This chapter on Voice is one that I have always struggled with. I use it all the time but find it hard to define. I also fail to see it in my own writing, but I hope that I will figure it out over time.
CHAPTER 8
VOICE: THE SOUND OF A STORY
By Hardy Griffin
First of all, the voice of a piece is what makes it special, what sets it apart and makes it feel lived. On the other hand, voice isn't half as ephemeral as critics and academics make it sound. But most important, it's essential that your narrative voice sounds natural.
Simply put, voice is what readers "hear" in their heads when they're reading. Voice is the "sound" of the story.
The voice of a story is the voice of the narrator.
However, the best thing you, as a writer, can do is to concentrate on the narrator's voice of each individual piece of your fiction.
TYPES OF VOICE
More than anything else, your choice of voice is related to your point-of-view choice. Also, the sound of the second- or third-person narrator will be affected by the emotional distance with which this narrator is telling the story. A first-person narrator will naturally tell a story in a way that is close to the action because he or she is inside the story.
CONVERSATIONAL VOICE
The conversational voice feels a lot like the narrator is having a casual conversation with the reader.
The great thing about this voice is that you can let your first-person narrators go full throttle with their personalities. And they can pretty much tell the reader anything. Which can also be the downside. If you're not careful, it may sound like your narrator is blabbing out all her intimate details for no good reason.
INFORMAL VOICE
Informal voice is a fairly broad category that's not as casual as the conversational voice, but it also doesn't quite have the dressed-up feel of the more formal voices.
In the informal voice, the narrator uses casual, everyday language but isn't as personality-heavy as the conversational. This informality can also come through with a third-person narrator.
The main advantage of the informal voice is that it's middle of the road. If you're working in the first person but don't want the narrator's voice to dominate the story, this is a good pick. It's also a good pick if you're working in the third or second person but don't want to sound too much like a "writer."
FORMAL VOICE
This kind of dressed-up style can work in contemporary fiction too. If you're working on an epic story that, say, covers multiple generations, a number of locations, and a large cast of characters, the formal voice is a good bet because it lends itself to the story's "big screen" sweep.
The formal voice is perhaps most commonly found in the third-person POV, but it's not restricted to this.
Go for the formal voice if you want a certain high style in your prose, but make sure you're not just trying to sound like a writer and, if you're using this voice for a first-person narrator make sure it's someone more likely to write with a Montblanc pen than a chewed-up pencil.
YOUR TURN:
Two cars collide at an intersectioin. Write a brief passage describing this event from the POV of a teenager, then again from the POV of a socialite, then again from the POV of a cowboy type. You decide how these characters were involved in the collision. In all cases let the character be a first-person narrator. So pick the voice type--conversational, informal, or formal--That seems most appropriate for your narrator. Conversational may work well for the teenager, doesn't it? Whatever you come up with, each passage should sound different from the others because these are three very different characters.
CEREMONIAL VOICE
You wouldn't think that ceremonial voice would come into play very much in fiction, but many writers have used it to great effect.
Just as conversational is hardly ever in the third person, it's also quite rare to find a first-person ceremonial narrator. The advantage of the ceremonial voice is that it slows the reader down, giving a great sense of occasion and importance to the story. The disadvantage is that it can seem stilted and suppress the story's energy.
OTHER VOICES
The voice of a story can take on any conceivable "sound" as long as you have a reason for it. Literature is filled with unusual voices that don't fit anywhere on my clothesline of type.
A voice can become lyrical to the point of sounding a lot like pure poetry.
Such poetry can stretch even further into stream of consciousness, where the writer attempts to portray a character's thoughts in the random manner in which they play through the human mind.
STYLE
People often use the terms voice and style interchangeably, but there's an enormous difference from the writer's perspective. Style consists of various technical choices made by a writer, and the voice is the sum results of those choices. If voice is the velvet dress, style is the fabrics, threads, buttons, and such that create the garment.
The dirty truth is that a piece's voice is created by the most elemental tools in writing--namely, what words you pick, how you string them together in a sentence, and how you mix and match your sentences to form paragraphs.
WORDS
To see how deeply word choice, often known as diction, affects voice, compare two example of first-person narrators commenting on similar subjects.
Choosing the right words basically boils down to this: know your narrator and what sorts of words this person is inclined to use and make sure your word choices are working with the general type of voice that you have chosen. But don't worry about it too much as you're writing always go back and take out any incongruous fellas that sneak in
SENTENCES
Words alone don't create the voice; how they're thrown together into a sentence is what really gives writing its flow. How you place words in a sentence is the most important stylistic choice you'll make.
A sentence is just a new thought.
But your choices with sentences come down to two basic things: sentence length, and the structure of the sentence, which is often called syntax.
Whether you lean toward short or long sentences as a rule, you always want to make sure that you vary your sentence lengths once in a while. If all your sentences are exactly the same length, your reader will get bored pretty quickly.
Working together, sentence length and syntax often create a rhythm, and you can manipulate this rhythm to great effect.
PARAGRAPHS
The length of your paragraphs also has a big influence on voice. As with sentences, you want to vary the length of your paragraphs to prevent a sense of stagnation or predictability. But beyond that, you can manipulate the feel of your voice by leaning toward long, winding paragraphs or short, snappy ones or somewhere in between.
Generally a new paragraph signals a shift in thought, either major or minor, or a jump in time or space. But there is a lot of room for interpretation on when you want to make these paragraph shifts.
You shouldn't be afraid of using short or even one-line paragraphs.
Another use of paragraph breaks is to separate narration from dialogue. This shifting between narration and dialogue also offers an interesting energy to a story's voice because the narration and dialogue often have different levels of language from each other. Either the language of the narration is more formal than the dialogue or vice versa.
CONSISTENCY
In addition to being determined from words, sentences, and paragraphs, voice is a result of every type of choice made in a work of fiction, sticking its dexterous fingers in every slice of the larger craft-element pie.
All the elements of writing must coalesce into a unified voice.
The key is consistency.
FINDING YOUR VOICE
Bad style often comes when a writer is trying too hard to imitate this style of other writers. You can and should admire and study the words of other writers, but if you find yourself writing in the voice of Charles Dickens or John Cheever or Toni Morrison, you're in danger of sounding like one of those phonies that Holden Caulfield fears so much. Those folks aren't you and their narrators aren't your narrators.
Your own natural voice will come from regular writing practice, whether it's in writing stories or writing in your journal or doing the exercises in this book. The more you write, the more your own voice will emerge because you'll grow more confident and you won't continuously pause to edit every word.
YOUR TURN:
Write a letter to someone you know well. Not a short e-mail note but a longish letter where you really talk about something. Don't worry about voice or style or anything else. Just write the letter. Then...when you're done, analyze the voice and style of the letter. Chances are it will be a good reflection of your natural voice, which may be similar to a storytelling voice you choose to use in your fiction. If you're so inclined, go ahead and send the letter. If you get a response, you can analyze that person's voice.
You can also find the voice of a story by listening to the story's narrator. If you're using a first-person narrator, look at all the choices you have made about that character and get a sense for how this person would tell his or her story, whether the character's illiterate, like Huck, or pretentious, like Humbert. If you're working with a third-person narrator, figure out what this narrator should sound like by tailoring the voice to the characters, story, POV choice, setting, and how intimate your narrator is with both the reader and what's happening in the story.
But again, dont let your details hold you back. If you have a plot or character burning in your mind, but you're agonizing about the voice for the piece, stop worrying and just write the the story.
When you've finished a first draft, then you can think about the voice a bit more. Go back and check to see if the voice wavers in its general level of personality and formality. Pay attention to the way your words, sentences, and paragraphs are contributing to, or detracting from, the voice. If the voice sounds terribly unnatural or ill-suited to the story, try changing it to something that's more familiar to you or something in which your story fits more comfortably. Just as you should experiment with different POVs for a story, it's not a bad idea to do the same with voice
At some point, you may get bolder about modifying the style to fit the story.
On the other hand, you can only allow voice to guide you at the outset. If you're starting a piece but no plot or subject comes to mind, start writing from the perspective of someone who has a very distinctive way of speaking and thinking, and see where that voice will take you.
Last of all, you should always test your voice with a real voice. After a draft or two, you should read the whole piece from start to finish aloud, letting your actual speaking voice merge with the voic of the writing. See if the sound of the piece fits with the voice you wanted. Perhaps you could persuade someone to read the story aloud to you so you can simply listen to the voice. Either way, you should mark down places where the voice feels particularly natural and where it feels strained. Soon enough, you'll be able to spot the voice hiccups right away and wash them away with a glass of water.
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