Novel Mechanics: Voice

Ah, voice. The elusive goal of all newbie writers.

But what the heck is it? And how does one find their voice?

Voice is the ability to convey the unique way that you see the world to your readers. It is the style, the themes, the passion and personal observations that you bring to your writing. Voice is the overarching concept that encompasses the tone that you use and the messages you send.

Clear as mud, right?

Well hopefully the steps you can take it find or improve your voice are clearer. Remember that voice takes time, patience and practice to formulate. 

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1. Write with purpose

This takes three forms: knowing yourself, your message, and knowing your tone.

Know yourself:
Finding something that you are passionate in can be really easy or leave you stroking your chin for hours.
How do you go about discovering what you are passionate about? Below is a few points that you can try to help you find what matters most to you:

• Read - a lot (in different genres and people with different views to yours, you'll find that there are themes and ideas that draw you in more than others)
• ​Ask yourself:
  • What do I value most? Why?
  • What type of people do I value most?
  • If I could change one thing about the world what would it be?
  • How do my beliefs shape who I am?
  • What do you spend most of your time thinking/talking/learning about?
  • What makes you angry for days on end?
  • What actions/views are truly unforgivable to me? Why?
• Challenge your perceptions: Write from the perspective of someone who believes the opposite to you (and with good reason)

Know your message:
When you know what you are passionate about, you can begin to look at what message. What do I want to say about my passion? To make a message it needs to be more than just - oh look, here is something I feel strongly about - the message needs to provoke a question and challenge/reinforce your readers current ideas about that passion. Below are a few ideas about how you can craft a message:

• How my passion conflicts with society
• How my passion can overcome conflict
• Why my passion is important
• Why my passion is still relevant
• What the world be like without my passion
• What does it mean to have my passion
• Who opposes to my passion
• Who sacrifices to keep my passion

Your message becomes a theme when you embed it, discretely, in your novel. You can be show your theme through a number of different ways, here are a few: 

• Character (make the protagonist's motivation line up with your theme, make their goal something that you feel strongly about, give them a backstory that shows the dangers of having/lacking your passion)
• Conflict (have your antagonist employ/remove the thing you are passionate about in their reign of terror, make them be passionate about the opposite of what you believe, make your antagonist embody the negative aspects of your passion)
• Symbols and motifs (show the significance of your passion through a seemingly unrelated symbol [e.g. images of birds taking flight and flying = freedom], have the world interact with the symbol [butterfly crushed by antagonist = loss of innocence], choose a symbol that is important to the character and have it relate to the passion)

Know your tone: 
When you have your message nailed down, you can look at what tone suits the how you express your theme. The tone that you choose can have a huge impact on how well your message is received, as well as how clear your voice appears in your novel. Here are some ways to show tone in your writing.

• Go beyond the superficial with your character's actions ("I need this job." says much less than "I need this job, I have to get out of this town." The second adds a layer of depth to the action, adds mood to the action/scene)
• Adjectives and verb choice are your friends ("He cut my finger with the knife" is very different to "He hacked my finger with the knife" and it sets the tone of the action, the motives and what you are trying to convey through the scene.)
• Using nature and setting to convey mood (You can easily create a mood for the setting, getting your reader thinking about deeper meanings and motivations of what is happening in the scene. "The young girl skipped into the neglected house" and "The young girl skipped into the decrepit house" paints a very different picture - I know which girl I would be wary about trusting.)​

2. Improve your craft

I know, this one is no one's favorite. But as it is what we are hoping to be paid to do - we should at least try to be good at it. Plus, less editing = less money, I'm always a fan of saving money when I can.

And unfortunately, often a weak or poor voice comes from the inability to structure a sentence or create a clean paragraph (*raises hand* I am so guilty of this). 

Now I hate this stuff so I am going to link some websites that I found helpful:

Grammar
University of Bristol

Cliches
The Writing Center - UNC

Past vs Present
The Write Practice

Passive vs Active
American Journal Experts

This stuff IS important - often good writing will trump a clever or interesting voice. So practice and learn.

3. Develop your voice through editing

Ergh! What am I doing - another evil step. 

​Yep. Evil but necessary.

Editing allows you to discover what you do well and what you do poorly. It forces you to examine the way you write and to refine it and polish it until it sparkles. Taking the time (and it will be a lot) to edit your work makes you a better writer. It sounds contradictory but it forces you to apply the things you know about the craft of writing. It takes out the garbage and leaves behind the essence of your writing - your voice. And the more you apply the rules and standards of writing, the better you will get at it. Also, it makes you more likely to avoid the same mistakes in your first draft for any later books. 

I like to work from big picture to small picture. The idea is to look over the novel as a big picture, examine it for tension, plot holes and overall pace. Then work on the smaller elements that take up progressively less space in your novel. The last part is checking punctuation and spelling errors.

This is an overview of the editing steps I use:

1. Plot and structure
2. Characters and development 
3. Point of view and tense
4. Scene by scene
5. Imagery
6. Prose​
7. Proofreading

I will be doing an in depth post about this subject on a later date.

DISCLAIMER: PLEASE DO NOT THINK THAT YOU CAN PUBLISH WITHOUT PROFESSIONAL EDITING - THIS STEP IS ABOUT LEARNING AND IMPROVING - YOU STILL NEED A PROFESSIONAL EDIT. SERIOUSLY, JUST HIRE SOMEONE.

4. Experiment with point of view

As writers we tend to get stuck in this idea of what we SHOULD be writing.

"YA/NA is first person" or "Fantasy is third person".

We have this idea, usually because of our reading preferences, of what our writing should look like and sound like. The thing is, if we only write in one POV we might be missing out on discovering the POV that works best for us. You would be hard pressed to find a reader that picks up a book and puts it down with a scowl, saying: "Yuck, first person."

A fun way to experiment with POV is creating pieces of writing from other characters perspectives; I wrote about some activities to try when you have writer's block (see here). In these smaller pieces you can experiment with what works for your style of writing.

Another key to voice is understanding what the pros and cons of each POV offer. This will help you choose one that suits the message you are trying to share.

First Person  (Me, I, my)
​This style plonks you in the character's head, the reader experiences the life of the character, walking in their shoes.

Pro

• ​​The biggest advantage is that we get to see and feel everything that the character does; there is a sense of intimacy and a deeper emotional connection
• The intimacy encourages readers to react the same way as the character - they are invested in the feelings of the character
• In life we only see through one perspective, so this POV adds a sense of realism to your piece
  
• It can feel more natural to write in this POV
  
• The character's voice is more clear, distinct. We are experiencing everything through their filters, their thoughts

Con

• ​Head hopping - jumping between character perspectives can be confusing and at times exhausting
• Encourages too much introspection - invites the author to tell too often rather than show, throws out the balance of the two
• Can limit the types of characters you write (can't be so normal that they are boring - can't be so crazy that the reader can't relate)
• Describing your character can be tricky without resorting to the "looking in the mirror" scene that is so hated by readers and writers
• Your reader only knows what your character does - you can't explain juicy details if your character doesn't know this information
• Character's viewpoint of the world is incredibly subjective (can make them an unreliable narrator)
• Assumption of survival when in first person

Explores the question of: Persona vs Identity

• What of myself do I reveal to the world?
• What do I conceal?

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​Second Person (You, your, yours)
In this style the reader is a character in the novel. It is usually written in present tense. Common uses of this POV is in choose your own adventure novels.

Pro

• The reader has control and ownership of the actions
• Allows for creativity in endings (you can have multiple)
• Personalized reading for each person - they choose what makes them happy
• Creates tension as the reader is responsible for the outcome of their character.
• Re-readability (many options means ability to re-read and get a different outcome

Con

• ​Can limit your ability to traditionally publish
• Can limit your market (Choose your own adventure is seen as a mostly child-centric genre)
• Can be difficult to write
• Depth may not be as easy to acchieve
• Offers different options to the reader (can be difficult to plot and write)

Explores the question of: Identity vs Construction

• How does you compare to I?

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​Third Person (He, she, they)
This POV has the narrator describe the events as they unfold. Usually written in the past tense, this POV can be written in Limited (knowledge is limited to what the character knows/think/feels) or Omniscient (the narrator knows everything, even things the characters don't). 

Pro

• This POV is the one that most readers are comfortable with. A lot stories are written this way. 
• More objective and reliable narrator
• Changing to a different character's thoughts or actions is less confusing and rarely feels like head hopping
• ​Distance from the character can allow the narrator to show a broader scope of the story, you can show things without the protagonist being there
• Showing is easier to do in this POV
• You can share secrets and tid-bits with the reader that the protagonist doesn't know
• Freedom to include characters that are not known by your protagonist - its less jarring in third person
  
• Builds more tension - you don't know who will survive because the POV can jump to any character​

Con

• Emotionally distances the reader from the character​ - feels more like watching the events rather than living them
• Thoughts and emotions can be more difficult to convey because you aren't in the character's head.
  
• Info dumps/exposition are far too tempting to write in this POV
  
• If you include too many character POVs it can be confusing tot the reader and they may not connect with all the POV characters
  
• Telling your readers too much that the protagonist doesn't know can weaken the tension - the reader knows they will fix the solution, or that there is a solution
• Keeping your POV consistent throughout the scenes can be challenging when writing in limited third person - you may be tempted to include information that your character doesn't know, or can't see/hear

Explores the question of: Internal needs vs External needs

• Is what I see the same as others? (Multiple third person)
• How do internal needs and conflicts drive an external action? (Singular third person)
• Is there an objective reality apart from our own interpretations? (Objective third person)
• How do we interact and why? (Classic Omniscient third person)
• How do the needs for freedom conflict for our need for society? (Contemporary Omniscient third person)

5. Befriend the inner critic

The most consistent way of squashing your voice is to doubt your writing - censor it. And the little voice in your head is most often the culprit. Jerk.

Unfortunately, this is one of the hardest steps. But instead of seeing this inner dialogue as a villain or something that needs to be stopped, we need to befriend it and acknowledge that it is trying to say something that will help us. It just doesn't know how it express itself properly. Resetting the way that your inner critic talks to you and how you respond is difficult and can take some time and work. It will feel like it's not working - don't give up, it is working, just give it time.

Below is some steps that might help calm the nasty critic:

1. Make the conversation more specific:
Change the way your inner critic talks about your writing. Too often it will tell us "Your writing sucks" or "You can't write". It gives us these blanket statements that kill our enthusiasm, that hurt rather than help. Often these comments come at a moment when - let's be honest - your writing might not be that great. And that's why it hurts so much. 
But instead of telling it to shut up, ask it "why?". Get it to be specific. Change "This sucks" to "This paragraph doesn't flow" or "The dialogue isn't natural". These changes in phrasing, move the critiques from defeating stabs to the heart into something that you can use, something that is actually helpful.
Next time your critic slams you with a blanket statement, force it to point out what the actual problem is.

2. Make a note of what it is saying and keep going:
Like all good relationships its give and take. Your critic is only going to be helpful if you listen to it. But usually you want to keep writing, you don't want to stop to make changes. So, compromise, make a note (jot it on a sticky note, make a highlighted comment on your document, or just scribble it down in a margin) and keep going. It will keep you writing and your inner critic will be happy. 

3. Work on what it is telling you:
Nobody likes to offer help that isn't listened to. Your critic will keep bashing you with horrible corrections until you fix it. And if your critic is anything like mine, it gets meaner the longer you put off fixing the problem. Take note of the commonalities of the critic's message. Then work on it. Research the problem, read books/blogs on how to improve your craft, and make an effort to improve whatever is causing the problem. When it is resolved your inner critic should shut up about it - although it will probably find something new to complain about. Like I said: jerk.

Once you befriend your inner critic you will be able to write how you want to; your voice will become stronger and clearer because its no longer being drowned out with fear and doubt.

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I hope you enjoyed the post.

Let me know what you think.

Until next time: don't push fear away, embrace it, it's the part of yourself that has something to say.