The Author's Voice

What I'm reading: Blue Heaven, by C.J. Box

A reminder. I'm giving away e-books for a limited time. If you want one, don't delay. There's a link to the post in the Deals & Steals tab (or scroll down to Sunday's post). And, if I don't respond immediately, it's because I'm out of town for a couple of days. Be patient; I promise to honor all requests.

While at a recent writing seminar, I met several people who had attended the presentation I gave for a local book club. One of them said after hearing me speak, she read one of my books. Her comment was, "You write the same way you talk."

And I think that sums up my author's "voice."

I've discussed voice before, and since Hubster and I are taking off for our "official" anniversary celebration today, I'm going to repeat some points from other posts I've done on voice several years ago.

From what I understand, voice develops as an author writes. I judge the growth of my voice with the increasing ease of writing narrative. Not dialogue, because that is someone else's voice on the page—the character's.

Cowboys don't talk like artists, who don't talk like sailors, who don't talk like politicians. And men don't talk like women, no matter what job each has. When I write my male characters' dialogue, I always go back and cut it down by at least 25%.

But all the other words, the way the sentences are put together, how the paragraphs break—that's the author. And that's where the intangibles lie. When I was starting, and I'd enter contests, I'd get very disparate feedback from judges. Another author told me it meant I had a strong voice, which might or might not appeal to a reader.

Get Off The Page

Normally, I eschew too much self promotion. But because this is my blog and I get to make the rules, here’s a review snip from Long and Short Reviews for NOWHERE TO HIDE (But don't worry--we'll get to writing in this post. Promise.)

Terry Odell creates characters that the reader can empathize with and cheer on as they cope with overwhelming challenges. She also writes a love scene that makes one apt to agree with Colleen that “sex rocks”. Her writing style is so smooth that she seems to disappear and the characters come alive so the reader is in the moment with what is going on.

Nowhere to Hide captivates and keeps one turning pages.

But, since it wouldn’t be right to spend the whole blog talking about a nice review, let’s look at it from the author’s standpoint.

Anyone care to gander a guess at what line in the review makes me the happiest?

Lizards, Turkey and Voice

Thanks to Jessica for sharing her experiences and reminding us that although things might be different, there's an underlying sameness to the basics of our lives.


A while back, fellow author Patricia Stoltey mentioned seeing some cow street art in Colorado. I was reminded of a LizArt project here in Orlando some years ago, in which artists created sculptures using basic lizard "templates."

As I Googled my way to digging up what I could find on the LizArt project (not knowing its name slowed me down a bit), I couldn't help but think about how this relates to writing. After all, for a writer, everything relates to writing.



There are writers who refuse to divulge anything about a project until it's published. I've read and heard comments from writers who won't enter contests because they're convinced the judges will steal their ideas.

I remember the first "brilliant" scene I created for my first manuscript. This was years ago, and cell phones weren't commonplace. How clever, I thought, as I wrote the following:

More on Voice

What I'm reading: How to Abduct a Highland Lord, by Karen Hawkins.

Thanks so much to Neil Plakcy for his insights into voice yesterday. The subtleties and nuances of writing, those 'you can't teach it' intangibles are the things that we're always striving to improve in our own writing.

And speaking of writing. I'm finally back into a semblance of the pre-holiday routine. One thing I noticed—when I actually applied fingers to keyboard, my anxiety level dropped markedly. Even though I'm still not sure exactly how I want to get through the "and all hell breaks loose" moments, just putting words onto the page reminded me why writers write no matter what.



I'd like to expand on Neil's post about voice. He went into detail about the character's voices. It's important in a book that they sound like themselves. That means knowing their history, their age, education, as well as occupation, nationality—the list goes on. A reader should be able to know who's speaking from the dialogue on the page.

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Cowboys don't talk like artists, who don't talk like sailors, who don't talk like politicians. And men don't talk like women, no matter what job each has. I went into this in my series on His Brain, Her Brain (if you type that into the search box, you'll find those posts back in early September, 2008.) When I write my male characters' dialogue, I always go back and cut it down by at least 25%.

I recall reading my first book by a best-selling author. A male character discovered a young girl, about 5 years old, who had been left to die in the woods. He brings her to his cabin and finds she cannot or will not speak. I was impressed with the way the character spoke to the child—it seemed exactly how someone should deal with that situation. However, as more characters entered the story, I discovered that he spoke that way to all of them. Not only that, almost every character in the book spoke with that same, "Talking to a Child" voice. Obviously, it doesn't bother the millions who buy her books, but it bugged the heck out of me. And it's consistent with all her books in that series. It wasn't just a one-time deal.

However, today I'd like to address the author's voice. From what I understand, voice develops as an author writes. I believe I commented yesterday that I judge the growth of my voice with the increasing ease of writing narrative. Not dialogue, because that is someone else's voice on the page—the character's. But all the other words, the way the sentences are put together, how the paragraphs break—that's the author. And that's where the intangibles lie. When I was starting, and I'd enter contests, I'd get very disparate feedback from judges. Another author told me it meant I had a strong voice, which might or might not appeal to a reader.

Voice is something a reader recognizes instinctively. It's what makes bestselling authors. Sure skill comes into the picture, too. You have to know how to plot, pace, create settings and characters, etc. But voice is what readers really fall in love with when they're reading. It's 'HOW' you tell your stories.
~Jordan Summers

Can anyone confuse Suzanne Brockmann with Lee Child? Janet Evanovich with Michael Connelly? Even Nora Roberts has a distinctive voice that is recognizable whether she's writing a romance as Roberts, or one of her "In Death" futuristics as JD Robb.

Try looking at your manuscript, or the book you're reading. Find a passage that's filled with narrative. How does the author deal with it? Is it in the same vein as the dialogue, or do you get jolted out of the story because all of a sudden there's an outsider taking over? If it's a funny book, the narrative needs to reflect that sense of humor. If it's serious, the author shouldn't be cracking wise in narrative. If your character speaks in short, choppy sentences, then he's likely to think that way, too. Again, the narrative should continue in that same style.

Which brings me to another thought. When I was in high school, we were required to discuss the "style" of all the books and stories we read. A student asked the teacher to define "style." He said, "It's the words the author chooses to use." Which sums it up pretty well for me. Perhaps we should use that term for the author's voice, to differentiate it from the characters' dialogue.

Voice can't be taught. It comes only after spending hours, days, months, years at the keyboard. It is, to use a favorite term of an author friend, "organic." It comes from within, and it feels right. If you're thinking about it, you're not developing your voice.

Elmore Leonard points out that the essence of being a good writer is keeping yourself off the page. So if it sounds 'writerly' it needs to be cut.

What is Voice, Anyway?

Today, my guest at Terry's Place is author Neil Plakcy, who has published six novels (four mystery, two romance) and edited three anthology collections. He teaches writing at Broward College in south Florida and is vice president of the Florida chapter of Mystery Writers of America. In the course of writing and editing in these different genres, as well as teaching students how to write better, he’s become an expert at developing and customizing the way writers address their topic—the “voice” they use.

Welcome, Neil.

I was thinking a lot about voice this summer, as I revised a book I wrote a few years ago. The voice of this character is very different from the one I’ve been refining for my Honolulu police detective protagonist. So working with it has made me wonder -- what is voice, anyway?


To me, it has a number of components, first of all the choice of first-person, second-person and third-person. Is your narrator telling the story himself? Has the author created some disembodied narrator who has access to the feelings and impressions of the character? A first person-narrator is expected to speak like a real person, and that person’s background is going to influence how he or she speaks—and narrates the story.

Word choice is an important part of voice. The character I’ve been working with is a college professor, a stuffy kind of guy, though he’s only in his early thirties. I’ve noticed he waffles a lot, using “He seemed to be in pain,” rather than “He was in pain,” when observing another character grimace as he stands up. He uses a lot of what my father used to call ten-dollar words—abundance, serviceable. He knows the names of obscure things, like a chesterfield sofa or a torchiere lamp.

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His voice also rises out of the details he chooses to mention. For example, he says, “One of the benefits of living in a college town is the abundance of good coffee shops.” That tells you he’s not the kind of guy who buys his coffee at McDonald’s, even if they do offer cappuccino now. He’s nowhere near as worldly or jaded as my detective hero, who has killed a man, and seen a lot of dead bodies and injured victims.


His voice does not use many contractions, especially not in dialogue. His sentences are often long and involve complex structure, layering clause on clause. His voice reflects his upbringing and his education. He’s obviously read a lot, in the course of receiving his PhD, and written a lot, too.

One way in which this voice is like my detective, though, is in access to language and description. Both guys, like me, grew up reading, and both pay attention to detail. So Kimo can describe the arc of a wave, and Steve the smoothness of a handmade antique wooden box. Both of them live in the place where they grew up, so they know its neighborhoods, its flora and fauna.

I try to use humor when I can, no matter what voice I’m using. Kimo’s humor is darker, while Steve’s is more sarcastic. Both of them like word play, riffing off a word said by another character.

Some writers have such a distinctive voice that they are easy to imitate. After I read Nabokov’s Lolita I started writing a story that channeled his arch, playful voice. Big mistake. But I also tried to imitate Elmore Leonard’s style, telling the story almost exclusively through dialogue, and that worked for me. I’ve read Laurie Colwin for her emphasis on domestic detail and tried to emulate the richness of her settings.

A couple of years ago I sat down to write a story about a naïve teenager who is befriended by a male prostitute just a little older than he is, who takes advantage of his generosity and then breaks his heart. I was appalled, on looking over the first draft, to find that this Chicago teen spoke like my jaded Honolulu detective. Oh, my God, I thought. Do I only have one voice?

I went back over the story and polished it, delving deeper into the character’s hunger and pain, and that helped me modify his voice. He started speaking more like a kid than an adult. The college students I teach have a pretty narrow frame of reference; they don’t know much literature, and they don’t even know movies, TV shows or music from more than a few years ago. Making sure that all the references a character makes are believable is another part of voice.

There’s still more work to be done revising that five-year-old novel. I will continue to try to improve it while maintaining the integrity of the character’s narration. And the more I learn about all the elements that make up a voice, the more confident I feel I can do it.

Neil Plakcy’s website is http://www.mahubooks.com, where you can find more about his Hawaii-based mystery novels, including Mahu, Mahu Surfer, Mahu Fire, and Mahu Vice, as well as his M/M romances.

Voice and Fashion

What I'm reading: Warrior, by Angela Knight

Recently, I've started watching "What Not to Wear." I'd never heard of the show until I was at a conference, waiting for an agent appointment, and another writer asked if I thought she was dressed appropriately. She told me her entire wardrobe had been hijacked by a television show, and she had only 3 outfits until she could get to New York for her shopping spree.

Then, hubby made some comment about how something in my closet (probably many somethings) would never pass muster on "What Not to Wear." So, when an episode showed up during a bit of channel surfing, I stopped clicking and watched. I learned that one poor, badly-dressed soul gets $5000 for a new wardrobe, but has to follow the "rules" set forth by Stacy and Clinton, the hosts of the show.

The show has become a guilty diversion as I take a lunch break (and the hubster normally brings his sandwich in and watches it too, although I'm not sure why, since half the time he prefers the slut look so many of the participants start with. Ah, wait. They show the before clothes!). And some days I watch a second episode in the evening.

One of the most common fears expressed by the nominees is, "I want to be me. I don't want someone changing my special style." Of course, Stacy and Clinton will argue that the nominee has no style, and they proceed to throw away the poor person's wardrobe.

And before you shout, "waste, waste, waste", I have it on good authority that the clothes are actually donated – which must make Stacy and Clinton cringe, since they consider almost all the stuff totally inappropriate for wearing.

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And the nominees most certainly must sign something that says they have to go along with it if they're going to get the money, yet they continue to argue that their clothes are fine, and Stacy and Clinton don't really know them well enough to tell them how to dress.

Anyway – what does this have to do with writing? I ran across a few posts on "Voice" in my blog hopping, and I think there's a tie in. Because when each episode of WNTW ends, the participant agrees that they're the same person on the inside, but now the outside matches. And they almost always admit they were wrong, and they're much happier now that they've seen that they can be attractive, yet be themselves.

Stacy and Clinton don't create cookie-cutter clones. They pay attention to the participants' likes and dislikes, and try to show how they can keep those, while working within some more fashionable parameters. Like, no tails pinned to one's jeans. No bare bellies.

Any author starting out tries to write what she thinks an author should sound like. She might work hard to make her characters sound unique, and true to their backgrounds, but all the other stuff—the narrative parts where the character isn't speaking—sounds stilted. It sounds "writerly." And what the characters say isn't the same as "Voice."

There's no real way to teach voice. We've done exercises in workshops where everyone gets a picture and writes a paragraph about it. Then they switch with someone else, and write a paragraph about that person's picture. When they're read out loud, it's clear that no two are alike. Not only do they see different things in the picture to write about, but some will write humor, others write dark. Some write short, snappy sentences, others write flowery prose.

If you read multi-published authors, you'll start to be able to recognize their voices. There's no way you'd mistake Janet Evanovich for Michael Connelly. As the writer, you have to let your own voice show through, no matter what you're writing. It takes practice—and courage, because you have to put "you" on the page, and not the "writer."

But when you finish, you should have your own special work. You won't be a cookie-cutter clone. Rule of thumb—if it sounds "writerly", cut it. When the words flow from the fingertips, that's probably your own voice coming through. Let it sing.

On the real life front:

No word on when the dryer part will appear. I guess the repairman and I have different definitions about "I'll keep you informed," despite my followup call to the company.


And, not so surprising, the retirement/unemployment thing is hitting a few stumbling blocks. Hubby went to the eye doctor. They now require payment before you see the doctor. Upon checking, they said our insurance doesn't exist, despite the fact that we've been making the COBRA payments for the past 5 months. (Sorry, couldn't resist using the snake to illustrate this point). I wonder what'll happen when the dentist puts the charges through for my routine cleaning last week. Of course, nobody at the insurance side of things was answering the phone, and their website was down. The only 'bright side' is that since this is all based on hubby's former employer, he gets to deal with it.

And, what he found out was that despite our paying for everything, we don't exist. We've been reinstated retroactive to the 1st of July, but somehow, I'm wondering if they'll refund our premiums for all the payments we made prior to that. Not holding my breath for that one.

Tomorrow - yep, it's Friday. Bookmark this blog for another chapter from the adventures of Homicide Detective Mark Hussey.

On Voice

What I'm reading: Kiss and Dwell, by Kelley St. John

What I'm writing: Chapter 27

If you can't read the panels, click on the image and it should open an enlarged version. Or, you can try this link. It's the Sept. 28th comic.

Voice is something a reader recognizes instinctively. It's what makes bestselling authors. Sure skill comes into the picture, too. You have to know how to plot, pace, create settings and characters, etc. But voice is what readers really fall in love with when they're reading. It's 'HOW' you tell your stories. ~Jordan Summers

When I discovered fan fiction, I was attracted to the stories of one author. Not only did the stories interest me, but as I read them, I thought "If I could write, that's what I would write like." I didn't realize it at the time, but it was her voice that attracted me.

But voice is more than making a character sound like a Texan, or making sure a cop doesn't sound like a princess. Just as you can recognize an artist by his or her work, you can indentify an author by his or her voice. Nobody would confuse Janet Evanovich with Sue Grafton. Or Nora Roberts with Suzanne Brockmann.

Developing you own voice takes time. We all use the same tools. Words, strung together following the basic rules of grammar and punctuation, into sentences as paragraphs. But the choice of our words, and the order in which we use them, comprises our voice. I think when we start writing, we try to sound "writerly." But it's not until we put ourselves on the page that we can develop our own voices.

Our experiences, both positive and negative, play a part in our voices. So do the story and the characters. One exercise we've done in workshops is to choose a picture from many provided by the instructor. Based on the picture, each person writes a brief paragraph or two based on what they "see". Then, everyone swaps pictures with someone next to them and repeats the exercise. As participants share what they've written, the different voices become clear. One will find something humorous, one will see the same picture as dark and ominous. This is one reason we shouldn't worry too much about sharing story ideas. Even given the same plot, no two writers will write the same story. This was pointed out in another workshop where the assignment was simply to write a short paragraph or two about a wife wanting a divorce. Same situation, but no two stories came out the same.

As I continue to write, finding my voice gets easier. When I sit at the keyboard and the words pour out, that's my voice. When I struggle to find the right way to say something, I'm hoping that I'm searching for "my" voice, but until the words feel right, I'm not confident I've nailed it. And when I read an author whose voice resonates with me, I have to make sure I'm not using that voice instead of my own when I write. For that reason, there are several authors I don't read while I'm writing. I could always tell when my husband spoke to his parents on the phone, because his 'voice' changed into that of a central New Yorker. In Los Angeles, I never heard him say "Hey-Yup", but put his father on the phone, and he used the expression all the time. I don't want to start letting their voices (fantastic as they are) get confused with mine.

Of course, the flip side, as with everything, is that one reader may love a writer's voice, while it can be a turn-off to another. But that's why there are so many books out there.