A few weeks ago, Julie Czerneda and I ran a 1st Page Critique workshop at a fan convention in Orlando. I'm still impressed by the great writing we saw, but the ones I most remember had that elusive and priceless element: voice.
I wish we'd had more time to spend on that. I wish we had a whole day to talk about it.
Voice is more important than plot. More important than getting the details right (although we should all always hope to get the details right.) More important than fully rounded characters.
Of course we want to have a strong plot, accurate terminology or concepts, and characters that leap off the page into the reader's imagination. A strong story or novel has the whole package neatly tied up in a bow (or messily tied up with barbed wire, if that's your genre.)
But voice is the golden ticket to the Wonka factory. Voice gets you past the reader's front door.
Snarky voice. Fearful voice. A voice full of jealousy. A voice full of sadness. We long for voices that call to us wherever we are in our own mental landscapes. We'll follow them over hill and dale.
Voice runs into trouble when it meets Point-of-View, however. In first-person POV we hear the voice quite clearly. (Check out Andy Weir's The Martian, one my favorite books this year, for a snarky example. Any Stephen King book will also do- try Duma Key. You can always return to the classics: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn can't be beat.)
Voice is a trickier to hear in third-person POV, because of the distance it imposes. But Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel has a lyrical and lovely voice.
Voice often gets mixed up with style, or the presentation of the story. But that's like confusing an opera singer with her gown. Usually they complement each other, but contrasting them can be fun, too.
A book I often recommend to students interested in learning more about voice is Ben Yagoda's The Sound on the Page. My own copy is dog-eared and jammed with yellow stickies.
Unfortunately, the world will try to flatten our voices. Or we flatten them ourselves in an attempt to please fellow writers. I saw this happen in my own MFA program, where the most unique voices lost their edge or allure.
Cherish your own voice. Guard it against anyone who wants it to sound like everyone else in the chorus. And definitely check out The Martian and Station Eleven.
(One of the great reasons to own a Kindle or use the Kindle Cloud Reader is that you can download first chapters to study. My own Kindle has hundreds of samples on it. If you're there checking out the books above, perhaps you'll also download a sample of my sf adventure for juvenile readers Annie Wu Saves the Future. I had a lot of fun with that young voice.)
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