Author Voice, part four

*This is part four in a series. View parts one, two, and three. 

If you've been following this series, are you understanding author voice a bit more? Author voice is the distinct manner in which a novelist creates sentences and story.

I'd like to share a final author voice, one I've recently discovered.

Dandelion Summer by Lisa Wingate:

A single drop of water changes the ocean. A noted colleague of mine once asserted this as we dawdled over lunch at a restaurant near Cape Canaveral. “How can it not?” he demanded. “Some amount of matter is displaced. There’s transference of energy. Nothing is as it was before.” We were young then, certain of our own importance. Convinced that our presence in the world, that our work, was destined to change it. 

From the above sample, is there little doubt that this book is about relationships?

Here are some more tips to developing your author voice:

1. Allow yourself to be lousy—while you’re finding your voice, some of what you write may very well stink. That’s Okay. It’s all part of the process.

2. Write honestly and allow your passion to shine through. When you write from your personal feelings, your voice will be natural. Write as if you were talking to a friend.

3. Care about your subject matter. If you don’t care what you’re writing about, you’ll never discover your true voice.

4. Play games—Select a picture from a magazine, billboard, or advertisement, and write a one-line sentence about what is going on. Or go through old photo albums and write a short story about one of your favorite pictures.

In Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Brown and King say, “In order to write with a mature voice, you have to mature first.”

Be passionate with your ideas and put your feelings into your writing. Get emotional, but don’t tell your reader how you feel, show him/her.

What is your opinion? Don’t be afraid to share. Opinions give us our voice.

I encourage you to practice your craft, pursue your voice, and perfect your style. And don’t forget, have fun writing your story!

Author Voice, part three

*This is part three in a series. View parts one and two. 

I hope you’re enjoying the different samples of author voice we're including in this series. I’ve got a few more distinctive voices to share with you.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

There is a lonliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind—wrapped tight like a skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that make the sound of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.

I think you'll agree that Ms. Morrison definitely has her own distinctive voice. I love to get lost in her beautiful, lyrical style.

Tangerine by Marilynn Griffith

Fall came to New York like a Good Samaritan, blanketing the city with a generous wind. Clouds floated tall and wide, majestic like a grown man a good suit. Jean Guerra lent her short hair to the cold, giving the wind a place to leave some goodness. Instead, the air blew past her face a brushed her lips like a kiss from God.

One thing I love about Marilynn Griffith's novels is her use of sensory elements. Her novel Made of Honor had so many delightful references to fragrance that I had to email her one day after I was in a soap and fragrance store in Aspen to tell her that it made me think of her novel.

Here are a few tips on how you can develop your unique voice:

1. Read, read, read—fiction, non-fiction, in your genre, out of your genre.

2. Write, write, write—don’t limit yourself to one particular type or genre of writing. Experiment. Write letters, blogs, dreams, and greeting cards

3. Copy—sit down and copy the voice of an author you admire or whose work is distinctive. You will always put your own spin on the style, incorporating your worldview and your own tone of language.

4. Limit yourself—write only 140-character thoughts. Twitter challenges you to write your thoughts in only 140 characters, you must be able to distill the essence of what you’re communicating. It helps you to boil down your language to the most meaningful idea.

Visit my blog again onThursday for the rest of the list.

Understanding Author Voice, part two

*This is part two in a series. View part one.

Earlier we started discussing author voice, which is the distinct manner in which a novelist creates sentences and story.

In other words, your voice is your exclusive worldview: your beliefs, your fears, your attitudes, your dreams, the way you react to situations.

All of this means that you have to put yourself on your page. This is what is known as developing your voice. Voice isn't merely style. Style would be easy by comparison. Style is watching your use of adjectives and doing a few flashy things with alliteration or simile. Style without voice is flat. Voice is style, plus personal observations, plus passion, plus belief, plus desire. Voice is revealing yourself on the page, and it can be a powerful, frightening experience.

Yesterday we looked at two samples of writing, today there are two more “voices” to listen to:

Women's Intuition by Lisa Samson

FLANNERY DESERVES TO KNOW THE TRUTH about her father. One day I'm going to have to tell her. But not tonight. I am worn out.

It's a tiredness of years.

You know how those ladies' magazines pretend women can do it all and still appear fresh as a sweet-smelling daisy by a clear Swiss spring? Wearing cute loafers, tweed miniskirts, and a camel cashmere twinset, they deposit their kids at soccer in sleek silver cars, green vans with television screens, or gargantuan white SUVs. Drive-through windows constitute meal planning. They see the best doctors because they don't mind going across town. Malls and boutiques bark their clothing on glitzy, stylistic posters. They instantly rid themselves of the nasty Flair inserts in the Valu-Pak coupon collections I look forward to each month. And they throw them into a recycling bin they bought from some woodsy, catalog-driven company.

They adroitly embroider their own existence with the silk threads of others' lives as though the fabric of their day-to-day duties was spun of gossamer and not the heavy mail plates that make up mine.

Was I ever like that?

Once upon a time, I suppose.

Magdalene by Angela Hunt

SILENCE, AS HEAVY AS DOOM, wraps itself around me as two guards lead me into the lower-level judgment hall. When I fold my hands, the chink of my chains disturbs the quiet.

My judge, Flavius Gemellus, senior centurion of the Cohors Secunda halica Civum Romanorum, looks up from the rolls of parchment on his desk, his eyes narrow. I don't blame him for being annoyed. I am not a Roman citizen, so I have no right to a trial. Besides, I have already confessed and am ready to die.

Do you see a big difference between Angela Hunt’s and Lisa Samson’s excerpts? What do you hear that’s very different?

Can you see the difference in style, personal observations, author’s passions and beliefs in these two samples? Can you glimpse into their worldviews through their voice? I think so. Also, both authors wrote in first person, yet Lisa’s is introspective, and Angela’s character is evaluating her surroundings. Both authors have a very distinctive voice.

Be sure to come back next Tuesday. I’ve got some more wonderful samples to examine and some tips on developing your voice.

Author Voice

A lot of time is spent in writing circles discussing author voice. What is it? How do you perfect it?

According to bestselling author Brandilyn Collins, author voice is the distinct manner in which a novelist creates sentences and story.

Let’s look at some passages from books by two authors and “listen” to a few different voices and what they say to us.

Coming Home by Rosamund Pilcher:

The Porthkerris Council School stood half-way up the steep hill which climbed from the heart of the little town to the empty moors which lay beyond. It was a solid Victorian edifice, built of granite blocks, and had three entrances, marked Boys, Girls, and Infants, a legacy from the days when segregation of the sexes was mandatory. It was surrounded by a Tarmac playground and a tall wrought-iron fence, and presented a fairly forbidding face to the world. But on this late afternoon in December, it stood fairly ablaze with light, and from its open doors streamed a flood of excited children, laden with boot-bags, book-bags, balloons on strings, and small paper bags filled with sweets. They emerged in small groups, jostling and giggling and uttering shrieks of cheerful abuse at each other, before finally dispersing and setting off for home.

What does this author’s voice say to us? Ms. Pilcher invites us into a fictional setting with rich detail but without lingering on the minutia that might bog down the story. (Confession time, she’s one of my all-time favorite authors.) She seems affectionate in describing this scene and wanting us to see the excited children as they head on home. I imagine that I’m sitting in a toasty kitchen, sipping tea while a dear friend tells me a good story.

Here’s another sample:

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote:
The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.

Capote’s description of Holcomb is almost clinical in style. His voice colors his description of the setting, especially when talks about the local accent. He seems to show no special affection for the area, yet he’s invited us to Holcomb to journey with him as he investigates the story behind a family murdered. His is such a different voice than Pilcher’s, don’t you think?

I have good news and bad news for you today.

The good news is that no one, no other writer, speaker, or thinker can steal your voice. Your voice is what publishers will buy. Your voice is the only product readers can’t get anywhere else.

The bad news is that no one can teach you how to create your voice.

But, I have more good news—with practice, you can discover and develop your voice.
Join me again tomorrow when we look at a few more authors’ voices and continue this discussion.

But, tell me—have you found your author voice?

*This is part one of a four-part series on author voice. Check back on Thursday for part two.