Category: Voice Week

Dates for Voice Week 2012!

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Yes folks, Voice Week is back—and we’ve got less than two months to get ready for it.

 

What is Voice Week?

Voice Week is the time the InMonsters (and anyone else who wants to join in) all step outside the voices we are used to and try writing something new. We’ll each write five different 100-word pieces—each piece told in a different voice. We’ll post a piece a day, Monday through Friday, in the first week of October. Then we’ll hop around to each other’s blogs, reading, commenting, learning, and offering constructive criticism. There’ll also be a prize or two awarded to randomly-selected voice writers (exact prize(s) to be announced soon).

 

What is voice?

Voice is the personality infused into your writing—from the words you choose, to the structure and rhythm of your sentences, and other little details, like whether you add accents or grammatical errors on purpose. Different narrators have different voices. An old man will choose different words and arrange them differently than a teenage girl will.

 

Why do I need a unique voice?

Your voice sets you apart from every other writer. Voice is the quickest way to help your readers get to know your narrator—and it’s more effective than exposition. Voice is one of the biggest ways you show (don’t tell) your narrator’s personality. An intriguing or amusing voice can keep readers reading even when not much is happening with the plot. 

 

Why do I need to practice different voices?

Your voice may change depending on the story you are writing. Maybe your novel is a brooding literary piece, but you’re also writing a short adventure story that requires a whimsical wit. Even if you don’t cross genres, your protagonists may be different. A boy or a girl, an adult or a child. An angel or an alien. A person from the seventeenth century or the twenty-seventh. They all require different voices. The more unique and authentic, the better.

 

But what if I write in third person?

All narrators have voice, whether they are characters in the story or not. Think of your favorite third-person writers and how different they sound from one another. Is the tone dark, or light? Clean and sharp, or thick and introspective?

 

How do I become a part of Voice Week?

  1. Leave a comment telling me you’re in! Be sure to include a link to your blog so I can add you to the Voice Week blogroll.
  2. Write something about 100 words long. You can use an InMon prompt, a Voice Week prompt, or even a piece you wrote a long time ago. HINT: It might be easier if it’s in first person, but it’s up to you.
  3. Rewrite that piece four times. Change the personality of the narrator each time. The goal is to write with five different voices. The benefit of using the same story/scene/situation is that we can focus on the difference in the voices. Whether you simply change the personality of the same character five times, or write the same scene from five different characters’ points of view, or only write similar situations happening to people in five different centuries—it’s all up to you.
  4. Come October 1, start posting, and link back to the Voice Week homepage with each post.

 

I’m confused.

Check out the rules

See answers to frequently asked questions

 

I need examples. How did Voice Week go last year?

Read last year’s voices

Read my summary post

 

I can’t wait to get started!

Comment below, and…

Get your Voice Week badge!!!

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Stay tuned: in the weeks leading up to Voice Week, we’ll be digging deeper into voice, what it is, and how to find yours.

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Voice Week: why it totally rocked

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You guys are awesome.

I don’t think I’ve ever read such a wide variety of such high quality work that fascinated and thrilled me as much as the work the Voice Writers did last week. We heard the voices of animals, trees, supernatural beings, a park bench, and dozens of unique humans. We watched a bride prepare for her wedding, and a man on death row prepare for his execution. We questioned and pondered and loved and hated—and learned.

Here’s a few of the cool things that came out of it / that I learned:

Everyone interpreted the project a little differently. The variety of ways people’s pieces fit together made the project fascinating—some used different viewpoints to progressively tell more of the same story or more about the same character, some showed how different personalities would react to the same situation, some were linked only by prompt or by setting and showed the subtle contrasts between personalities. It made me glad I wasn’t too specific about what I thought I wanted for this project–it allowed the participants to be much more brilliant than narrower parameters would have allowed–creative minds need structure, yes, but they also need the freedom to be unique; that’s the same reason Inspiration Monday works as well as it does. (InMon is returning one week from today, by the way!)

He said, she said. Many pieces throughout the week had us guessing whether the narrator was male or female. We inferred gender by deciphering situation and analyzing word choice, and simply by how the character struck us. Sometimes we were right, sometimes wrong. A bit of a debate started over my first piece; in the comments, “female” currently leads the vote eight to three—and the majority is correct! With that in mind, here are some things to consider:

  1. Keeping the main character’s gender vague can be interesting, even profitable in a short story where gender doesn’t matter; readers of either gender can easily place themselves in the head of the narrator.
  2. Keeping the gender of a main character vague for too long, however—such as several paragraphs into a full-length novel—can also throw a reader off if they guessed wrong to begin with.

We can use bias to fight bias. I found myself relating to characters I normally wouldn’t like. I found myself disliking characters I’d normally relate to. I was irritated by the responsible bookstore manager, but I loved the nonchalant killer. I formed opinions, read others’ comments, read the rest of the week’s pieces—and second-guessed myself. I stopped to think about why I felt certain things toward certain characters—and whether that was justified by truth or clouded by bias. A well-crafted voice in a well-crafted story can show your reader the humanity in his enemy—the vulnerability and even the likability.

The mystery of the other side of the story. Possibly the most fun was the switching of views within the same story, a method several of the Voice Writers used to create suspense. In each character, we got a limited perspective—each one saw things the others didn’t; each one told us something new about the story. We got to piece together the clues to reveal a bigger truth than any one character could see.

Actions speak louder than words. One of the finer points of “Show Don’t Tell” hit home for me last week, too. When all was said and done, one of the most powerful illustrations of character was not the words they chose but the actions they used to respond to others. Giving a hot drink to a homeless man, or ignoring him. Locking a door and drowning out what’s on the other side, or taking a deep breath and opening it.

The Internet is the greatest invention since before sliced bread! Twenty years ago we couldn’t do this. Most of us, lacking the support of a writing community (not just here at BeKindRewrite, but all over the social media sphere) probably would’ve died out as writers by now. We would’ve given it up as a silly hobby nobody else cared about. And something precious and beautiful and potentially world-changing would have been thrown away. The Internet connects us across continents and oceans and helps us learn, inspire, and grow together.

So I want to thank each and every one of you for making this week so incredible. I may have gotten it started–but it was you guys who made it happen. Again and again I was blown away by your talent. I don’t think most of you realize just how talented you are. Every one of you contributed something unique and worthwhile. Every comment was encouraging, useful, insightful or all three.

I wish I could send you all books in the mail, but two’s the limit for now! The first random number is 12 – which is R.L.W. over at SnippetsAndScraps. I’ve sent you an email to get your mailing address and choice of prize!

What was your favorite part of Voice Week? Shall we do it again next year?

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Voice Week 2011: Friday

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Ah…the end of an incredible week. The project turned out better than I possibly could have expected. I think we’ve all learned a lot, had a lot of fun–and written some amazing stuff.

And as I write this now, there are still a few un-posted pieces to look forward to! Keep reading up on everyone’s fantastic work here. And tune in Monday for a recap of the entire week–plus the drawing (announcement) of our first prize winner!

 

I struggled for a bit with this one, but finally got into it when I decided it should be a first-day-of-school homework assignment.

See what you think:

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What did you do this summer?

This summer I tried one of mommy’s drinks. I wanted to see what it tasted like because she drinks it all the time and I thought it would be o.k. if I had just a taste but she was mad. It tasted bad. Worse than medicine. It burnt my throat and I felt sick. I asked her why she drank that bad stuff. Then she threw it and it hit the wall and almost hit me but I moved. Sometimes it scares me when she gets mad, but it’s o.k. because when she’s done being mad she’s nice and sometimes we go out for Snickers bars.

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From the prompt “alcoholic mother.” Read the other versions: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4

Who does the character feel like to you? How old, what gender? Where did you think the voice was strong or weak? Let me know!

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Voice Week 2011: Thursday

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Voice Week is almost over! I can hardly wait to read the genius work tomorrow, but it’ll be sad to see it end!

I decided to travel back in time for today’s piece.

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If the woman had a single flaw, her flaw was weakness; weakness for the caresses of wandering sirs who were more knave than knight, and weakness for spirits when they left her for their more elegant wives. With tender, purplish splotches here and there on her once-lovely face, she would sit hunched over the bottle, her feet spread wide beneath her skirt, abandoning the feminine charms with which she so often veiled her pain. My father very likely had noble blood, but I cannot imagine he had a noble heart to match it.

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From the prompt “alcoholic mother.” Read the other versions: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 5

 

Who does the character feel like to you? How old, what gender? Where did you think the voice was strong or weak? Let me know!

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Voice Week 2011: Wednesday

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This is turning into quite a fascinating project – both into how what is written effects the reader’s perceptions of character, and how the reader’s own pre-existing bias figures in.

I tried a different angle with today’s piece:

When they ask, I tell them that my mother taught me everything I know. I say she taught me to love books by reading to me every night. I say she taught me to love music by singing me songs as she drove me to school. I say she taught me how to be a lady by never raising her voice, by never speaking a crass word, by never drinking more than half a glass of wine. But really, all she taught me was how to lie.

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From the prompt “alcoholic mother.” Read the other versions: Day 1, Day 2, Day 4, Day 5

Who does the character feel like to you? How old, what gender? Where did you think the voice was strong or weak? Let me know!

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