though it was substantial (I was kicking myself that I missed it), it was contained. So I didn’t have to go through the entire text changing things. The problem was limited to a few chapters at the end, and a week of furious rewriting fixed the problem. End of stage one. Sort of.

Stage Two: Line Edits (also called copy edits)

I give my bright and shiny manuscript to my copy editor, who whips out her red pen. Gleefully. (Okay, she probably isn’t gleeful, but it seems that way to me as I hand her my baby.) She looks for smaller things—awkward phrasing, poor word choice, grammar, etc. And those are the only things she’s supposed to find. But they aren’t. She finds something more substantive.

My response? NO!! She must seriously be wrong. I finished the Sub Edits. I know that I if I have to do any more of those, I am going to die.

After I treat myself to a few consoling Haribo raspberries (the European kind that are tangy and not too sweet), I ponder the fact that the line editor might be right. She’s probably wrong, of course. But I should check up on the issue. So I email one of my betas and ask about the issue. Beta agrees with line editor! No! Say it ain’t so. Please!

Don’t get me wrong. I love this story. My betas love the story, even better than the first book. But I’m so tired of it. I want to move on to the shiny new story that’s seductively calling to me in my mind.

So this is where I am. The line edits are 2/3s done. And I’ve hit a snag. Honestly, it’s not that big. And it’s contained, so it should be an easy fix. It’s just that I hoped to be done with line edits by the end of the week. Sigh.

Now I’m sitting with my pages and my gummi raspberries, trying to decide where to begin.

After this, the final stage is proofreading. That’s its own special torture where I sit with the Chicago Manual of Style and obsessively look up things that probably don’t really matter. I’m trying really hard not to think about that. Time for more raspberries.