Voice Vs. Writing Style

(This post was originally written by me for my writing group blog.) 

Since I started getting serious about writing, I've done a lot of research about the various elements of fiction writing, and about what agents and publishers are looking for, and one specific nugget has stuck out: It's all about the voice.

For three years I've read various agents - probably everyone that writes a blog - tout how important voice it. If you've got it, almost nothing else matters. They can fix plot problems. They can deal with weak characters. But voice... well, either you have it or you don't. And if you've got it, you're golden.

The problem I stumbled over time and time again was trying to figure out what voice was. What was this thing I needed to have that would snag me an agent and get my book published? And why was it such an indefinable, vague thing that no one could tell me what it was? After hemming and hawing over post after post, most agents ended up with the incredibly not helpful: "We just know it when we see it."

Lately, though, I've seen more and more trying to define it, and it usually goes something like this: "It's what makes you sound like you. It's how you pick up a Hemingway and know it's Hemingway, or a Grisham and know it's Grisham. It's your personality. "

In the humblest of ways, I'd like to say that's wrong. That isn't voice. That's writing style. A person's writing style - the words they tend towards using, the length of their sentences, their use of punctuation, the casualness or formality with which they approach writing – is something that usually remains somewhat consistent once a writer finds his groove. If a writer stays within a certain genre, the writing style can be fairly recognizable from book to book.

But the voice... the voice should reflect the story, the characters, their mood and social standing and education, where they live and where they've come from. If a character is uneducated or mentally challenged, the way Perry Crandall is in Patricia Wood's LOTTERY, you expect the voice to reflect that. If the character is sad or rebellious or buoyant, the language an author uses will show that.

And that is something that changes from book to book, from character to character. A voice can change within a single book if the narrator changes. There's nothing more frustrating to a reader than reading a book with several main narrators that you need a notation at the top of every chapter to tell you who is speaking now.

When an agent says they love your voice in fiction, they aren't talking about the length of sentences or sentence structure; they aren't talking about the style that makes you sound like you. They are talking about what sounds like your characters. Not the characters themselves, but the way the writing reflects the characters. Which is why the stronger the character, the stronger the voice.

Very few readers are going to fall in love with you. They aren't going to rave at coffee shops with friends about the way your writing sounds like you. They're going to rave about your characters. And how they love them. And how they feel like they know them and want to spend time with them.

And isn't that the way it's suppose to be?

The Journey

I'm down to a mere hours now before my first big book signing, and although the book has been out a few months already, this feels like it's the biggest moment since I started this journey towards publication. There are about 75 people that I know will be coming, along with a whole host of others that I don't. There are confirmed 50 that are coming to the party tomorrow night, and still some up in the air (and some grounded, literally, in Europe by volcanic ash).

When I woke up this morning I started thinking about what a long road it's been, and how this all started. And how far it's come. My life is not the same as it was at the beginning, and not just because I've written a book.

Two and a half years ago I knew nothing about publishing. I'd nearly finished my first book, one which I'd started two years prior to that, began with a vague outline and strong characters and then ended up pantsing the rest with dubious results. But as I neared the end of writing, I began thinking, "What now?" How in the world do you go about getting published?

So I did what any eager writer does.... I googled. Specifically I think I googled, "How to get published."  The first entry that came up was something called a blog (I'd never heard of one before) written by someone named "Miss Snark."  I figured I'd skip over and mosey through it briefly, find my answer, and be on my way.

This is the moment I found the addictiveness of blogging. I think it's also where I learned what voice meant in the writing world. Not because Miss Snark wrote what it was, but because she had such a strong one.

I never got back to my google list. I spent the better part of three weeks staying up until two in the morning reading through every one of her archived posts, along with every one of the comments. If you want to get published, everything you need is there. If you don't want to get published, but you enjoy an enthralling diversion, she's good for that too.

Through her I learned about query letters and agents and revisions. I found Janet Reid, Jessica Faust, and Nathan Bransford, the blogging agents that would become my staples over the next year. When I started to submit, these are the first three I chose. Within three days all three would request my manuscript.

Those would also be my first three rejections.

Instead of pressing on, I stopped to look at what I'd written in light of what the agents said (mostly that it was too slow a start), and decided to rewrite the beginning. So I rewrote. Then I rewrote some more. Which necessitated rewriting some of the middle stuff. Then the beginning had to be changed again. Finally it all got so muddied and I couldn't tell if any of them were better or just different, and I put the book away.

Then I started on Some Kind of Normal. This one took me six months to write, mostly because my fabulous writing partner and fellow author Jen Blom challenged me to a word-a-thon. In the summer of 2008 we both finished. I waited a few weeks to let the book sit, take a vacation, have crit partners read it, and then started back in September with the revising. By the end of October 2008 I was ready to query.

Unfortunately, the publishing industry was imploding with the rest of the economy, and whole publishing houses were completely suspending acquisitions. Some agents, likewise, began to stop taking queries. It was a rough time to break into the industry, I reasoned that, like other agents said, a good book is still a good book, and it will sell no matter what the economy.

I sent out over 100 queries over the next five months. Every time a rejection came in, I sent another out. Unless an agent specifically said not to, I sent the first five pages with my query. I knew this might cut down on requests, since an agent would be able to get a feel for the voice and writing before requesting, but I reasoned that would be less disappointment down the line.  I had 15 or 16 fulls requested out of that, and a number of partials that turned into fulls.

There were some high hopes in there. I received some tremendous feedback. Nearly every agent said they liked the story and thought my writing was very good. Two said they weren't taking debut authors in this environment because no one would buy them. Many said they just didn't know how to market  it to an editor. One clearly didn't like the Southern voice, which stumped me a bit because I'd send the first five pages to get that hurdle out of the way.

I sent my last query in February of 2009. I was done. I still had a lot out and not responded to, but I was done with the highs and lows, and ready to move on. Over the next few months a few more requests trickled in, and the first week of June I got the rejection to my last outstanding full. I'd lie if I said I wasn't heartbroken.

I decided to take a break from writing. I'd take the summer off at the least.

Then, out of nowhere, an author wrote me and said his publisher had seen my pitch on a forum next to a comment of his, and they were very intrigued. They wanted me to send on a proposal package. I sent my synopsis, first 50 pages, and a market analysis, and days later they sent me a contract.

It wasn't easy going a path that diverged from the mighty Miss Snark's path. No agent. Small publisher.

I hemmed and hawed. I had long conversations with the owner of NorLights. I had long conversations with my father, who is a contract-specialist lawyer. I had long emails with an agent I've kept in touch with who was still very interested in representing me on a different project than Some Kind of Normal. I had long conversations with my husband, myself, and God. It wasn't a quick or easy decision.

What I learned in all this is that there are lots of ways to get published. There are lots of valid ways to get published. And no one should tell you there is only one right way, or only one legitimate way. And sometimes the path you choose is not the path that chooses you.

I now have a book that is sitting on bookstore shelves.  A book people who I don't know are buying and reading. I didn't pay to have the book edited, published or marketed, and I get royalties. I have a book that is being considered for a national book club, a book that has been read and endorsed by people high in the medical field as well as other authors. I have a book that has landed on the Amazon bestseller list with Jodi Picoult and Michael Crichton.

I have a book.

And sometimes, like today, after all this time, I marvel at that. The ups and downs, the depression and elation, the determination and the frustration....

I have a book.

It's been a heck of a journey.

I hope this is only the beginning.

The Ugly Word

My grandmother was something special. Petite, warm, gracious, a southern debutante in her day, and a fiery college English teacher who loved the way language worked.

I remember lots of things about my grandmother, but one of the things that I think of most often, especially as a writer, was her distaste of the word, "got."

It's ugly, she said. It's slang. It's unspecific. You can always find a better, more exact word.

If you think about it, it's true. There is always a better word you can use.

Unless your character wouldn't.

Trying to match the beauty of language and the voice of your book is a tricky thing. When my narrator was an uneducated southern gal, the idea of her saying, "I received the letter in the mail" was preposterous. How uppity! A woman who flings words like "y'all" and "ain't" (oh I think my grandma is rolling in her grave!), would NOT say "received." She'd say "got."

And now, I'm finding the same in my new WIP. That ugly word sits at the top of the paragraph like a zit on a forehead. It's either my grandmother's influence or my genetic make-up that makes me keep going back to it to see if I can't find a better word. A prettier word. A more specific word.

But every time I try, it sounds stuffy and very unlike the voice I'm trying to create.

Are there words you just can't get away from?

Demystifying Voice: My definitive definition

Nathan Bransford had a post yesterday in which he asked people to write in about their pet peeves in writing. The result? A comprehensive list of just about everything in writing.

At first, going through the comment section, I thought, I do this! My book has this! Oh no, it has this too!

After all, what book doesn't use the word, "said," use descriptive passages, narrative, short sentences, long sentences, adverbs. If you try to please everyone, you can't have either a surprise ending, or a predictable ending, can't set your book in New York or Seattle, have dreams, any real purpose in telling the story other than to just entertain, have religious or anti-religious themes (This from the same person... apparently any mention that faith might in any way play a part in someone's life, even if minutely, is off limits), include too much dialog or not enough dialog.

Are you getting my point?

Much ado has been made lately over an author's voice. I've written about it myself. Almost every agent who has a blog has written several posts about it. Writers write about it. It is tauted as the most important part of a submission. Yet no one can define it.

Well, I'm going to.

Voice is writing like you. Not trying to write like someone says you should. Not changing your setting because ten people are tired of books set in New York. Not cutting out every descriptive phrase. Not changing every "said" to something more creative like "replied" or "whispered" and then cutting them out altogether, and then putting the "said" back because, heck, at some point you've got to know who is doing the talking, right?

Voice is not writing a story and then changing it to make it the way everyone else says you should. Voice is saying, "This is the story, and I'll evaluate the critiques I get, and understand that for many of them, there is an opposite opinion and I'll decide if the changes are really right for me."

In my critique group I get the chance to read lots of stories by some really great writers, and then offer suggestions. Sometimes I find myself writing, "I'd change this to this," and then realize, I would, but they wouldn't. I could take everyone's writing and change it to sound like me, but what's the point of that? So I offer some suggestions, and then I am fine with whatever they decide to do. After all, it should be their voice shining through, not mine.

I think voice is strong when you can tell a writer is writing with confidence. That they know exactly the story they are telling, and are telling it the way it should be told, the way they hear it.

If you have kids it's likely you know of Arthur the aardvark, the adorable series of books and PBS shows by Marc Brown. There is one that illustrates this perfectly. It's called Arthur Writes A Story. Every author should read it. A third grade aardvark writes a story he absolutely loves, is passionate about. Then he submits it to his critique group - his sister and friends - who all suggest new and different things they would add or change, and what he ends up with is a mess no one likes at all because it makes no sense. When he changes it back to what he originally wrote, everyone suddenly likes it. Because his voice is his own.

So there you have it: the official demystifying of voice.

Go, write. Stop being scared that someone isn't going to like what you wrote. I'll tell you right now, there will always be someone who doesn't like what you write. But there will be people who do, too. The story plot could be anyone's, but how you tell it is yours. That's your voice.

God Is Calling Me To Get Back To Writing My Book and Quit Lurking Around the Blogging World (but will I listen??)

Either my attention span is getting shorter or there are a whole lot more blogs on my bookmarks list. I used to be able to hit them all every day, at first just lurking and eventually branching out a little to leave comments here and there.

Suddenly, I've had to prioritize. There are only three agent blogs I hit every day now, and three or four personal/writer ones. The rest I read when I get around to them, skimming the previous weeks to see if there is anything I can't do without.

Today I checked in on Rachelle Gardner's blog and found several really good posts.

One post is about voice. I'm beginning to think this is the "thing" for this year in writing. Everyone wants a great one. No one can define what it is. It can't be taught, but it's essential to a good book. Everyone seems to want to weigh in on it: agents, authors, publishers. Trying to grasp what it is is like trying to hold water in your fingers. It seems to slip away as soon as you think you've got it.

Rachelle also did a 100 word contest. With a twist: she gave a photo as a prompt. I didn't participate (obviously, as I wasn't on top of my blog reading enough to catch it in time), but it is really fun (maybe particularly because I didn't enter) to read the very creative entries, as well as what Rachelle thinks are outstanding.

My favorite, however, is one that may not even effect you, but was entirely funny and useful for me. It is called God Told Me To Write This Post. It touches on faith and writing, and how NOT to use that as your hook to get agents to notice you. She's been getting a lot of queries where people start with, "God told me to write this book." I was shocked to hear people actually use this line in a query.

I liked it particularly because I agree that God may call people to do things other than the obvious. He may really want you to write a particular story. But not necessarily call you to publish it. Why? Because the process of writing may be more important than the publication. The discipline, the insights, what we get out of writing, how others close to us are affected by us writing.... these may all be more important. This isn't to say we shouldn't get published, or try to anyway. Just that we shouldn't tell an agent God told us to. Which, I would think goes without saying.

(Rachelle is, by the way, an agent for WordServe Literary and reps mostly Christian authors, whether their books be overtly Christian or not. If you are a writer, even if not a Christian, she's worth the read. She is funny and snarky and sharp and deep, and she doesn't blog particularly to a Christian audience).

I really like Rachelle's blog. Everytime I stop by her blog I laugh, I think, I ponder, I come up with 50 things to blog about on my own, but never have time to. I think this is why she's not one of my regulars. She takes time. But even if it's only once a week or so, it's worth it.

Maybe God is calling me to get published by a Christian agent after all. Hmmmmm.... I might mention this if I query her...

To Write or Not To Write (today)

My writing is slowing down. I am reaching that point more often when I stare at the page and wonder what to write. It isn't writer's block. It isn't that I don't have something to write. It's that I could take the narration in several directions. It's that as I am putting the words down I think, "This is going to take a major overhaul." It's that, when looking back on some of the writing I did earlier that I thought was great, it is pretty stinky, and I am afraid of writing more of the same.

So the question I have for you, fellow authors, is this:

When you worry that what you are writing is going to require tons of rewriting and editing, let alone polishing, do you barrel through it, writing anyway, or do you stop and really think about what to write, getting much less if anything on the paper (or computer screen as it is)?

The fear is that if I stop, I will stop for too long, and I will lose the voice, and valuable time and if I don't, I will write stuff that will ruin the book in the long run.

Am I taking this all too seriously?

If You Have a Choice, Choose a Strong Voice

BookEnds has a guest post today about voice. Voice seems like that ever-elusive, hard to capture but easy to spot element that can absolutely sell a book. And the lack of which can sink a book, even one of strong character and plot. I recently read an article about how to write well takes a devotion much like method acting: become your character - get inside their skin.

My own opinion is this is easier with first person than with third person.

With the book I am writing, I deliberately chose first person to allow Bab's quirky side and very Texas roots come through. By taking her voice instead of my own, the story has come alive much more than my first book, in which the narrator is really a outside, objective, and frankly, a boring storyteller. Try as I might in that first work, I had the hardest time infusing personality into a narrator which was only a disembodied (and uninvolved) voice.

Editorial Anonymous addressed that this week in a great post on voice as well. She answered a question that I've been pondering a lot lately: Is it possible to have a really strong voice in the third-person narrator?

Her answer: absolutely! And to prove it, she gives excerpts from books with strong third-person voice. My favorite is this example from Ivy and Bean, one of my daughter's favorite book series:

It all began because Bean was playing a trick on her older sister. Bean's older sister was named Nancy. She was eleven. Nancy thought Bean was a pain and a pest. Bean thought Nancy was a booger-head.

That one word, booger-head, sets a tone, and essentially establishes the side the narrator will take. It places the narrator more at Bean's level of maturity instead of an adults. It is playful. It's exactly the kind of book a seven year old girl would love.

This post, especially with all the examples, focuses on how important word choice is. It's important to know whose side you are on as the narrator. Writing novels isn't like writing the news (or at least how the news is suppose to be: objective!). As writers, we can choose to identify with a character. Even if we do it as a third person narrator.

The most difficult part for me as a writer is to let go of who I am and to allow myself to be someone else. There are times I start to write things and stop because it is not something I would do or say. If it goes against my own beliefs, for example, or if it is harsh, or mean, or emphatically politically incorrect. Babs, for example, uses the word fat a lot. For people. To their faces. She isn't trying to be mean, but she just "calls 'em as she sees 'em."

Of course, that one only made me wince a teesy bit. There is a whole element of the story I am approaching now that deals with religion. I find myself not wanting to step on anyone's toes. Not offend anyone. And then I realize, this isn't about me. It isn't me saying these words; it isn't my history - my baggage. If I write it the way my life is, or the way I think, I completely lose Babs. Her voice disappears. And frankly, my own voice isn't that interesting.

For all the agents that write about queries, I wish there were equal amounts of posts on voice, because it seems to me that if you can capture that, the rest will fall into place. Including the query.

Do you think first person is easier than third person to create a strong voice?
What books do you know that have strong voices that drew you in immediately?