What is voice? Several authors recently have talked in their blogs about the importance of voice. About not editing yourself into oblivion because you will lose your authorial voice.

It's the voice of the narrator, how they choose to describe the incidents. With sad approval or salacious interest? Or whatever else informs the narrator's voice. What incidents the narrator chooses to describe. How often does the narrator slip in slyly or burst in with an opinion or judgement.

that's my understanding of voice

For an extreme example of voice read MOGHUL BUFFET by Cheryl Benard. There is a narrator with an obvious voice, one who is a character OF the story but not one IN the story.

The third experience is my own, small in comparison. I have several stories written of the future, one steam punk, one first person love story, and one set in ancient times. Collectively there are three or four different voices in them, not because I'm hunting for my voice, but because I feel they each need a specific voice. I've deliberately selected a voice to suggest a narrator of the milieu, in an attempt to strengthen the setting of the story and some sense of feeling for the characters.

So I think voice is an attribute of the narrator, not necessarily the author. An author who spans several genres, or first person characters, will surely have a voice for each story, much as an actor has a different voice for each character. (Fleming has the same voice in all the stories of his that I have read, but they're all about 007 so that's to be expected.)

What's in common, then, that thing that draws us to a particular writer, will be the accuracy of the voice, of the portrayal of the narrator or the first person of the story--which would make an author's voice some function of accuracy and observation.

We don't often see that variety because audiences, and therefore publishers, like authors to be predictable: it helps sales. Maybe one needs a pseudonym for each voice.

Any examples more than Landis of writers with different voices? E.g. Did Heinlein have a different voice for his juveniles than his adult stuff?

Oh, I have one: Aldiss. HIs earlier work had, for me, an accessible voice. His later stuff went literary and lost me; a different voice surely.

And another: Tolkien. I thought the voice for "The Hobbit" and "Tree and Leaf" was more accessible to young people than the more adult--dare I say long-winded--tone of LOTR.

Thanks for starting an interesting thread, KayTi.

Pat

To keep voice's meanings distinct in my mind I've separated it into three distinct categories. This is one of my writing flashcards;

Story voice (or just plain voice as I've most often encountered it in writing tomes) is the primary person and tense of a story. Person informs who's telling the story, tense the time of the story relative to when the circumstances of the story happened, an attribute mostly in the discourse element of story.

Narrator's voice, oratorial posture of the narrator, tone or attitude toward a story's theme, invisible, remote, or intimate relationship to the story, mainly in the discourse element of story, partly related to person and tense, partly to theme and tone elements of story.

Authorial voice, nonintrusive mannerisms of a writer that are part and parcel of a story, intimate presence, remote or invisible relationship to a story, mostly an attribute of the rhetoric (schemes and tropes) element of story.

Each manner of voice has relevance to the resonance element of story. And of course, all story elements contribute to the main one, plot, as all roads lead to Rome.

Umpteen meanings of style as related to story;

Style, artistic flair, similar to authorial voice.
Style, vogues and fashions of the times.
Style, grammatical and mechanical conventions of a language.

quote:

---

You have many voices. You have one voice you use with your parents; another you use with your siblings. You might have a company voice ... a separate telephone voice. If you have children ... the stern, reproving voice, the affectionate approving voice and the baby talk ...

Each of your voices has its own vocabulary ... its own sentence structure, its own level of diction ...

When it comes to telling a story, far more choices open up to you. You can use voices in writing that you never use in speech ... regional dialect ... can bring colour and life to the telling of a story ... There's also attitude--cynical, flippant, wondering, cold, nostalgic. And level--crude, slangy, informal, formal, elevated, magesterial.

[In a first person story] the narrative voice has to sound like the first-person narrator; if it doesn't, it's a flaw in the author's technique.

But I find myself writing "in character" even when I'm using third person, even when the narrator isn't a specific person at all. I usually write in a voice similar to the voice of the viewpoint character ...

[But]

The characters will always have some overtones of the author's own style of speech. We can't escape completely from our own underlying voices even when we try.

The underlying voice that repeats from one story to the next is your natural style.

---

That makes sense to me--and thanks for making me read it again.

I thought I had developed something of a voice after having drafted a few stories of the near future. Then I wrote a story set in the distant past and it seemed wrong for the narrator to use modern idioms, so I consciously changed the narrative voice--I now realize, as OSC says--to one similar to the MC's. (One crit said I should use a modern voice for the narrator and reserve the more archaic voice for dialogue, but that felt wrong, even though it made the story harder to write in such a fashion as to be readable.)

So to summarise: there's a voice appropriate for the story, might be different for various stories from the same author, especially if they're first person. But too, there's an underlying voice, faint perhaps, that belongs to the writer.

I think the reason we think some authors have a distinctive voice is that they always write similar stories, because similar sells.

I believe the reason editors like stories with voice (as was observed in the previous thread) is that it brings character to the narrative; the narrator becomes someone we can relate to, someone with colour and depth, and so we become more engrossed in the story. Stories are in some sense about relationships, not just between the characters, but between the reader and the narrator and, at another level, the reader, author and magazine editor.

Cheers,
Pat

For writing, I am thinking that voice and style are interchangeable. After one has written quite a bit, one can see proper passages and recognize the author.
I write where if I cannot spell it or find out how to spell it, I won't use it. I will rewrite the sentance to avoid the word. This is the same if I am not totally sure of the proper definition or proper use of a word. My writing is really simple because of this. The subject matter and the way the work is presented creates my style. It is easily recognizable.

Others will throw in complex words and use complex sentance structures. Some will choose their words so that it is almost poetic. some will write soft and easy while others write forceful.