posted
I read today's post on Writer Unboxed, Voice 101, and I thought back to various posts of Dean Wesley Smith's where he cautions against extensive editing, noting it as a sure way to kill voice in a story.
Yet, as I'm not a multi-decade-publishing author with 90 books under my belt, I'm pretty sure my work needs substantial editing. I love a layered plot and solid foreshadowing, things that often seem to require a lot more rereading and editing than I expect. And if I get really fired up I find at the end, often enough, I've edited out that conversational tone that makes for Voice and the writing falls flat.
I have some ideas on how I might improve this, but I wonder whether you come across this problem in your own work - and how you deal with it. Or do you think this is just a beginner's problem and more practice will yield less edits and more voice remaining?
posted
I only realized my writing has a voice when I started to write in English. Using my native language writing was intuitive like talking and I could not see any personality in it.
Posts: 1271 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
I think I am a little different from many here in that, as I write a story, I'm trying to get it as "right" the first time as possible. I don't do multiple drafts. I write a story, send it for crits, then polish based on the crits. Its usually mostly fixing errors, whether spelling, grammar, continuity etc. There's usually a little bit of adding and/or subtracting and/or moving stuff around. I can go overboard with descriptions and overall word use, so while I do do some cutting, its rarely all that is suggested, because I want my stories to sound like me (or like my characters) not like something mass-produced.
Also, as I've said before, given that all plot lines have been used before at one time or another, and most characters can be placed into certain archtypes-in other words, almost everything can be called "cliche"-voice and writting style are I believe very important because they are much of what makes each of our writing unique and different.
[This message has been edited by Merlion-Emrys (edited January 07, 2010).]
posted
It wasn't until relatively recently that I realized I had a voice in my stories.
Of late---the last several years, actually---when I finish something, it's at the end of several drafts and a number of nitpicking find-and-replace wordprocessing searches. I've been thinking I've gone too far---the last one I finished sent out felt like I'd chewed gum until it dissolved in my mouth.
It didn't used to be that way. I started rough draft to final copy (on the typewriter, where revision was more difficult), then for a couple of years switched to one draft only (still on the typewriter), then switched back to rough-draft-final-copy (about the time I switched to word processing, but not yet on a computer).
My revisionism kinda expanded out of a strange desire to eliminate nearly every "ly" adverb, and moved on to trying to make all "have / has" and "were / was" verbs more immediate. I think I got carried away. I'm determined not to go so far next time---I'm working on a second draft of what I worked on the end of last year, just to smooth things out, and then I'll paste it in a new file, pick at it a little (but only a little), and then, maybe, say it's finished and send it out and move on to the next one.
quote:"There’s no simple, cut and paste solution to voice. It’s one of the hardest aspects of writing to master. Breaking the components down into a list is all very well. Using them to construct the perfect voice or voices for your story requires instinct as well as intellect." Juliet Marillier "Voice 101" from page linked in topic post.
In addition to the listing of voice characteristics Marillier offers, I've found subtler aesthetics of tone, mood, tenor, and register have strong influences on voice for all their relative subtlety. Without realizing them a story can be mechanically fully realized but soulless. Telling that a character is woebegone doesn't have the impact of faltering speech, self-correction, abrupt changes in train of thought and self-interruption. Timidity can be depicted by hedging speech, by characters and narrators. It was kind of sort of like she didn't exactly care for domestic chores any more than she enjoyed yard work. An undertatement for all its overstated hedging, a litotes, a special species of irony. Adjectives and adverbs have a significant place in voice. Rhetoric too, in an assortment of figures of speech and irony types and overlaps that inform voice.
Timely ironic discourse characterizes narrators and characters. And tone, mood, tenor; and register is more than just formal or informal, it's also standing in relationship, superior to superior, subordinate to subordinate, peer to peer, and any possible combinations thereof or spectrum of interactions. What the nature of the interactions and relationships are locate aspects of voice.
Me, I've had a soulless voice; I didn't keep it. I'm working on potent voices that are tailored to the stories I've written, am writing, rewriting, revising.
posted
As I have said several times: Read Les Edgerton's book FINDING YOUR VOICE. It's the best reference I've found on this particular subject.
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posted
I'm hardly an expert. But I suspect that voice is what happens when you're not trying too hard.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
I've found that it's necessary for me to really get my plot down in planning and prep, so that I can write naturally, so that most of that seemingly elusive voice component stays in, as I agree. Voice is what makes reading and writing enjoyable, at least for me.
So, for me, I've found the more I can invest in planning, thinking through plot, and really understanding character motivations before I start writing, the less I have to go back and edit for these big-ticket things, and therefore the more story that comes out, with more of my voice to make it mine and make it original and make it interesting.
I think, but I haven't done this, when a story really needs an overhaul because of a missed opportunity around foreshadowing or a poorly constructed character, then rather than "editing" the work, it might be necessary to "redraft" the work (I think OSC uses that term.) Basically rewrite it from memory, but with these new character points or plot points in mind. That way you have another opportunity to write in a way that maintains your voice. It might seem like that could take a while, but if you know exactly what's going to happen, in what order, who does what, it can speed things up. I know some amount of my "writing" time is the "staring off into space while I try to figure out a detail" time. When I know what I'm writing, I can write a crazy amount of words in an hour.
posted
The writing voice in my earliest efforts was unexceptionally deadpan, about as dry as fireplace ashes. All but one story was dreary to read, still are for the most part. The one was deliberately, with hard effort to maintain that voice now that I was conscious of it, written in deadpan but universally well-received in uproarious approval.
I can't even blame my English teachers for beating voice out of me, though some were nuns who flailed my knuckles and noggin with iron rulers and red inked my valiant compositions.
The lesson I learned from writing in deadpan is that it has a place in the right kind of story, but it's not to be a sole voice for me.
I've read stories and writing rhetoric advice that tend to force voice. I did read Google Books excerpts of Leslie Edgerton's Finding Your Voice. It's in a conversational, at times self-deprecating, attempted jocularity, attempted cleverness, attempted at times ironic voice. But find it forced and played out. Many contemporary rhetoric advices are in the same voice, but it's a better voice for it's register than the ones of rigid formalilty like Percy Lubbock's, Gustav Freytag's, and Noah Lukeman's, etc. Anyway, some nuggets there in Voice, but failing to accomplish a fresh voice in advices about voice doesn't bode well for my acquiring a copy of Edgerton anytime soon.
I do need to make the effort to find my voice, a particular story's voice. Eventually, I expect it'll come almost naturally. Meanwhile, I plod onward seeking fresh voices to own.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited January 07, 2010).]
posted
I believe there is a lot of naturality about one's voice, but I also think that we can learn to recognize it and develop it. I also think we can learn to weed out off-putting things about our voice. When you analyze your voice you can weed out pet words. (Like for me, I use 'just' far to often.)
Try editing someone else's work, not just a crit but actual editing as if for publication. When you do a real hatchet job on it you'll start to notice yourself trying to change things that aren't errors, they are just not the way you would have put it. This has helped me see other's voices, which helped me see my own.
posted
I wish Carmen Deedy would write a book about voice. I was in a class she taught about voice in a conference that was just fantastic. (Which reminds me I need to decrease my use of prepositional phrases.)
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:I think, but I haven't done this, when a story really needs an overhaul because of a missed opportunity around foreshadowing or a poorly constructed character, then rather than "editing" the work, it might be necessary to "redraft" the work (I think OSC uses that term.) Basically rewrite it from memory, but with these new character points or plot points in mind. That way you have another opportunity to write in a way that maintains your voice.
Dean Wesley Smith also recommends this as an answer to the problem.
Rewriting the whole thing from memory without looking at earlier drafts also has the advantage of letting you apply the writing skills you've developed in the meantime to the intial wording of the "rewrite" draft.
posted
I think you can rewrite in the same voice. However you've got to read through the story in order to get your mind in gear. I find it's how I picture acting to be. You've got to find yourself thinking in the right role. I find it the same way when writing dialogue.
If you attack small pieces of the story without getting into the right mindset, the voice can't come out.
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