A writers 'voice'

Schumi

Schumi

Hello everyone,

I've just finished writing a short story for a competition in writing magazine, but it's also in conjunction with my creative writing class.

I'm not particularly happy with it. To start with I thought it was going well, but I feel it loses focus somewhere in the middle. I’m a writer who is never, ever satisfied with what I produce, so that could be a reason for it. I might post it on the forums to see what others make of it.

Anyway, when I read it back to myself, I got to thinking about my writers 'voice'. Do you ever find yourself writing a piece of fiction, and realising that it's your own voice that your conveying, and not that of the characters? By that, I mean the style and pace of the writing don’t necessarily reflect the way the character would talk or think.

That's the impression I get from most of the fiction I have written. I write using the characters voice, but I end up using my own. Does that make any sense?

Viv

You can put dialogue into a character's mouth to convey their thoughts and feelings, but I think you only ever write in your own voice. The tone and style is unique to you - don't try to lose it.

Jenny

Is it OK to put a story on Talkback if you intend to enter it in a WM competition?

Carol

Jenny,Probably not a good idea when it's a WM/WN competition.
Schumi, middles can sag, give it a few days and look at it again.
I think you have to stop being so worried about hearing your own voice. It sounds like you are just becoming more aware of your writing voice. Feel comfortable with it, then you can go about changing your characters voice when needed.

Stan2

I wish you success with your story, Schuman - I may have spelt that wrong. Whatever, all the best with your story if you submit it for the comp.

Stan2

Sorry Schumi!

Vel

I worry about this as well. I wonder if the reader will be able to tell that it's X different characters in a particular scene, or do they all sound like one person? I tend to 'see' scenes in my mind, like I'm directing a film, so when I get the words onto paper, it all seems a bit one dimensional. Does anyone else work like this? (Were I to be lucky enough to have my book made into a film, I think I'd be the first writer to be happier with the film version than my own novel!)

I think some of it is to do with reading your own work; you'll never be able to get the distance, and therefore be completely objective, about your own writing. However, I find consolation in the fact that I have recognised a problem. To me, having a worry like this means a) now I've found I'm not happy with this area of my writing I can focus on it, and b) the fact I'm worried about it probably means it isn't half as bad as I think it is!

I hope this helps :-)

Schumi

Thank you for your replies everyone. Because the story is for a WM competition, I won't post it here. I should have realised that that would have been a silly thing to do.

Vel, I can relate to pretty much all of what you said. If I'm writing a piece of fiction, I have to be able to see the characters clearly in my head. I try to play events out as they would look in reality. The novel I am writing is particularly strong in that area, as I can see my main characters very clearly.

This particular short story has its strong points, but it frustrates me because I know it could be a lot better. Nobody could be a bigger critic of my writing than me. That's not to say I undervalue my own work. Some of it is good I think, but there's never been one piece of writing that I have written where I could say I'm happy with it. I strive for more all the time, and that's what I believe will make me a stronger writer in the long run.

With regards to my writers voice, what I really meant was that I struggle sometimes to separate the thoughts of my characters from my own. There are times when it could be both of us talking. For example, I have been known to go off on a tirade when writing a piece of fiction. I drift away from the characters voice and start injecting thoughts of my own that my character wouldn’t actually say. But I was guiltier of that when I first started writing.

As long as I know a character well, and those around him, then good things can happen.

Crazy Horse

It would seem inevitable that at least the central character will basically be you. Any reaction by a character coming from your creative imagination must in some way be how you would react.. Perhaps not as you are now but how you would be in that situation. Possibly the character will be the you who has passed or yet to be Dorothy, do you get m meaning?.

machinehurt

I once got the nasty comment . . .

LOSE THAT AUTHOR'S VOICE !

Without that voice, we cannot write . . . or was that the intention ?

Carol

It was probably saying that there was an obvious authorial intrusion- the voice of the author could be heard, rather than it just being the author's voice.

Tiny Nell

The author should be unobtrusive like a cat burglar, not wearing a multi-coloured jester's outfit with bells on his shoes!

However...
Lemony Snicket gets away with it in 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' - where it is accepted as that writer's trademark/prerogative; I have a feeling Roald Dahl also does it to an extent. In one of my children's books (Martha and Mitch) I took the liberty of authorial intrusion as it suited the style and plot, but generally I try to stay in the background.

Tristram_Shandy

There used to be many writers who did it. Not so many now, but it's still possible to write an omniscient narrative that makes statements about the world at large.

However, I dislike the tendency to speak about author's voice. The author sits behind the narrator, which is an entity in its own right. I tend more to agree with the kind of structure you see proposed in books on critical narrative analysis, i.e.:

Author > implied author > narrator

And it goes on to implied reader and reader; but for this purpose, we have author and narrator as separate beings, and an implied author in between. It's probably easier to separate where the narrator is a story character, but it still holds true with a third person omniscient narrator, where certain viewpoints may be expressed or implied about the politics and social context of the world, for example. Think about this, for example, in an entirely fictional world (a fantasy) where the socio-political context revolves around more of a dictatorship with a black and white kind of social set up of rich and poor, and the narrator suggests that (in the context of this world and story) there's a right or maybe wrong viewpoint of this setup. This wouldn't necessarily tie in with the real author's viewpoint, but belongs only to the narrator, for storytelling purposes.

But there's an implied author in between, and some readers (perhaps most) see the implied author; they believe the real author may actually share the views of her narrator. Not necessarily.

I don't see my narrators as me (third person or first), which is why narrative voice changes according to the story I'm writing.