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Expert Advice from Doris Booth |
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EXPERT ADVICE ARTICLES BY DORIS BOOTH
Printed in Romantic Times BOOKclub Magazine
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Category: WRITER'S TIPS
BOOK EXPERTS SPEAK: LESSON VII -- THE RIGHT VOICE CAN MAKE YOUR STORY SING FOR READERSA unique voice can sell a manuscript. The lack of one can land you in the rejection pile. What is this elusive thing we editors and agents call "voice"?
When pressed to explain, many professionals will tell you to read classic writers such as William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, James Michener, or bestselling contemporary authors Janet Evanovich and Nora Roberts.
Why? Because we know that by encouraging you to read good authors, you can gain
an intuitive sense of the true nature of voice.
Voice reveals itself through the work of these skillful scribes. The substance bleeds through on the page. This substance is something you, the writer, can learn to convey in your stories. As publishers look for less fluff and deeper meaning in the romance books they publish, it is essential that you hone a unique voice.
Nobel Prize winner Faulkner once said that "[Man] is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."
Voice is more than a mere record of man. It is the underlying "spirit" of your work. It's your unique vision of the world, the sum total of your experiences and thoughts.
Henry David Thoreau gave us a clue to the nature of voice when he wrote in his personal journal in 1877: "As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life."
We don't write like this today, but his unique vision of the world illuminates his work. If he merely had said, "Small truths color life," no vision would endure. Nothing unique would hook the imagination. The thoughtfulness with which a thing is said is far more important than the words themselves. Experience, observation and thought are inherent in the ethereal thing we call "voice."
Thoreau rings in our minds for more than 100 years because, in a single sentence, this master gives us a way to "see the unseeable." We can all envision the last drop of wine in a goblet, the thin residue left behind. By his comparison, we sense how a small truth spreads across the surface of one's entire life. Through the world as Thoreau personally experiences it, turning goblet in hand, we understand his precise vision of truth. He has given us a way to measure thought and feeling beyond a mere recording of events.
Voice is achieved through "showing" rather than "telling" your reader what is happening. Take Nora Roberts, for example, writing as J.D. Robb in Memory in Death. She begins the book like this:
Death was not taking
a holiday. New York may have been decked out in its glitter and glamour, madly festooned in December of 2059, but Santa Claus was dead. And a couple of his elves weren't looking so good.
Lieutenant Eve Dallas stood on the sidewalk with the insanity of Times Square screaming around her and studied what was left of St. Nick.
In the first two paragraphs of the story, we get a clear sense of how Eve views her world. Through detailed observation and thought, Roberts/Robb enables us to see the unseeable -- to observe her character's inner thoughts and feelings toward the world.
Look at another example by bestselling author John Connolly in The Black Angel. Can you get deep insight into the continuing character of Charlie Parker from the following passage in chapter five?
Each of us lives two lives: our real life and our secret life.
In our real life, we are what we appear to be. We love our husbands or our wives. We care for our children. Each morning we pick up a bag or a briefcase and we do what we must to oil the wheels of our existence ...
And in the darkness, one upon the other, the real life blurs at its margins, and the secret life intrudes with
a rush and a moan and the flicking tongue of desire.
Voice springs not from a single person inside of you but from the many different people who live in your head. These story people come to life when you make us see what your characters see, hear, taste, smell, touch, think and feel.
Here's a very simple illustration of the difference between being inside the character's mind or outside.
"She was angry." This is telling the reader what
is happening.
"She banged the ceramic cup down hard, sloshing coffee onto the table. Her fists drew in knots and she shuddered. How could he do this to her?" Do you know that she is angry? You bet! You have shown us. And that is far more engaging.
When you eliminate the telling or mere reporting from your tale and begin to "show" the reader your character's world, the story breathes. You must become the "experiencer" of your story, not the "observer." And in so doing, your reader too becomes the "experiencer," feeling the full force of what you have come to the printed page to say.
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