Can You Hear Me Now? Finding Your Voice
…voice is the emotional thread that connects the writer to the reader
If you were asked which writers have a unique voice, you’d have no trouble naming several. My list includes F. Scott Fitzgerald, Karen Blixen, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, Harper Lee, Stephen King, John Irving, and Anne Rice. But if you were asked to define “voice” in writing, your task might be harder.
I recently attended a writers’ conference and listened to a publisher explain voice. Her definition rang true and clear to me, so I’d like to share my thoughts on this element of writing.
When I began studying the craft of writing, I focused on plot, because I didn’t know how to construct one. I hadn’t given much thought to voice until I picked up a novel by an author I’d never read before. It was his fourth book and it had landed on the bestseller list. His characters grabbed me and whirled me along for the more than 400 pages. When I finished the book, I rushed out and bought the author’s three earlier books. I struggled through each one. I finished reading them only because I was curious to learn how he developed his craft. Then I realized it was his voice that captured my interest in the fourth novel. It was also clear to me that I couldn’t hear that voice in his first three novels. Maybe he was still struggling to find it. Who knows? Since then, I’ve read everything the author has written, and he’s now one of my favorite contemporary writers.
What I gleaned from the writers’ conference was that voice is the emotional thread that connects the writer to the reader. It’s the writer’s unique style of expression that adds a personal element to the story. Character, plot, and setting can’t do it alone or together.
Consider F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. This novel is an extraordinary story of love, loss, hope, and betrayal, and has these opening lines:
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in the world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’
Narrator Nick Carraway is telling a story as if you were sitting in a room with him and chatting over a cup of coffee. The natural ease draws readers in and keeps them turning the pages.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee writes of social injustice through the eyes of a child. The story is powerful because Scout (Jean Louise) Finch is experiencing prejudice for the first time. Readers connect with her struggle to understand the condemnation of an innocent man. The articulate voice of an observant child magnifies and focuses our pain at society’s injustice. Scout’s voice speaks to us, asking, “How can this happen?”
Every book that has earned its place on my bookshelf has connected with me on a deep level. Sometimes it’s the ideas that resonate with me, sometimes the voice, sometimes both. But books without either of those connections usually end up in my giveaway box.
