Tag: editing

5 ways to find your voice…in 5 voices

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  1. Understand what voice is

Voice is the personality behind your writing, the thing that makes readers recognize your work even when they don’t recognize the byline. Many things contribute to voice: sentence structure, word choice, mood, tone, and more—so by definition, all books have voice. But not all of them have really standout voices; the writing may be clean, but it lacks personality. But a unique and strong voice is priceless; it can make a book un-put-down-able regardless of plot.

  1. Train yourself to recognize a strong voice

This is easy, like if you read a lot or whatever. I mean, anybody can tell the difference between Ray Bradbury and Doug Adams and Earny Heming-whats-it, even if you throw out the plots. You just gotta know how to listen. Like, Bradbury is real poetic and descriptive and stuff. He can take you right back to summer vacation even if you’re freezing your toes off in December. Adams just thinks the whole universe is a joke, which makes him kind of depressing and really funny at the same time. And Heming…the Old Man and the Sea guy? He cuts out all the fancy words and just tells a simple story, but it’s pretty deep and stuff. I’ll post some little word clippy things next week so you can see what I mean.

  1. Remember, your narrator is a character, too

If you are behooved to write in the first person—telling the tale through, for instance, the eyes of your protagonist—you have certainly delved into that character’s innermost thoughts. But have you skewed every line of narrative with a unique, stylistic flourish?

Worse, a third-person writer may not have dreamed there was another character waiting to be tended to. But even a narrator who never steps upon the threshold of a single scene, is as vital as your hero—nay, perhaps more so. He is the voice within the reader’s ear. The eye peeking over their shoulder. Wouldst thou really let him wallow in commonplace prose?

Naturally, he must come from within you, and thus must start out as a part of you. Mayhaps he is an uttermost extreme version of a one side of yourself. Or mayhaps he is the darkest corner of your mind. Mayhaps he is the wit you wish you were. Ask yourself why he is telling the story. To entertain? To teach? To confront? To rant? Why does he bother himself to write it all down?

You may write in his voice all the time, or you may change narrators, as you would shoes, for each story you write. But whatever you do, do not let him (or, as it may be, her) become a bore.

  1. Experiment

When write long piece, piece like novel, you maybe accidentally write different voices. Maybe you read this book when you write chapter one, make you write one way. Maybe you listen to this song when you write chapter two, make you write another way. Then you go back, you read different voices, you see one you like, you write again to make all sound like voice you like. But you should try do more.

Take paragraph, write five different ways. Like a different person write each one. Maybe one a scared little child. Maybe one a drama queen. Maybe one a angry man. Or a alien. Or Death.

Find voice you like? Write more. Write whole scene.

We go deeper in voice experimentation in two weeks.

  1. Rewrite!

Come on people. You should have guessed this one. Did you not read the title of this website? What is wrong with you? Finding your voice isn’t as easy as changing a word or two. Oh-ho, of course you wish it was. But we can’t all have what we wish for, now can we? You’re going to have to go over that baby a few times, maybe alotta times, before it sounds peachy-keen. You should already know this. Why are you still reading?

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How terrible writers get on the bestseller list

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We love to deride them. The Stephanie Meyers-es and Dean Koontz-es of the world, who, despite lacking unique voices, characters, and descriptions, not to mention decent editing, are rolling in big piles of cash while the rest of us—real writers—are still flipping burgers at the Happy Clown. Indignant, we make fun of poorly-worded sentences, point out every typo with visceral satisfaction, and mock-gag at cheesy dialogue. It is the sheer magnitude of their success that makes them at once a mystery and an easy target.

Today I seek to solve that mystery—and to shrink the target.

My Theory.

There are writers who tell stories, and there are storytellers who write. The commercially-successful yet grammatically-challenged authors like Meyers and Koontz are storytellers who write. And while writers like myself have an awful tendency to insult them whenever possible, storytellers do have talent. In fact, there is a lot both types can learn from each other.

The Differences.

Storytellers are big-picture people. They are good at identifying major plot points and conveying those points simply and clearly. They are good at pacing, and using every scene to push the story forward. Their work is mostly composed of action and dialogue. But they have trouble with the details, with the close-up shots like character development, voice, theme, and setting. Grammar and punctuation are often just an afterthought.

Writers are detail people. They’re good at finding new ways to describe scenery, at creating unique characters, at using metaphor and analogy. Their work is thick with narration, description, and introspection. But they struggle with discerning the important parts of the story from the unimportant parts. They can write whole paragraphs that sound beautiful but put a drag on the story’s pace. They have trouble simply telling people what their books are about, and some of them have trouble coming up with a plot to begin with.

My advice to the storytellers: Many storytellers seem to be successful whether or not they put the extra effort into the writing, but don’t let that become an excuse. If you have completed a book in less than six months, don’t call it finished. Spend some more time on it—a year, at least—focusing on the writerly side of your craft. Dig deep into your characters and the poetry of the narration. Seek to create something not just entertaining, but beautiful.

My advice to the writers: Don’t attack the commercially successful storytellers; try to learn from what talents they have. Study the way they handle the movements of the story. What scenes do they play up? What scenes do they skim over? What makes it interesting?

As long as there is more to learn—which is always—it is our duty to do so. That’s what makes us professionals. That’s what makes us worthy of being read.

Are you more a writer or a storyteller? What do you struggle with?

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How to Format Your Manuscript

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Times New Roman. 12 pt font. Double spaced. You’ve got all that covered. But what else do you have to do to get your manuscript in shape for submission? Here’s some handy info I stole from a used copy of Writer’s Market (any edition of which I highly recommend; mine’s a 2004).

Cover page

In the upper left-hand corner, list your real name, street address, phone number, and email address (remember to use a professional-looking email addy based on your name) – this is the only part that should be single-spaced.

 In the upper right-hand corner, put the word count rounded to the nearest 500.

 One-third of the way down the page, center the book title in all caps. Double space, “by,” double-space again and type your name (or pseudonym).

Chapters

Start each chapter on a new page, one-third of the way down the page. Write the number of the chapter, a colon, and the chapter title (if applicable) in all caps, centered. Double space and begin the chapter.

Header

Create a header with your last name, page number, and shortened version of book title (unless it’s already short), all separated by dashes, and all caps. (For directions on this, type “insert header” into the search in MS Word Help.) 

Spaces

Double space everything. Indent the first line of every paragraph. Do NOT include an extra line between each paragraph, and do NOT include an extra space between sentences. Align text to the left; do NOT justify. Your margins are fine at whatever Word automatically sets them (usually between 1 and 1.5 inches).

Favor Chicago over AP Style

Generally, fiction favors Chicago style and journalism favors AP style. So use em dashes—like this—instead of en dashes – like this. And don’t forget your serial commas when listing three, four, or more of anything. When in doubt, consult Strunk & White.

No fancy fonts!

I know I already mentioned Times New Roman. Apparently Courier is okay, too. But seriously – don’t even use a fancy font for the titles. Your story should stand out because of the writing, not the type. Besides, if you send an e-query, the agent’s computer might not recognize said fancy font, and it’ll just pick the next-closest thing, which may look grotesque.

No fancy paper!

Standard 8.5×11 white printer paper. No colors, designs or sparkles!

File type

“.doc” seems to be the universally accepted file type. If you have a current version of MS Word, it may automatically save as a .docx, but if the agent you are querying has an older version of Word (like mine), they won’t be able to open it – so make sure you change it to .doc.

Questions? Need clarification? Shoot me a comment!

The second most important sentence in your book

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Copywriting (my day job) will never be as rewarding as fiction writing, but they share some similarities in craft. For example, the headline.

“Headline” doesn’t just refer to the large type on the front of a newspaper; it can mean the main line of text on any ad, billboard, webpage, or whatever. I probably spend more time writing headlines than anything else, mainly because they’re difficult. I can easily write a paragraph in fifteen minutes, but I might take hours to find the right headline for one ad. Why?

Lacking a striking image, the headline is the most important part of the ad. It must capture the attention of the audience and compel them to read the rest of the ad. It’s not enough to be well-written. Good writing by itself is not compelling. The same applies to the first sentence of your book.*

The first sentence of your book is the make-or-break moment for many readers, when they choose to keep reading, or to put it down forever.

So, a few pointers:

  • If you haven’t spent more time on your first sentence than on any other sentence in your book, you’re doing it wrong.
  • Scenic description, no matter how poetic, isn’t compelling.
  • Fight or chase scenes, no matter how action-packed, aren’t compelling if you don’t know anything about the characters involved.
  • What is compelling? It’s hard to put a finger on it, but it is usually weird, surprising, insightful, contradictory, or witty.

Examples!

In the fading afternoon light, the helicopter skimmed low along the coast, following the line where the dense jungle met the beach.

               –The Lost World, Michael Crichton

She seemed to float above the ghostly evening mist like a menacing beast rising from the primeval ooze.

               –Sahara, Clive Cussler

Eragon knelt in a bed of trampled reed grass and scanned the tracks with a practiced eye.

               –Eragon, Christopher Paolini

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

                –Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

Those all sound quite nice. But compare them to the following:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

               –Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

All my life, I’ve wanted to go to Earth.

               –Podkayne of Mars, Robert A. Heinlein

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

               –The Go Between, L.P. Hartley

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

               -William Goldman on The Princess Bride, by S. Morgenstern.

There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

               –The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis

Which ones make you want to keep reading? How does your first sentence measure up?

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*I call the first sentence in a book the second most important sentence because in keeping with the philosophy that we owe our readers satisfactory closure, the last sentence of the book is actually the most important. But I digress.

The four days that made me a writer

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When I was in grade school, I went to writing camp with my two best friends. This consisted of the three of us staying at the house of a creative writing teacher for four days.

The first thing I remember doing was sitting down at her little card table, one of us on each side, pencils poised over notebooks as we gazed off into space. Miss Judy was spouting random phrases, spaced out to give us time to think in between, and occasionally one of us would bend over the table, scribbling something on the notebook paper. I can’t remember any of the specific phrases she gave us, but they were something like: a strange visitor…the first day of school…the last time we met…my best friend…and so on. Writing prompts. Sources of inspiration.

Since then, I’ve looked at writing prompts on a few writing websites and been disappointed. Most set up a situation and then ask you how it ends. Others give you a list of words to use, or a picture to write a story about. This seems to me more exercise than inspiration. The simple phrases Miss Judy gave us sparked our imaginations and empowered us to write whole stories.

Second, Miss Judy separated us. We each had our own corner of the house, where we wouldn’t be distracted by one another. She would set the timer for 45 minutes and we would sit there and write whatever story had been inspired by her prompts. My writing spot was a long, straight hallway, with very few doors and no decoration. Stark white. It had a cold, clinical, futuristic feel. I can’t stress enough just how much I enjoyed sitting in this hallway. Something about its emptiness excited me, the same way a blank page excites me. I think this was the first time I felt the intense joy of creating.

When the 45 minutes were up, we gathered together and read aloud what we had written – and here was the kicker: we had to read it exactly as we had written it. No fixing grammar mid-read. This encouraged us to edit more meticulously before we came to the group session; it helped us to look more objectively at our own writing, because we knew we’d soon have to face the criticism of our fellow writers (which was always kind…but still!). Then, of course, we gave each other suggestions and encouragement.

Best. Four days. Ever. It was eat, sleep, write, critique. Miss Judy taught me a lot about writing, and she fueled my passion for something I had, until that point, only been mildly interested in. Although my two best friends now only write casually, occasionally, I have grown into a writing fiend. I’m addicted. If I go more than a week without working on some form of fiction, I start to get depressed. And I couldn’t be happier about that.

What’s your origin story? How did you become a writer?