Tag: literary voice

Voice Week – Things to Know

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Voice Week starts Monday, and if you’re like me, you’re not quite ready yet! If I can just get those last two voices sounding right…

Anyway, some housekeeping before we start:

Inspiration Monday is postponed until next week. So you get two weeks to play with the prompts I posted last week! Woohoo!

Remember to check the Voice Writer list. The right-hand column over here. Make sure your name is on it if you are participating, and comment if I still need to add you. I think we’re up to 20 people – great crowd!

Don’t worry about what time you post your voices. Without fail, every year, there’s some poor soul apologizing for posting early or late. The thing is, unless you mention it, I WON’T KNOW. We are in all different time zones, and my two-dimensional brain can’t even remember whether Australia is behind or ahead of Texas, let alone by how many hours. So I’ll just assume you’re all posting on the right day for your time zone. NO WORRIES!!!

There aren’t really rules. So don’t be nervous if you’re not sure what you wrote is what the challenge called for. Everyone interprets it differently, and that’s part of the fun!

Subscribe to (or hang out at) Voice Week HQ. I’ll be reblogging links to ALL the voices on that site, so you can click through to ’em all and get the whole scope of Voice Week in one place. Be sure to comment on what you read – the conversation is part of the wonderfulness.

So let’s get this fun started!

Still need some guidance? Here are some blog posts about voice!

How to find your voice – in five voices

Five great examples of voice

How to write like someone you’re not

How to write in an other-worldly voice

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Voice Week: Tips and a Prize!

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Announcing the Voice Week 2014 Prize!

The Hobbit book

 

And here it is. A lovely, miniaturized copy of The Hobbit. Fitting well in Hobbit hands, it’s the perfect size to take there and back again.

 

 

 

 

The Hobbit

 

Also small enough to sneak into a showing of The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies, so as to shout corrections at the screen.

 

 

illustration from The Hobbit

 

 

Featuring gold-tipped edges and black and white illustrations by Tolkien himself. Isn’t it precious?

It will be awarded to a randomly-chosen Voice Writer–so this isn’t a competition, but you do have to participate to win. Hint hint.

 

 

Speaking of Voice Week, it’s less than three weeks hence; I hope you’ve started writing. In case it helps, here’s the process I use for creating my own Voice Week pieces.

  1. Pick a prompt. I like to choose something that has a lot of emotional potential, but that isn’t too complicated. The first year, I picked “alcoholic mother” – a good opportunity to express character without having to flesh out a whole story. It’s more like a glimpse of some feelings than a story.
  2. Outline the week. I jot down ideas for which voices I want to try. For alcoholic mother, I tried versions that were educated (complete sentences, better vocabulary), uneducated (incomplete sentences, aint’s), teenagery (contractions, slang), fudging the truth (like educated, but with lies!), medieval (ye olde) and childlike (simplistic).
  3. Rough draft two or three pieces. I start with the ones I feel would be easy to write, voices I already have a good handle on. I tweak to make the differences as striking as possible, and may swap a few sentences.
  4. Look for themes. At this point I look to see if I have subconsciously included some kind of deeper message. If I have, I’ll shape the other pieces to flesh out that message more clearly.
  5. Read some stuff similar to the voices I’m trying to create. This helps me get an “ear” for what the writing should sound like. I tend to be a chameleon writer who conforms my own work to whatever I’m reading at the time. That may also be why I slip into a (very bad) English accent after watching too much Doctor Who.
  6. Write the remaining pieces. Finishing up, again based on outline and themes.
  7. Trim. Cutting down till they’re all close to 100 words, allowing wiggle room for wordier voices.
  8. Decide on the order I think they should appear. It might be chronological. Or the order might serve to tell a bigger story.
  9. Make my brother read them. Critique partners are so important—of course all your fellow Voice Writers will serve as critique partners during Voice Week itself, so this is a step that can be skipped.

Want more guidance? Here are some links!

How to write like someone you’re not

How to write in an other-worldly voice

Stay tuned for more.

Voice Week 2014: Aaaaaa!!!

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VW2014-Mon

September 22 – 26

Yes, friends, the time has come for the fourth annual, astounding, splendiferous, phantasmagorical, pen-bending event known as Voice Week.

Voice Week is a five day blogging challenge wherein average, ordinary citizens of the writing world push their literary abilities to the very limits of sanity–and possibly much further.

We will step outside our own matter-bound heads and into the mysterious, sensational, never-fully-explored minds of characters we have created. And, with luck, we will write in ways we have never written before.

We will write in their voices.

The rules are simple. Write five versions of the same flash story with identical facts but different voices. Make them each about 100 words long. Post one a day, Monday through Friday, September 22 – 26.

It’s not just about five different characters. It’s about five different tones. Five different thought patterns, and five different ways to express the same thing. Maybe your voices are different ages, or from different time periods, or different species.

Whomever they are, your mission is to make them sound different.

In experimenting with different voices, we hope to better understand our characters and to further develop our own unique voices. Voices that will make people recognize our work the way they recognize Dickens or Hemingway.

It’s not a competition; it’s a learning opportunity. And between now and September 22, I’ll point you to different tools that will help you understand what voice is and how to use it.

You can find all the details, including prompts, at Voice Week Headquarters.

I would so love for you to join the fun. Comment below or anywhere over there to get your name on the official Voice Writers list!

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How the Awesomeness Went: Voice Week 2013 Recap

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I think my favorite thing about Voice Week is that it’s like Inspiration Monday on steroids. Everybody posts some amazing piece on Monday, and then the awesomeness just keeps coming at you from different angles all week.

I’m so grateful to each of you for taking the time to join this project, both to create and to appreciate other writer’s voices. I’m astounded and humbled every year, when I write a few blog posts asking a bunch of strangers (but are we really strangers?) to do something crazy with me, and you all come up with this art that makes me gasp and giggle and tear up. There’s a heck of a lot wrong with this world, but if a bunch of random people can get together and do this – that’s a good reason to walk around with a grin on your face.

Every one of you impressed me. Every one. Here are some of my favorite lines from this week – and believe me, they were hard to choose!

 

He watched on the outskirts, unmoved by the tears. Hypocrites, all of them.  Anger swirled like a fog, draping over his shoulders.

From Carrie. Read about the funeral from the beginning.

 

As I fell I hoped he would remember me, and I hoped he could forget me too.

From Christina. Read about the fall from the beginning. Christina has also written a lovely recap of the week and what it taught her about her novel.

 

He says he’s careful: prays away from the others, doesn’t rub his faith in their faces, but a mother worries.

From Elmo. Read thoughts from the mothers of warriors from the beginning. Read Elmo’s recap, too.

 

They were different, all of them–different hues, different subjects, different strokes–but they all had the same eyes.

Leonardo’s eyes.

From Evan. Read the story of two renaissance legends from the beginning. Evan also has an interesting post on how much of yourself to put in your characters.

 

As fiercely intense as they looked in their full pads and helmets, it was easy to forget that they were just boys, and Michael had more reason than most coaches to remember that.

From Jennie. Read about the last nine seconds from the beginning.

 

The world is full of smells and, if you pay attention, your nose will tell you more than your eyes and ears combined.

From Jubilare. Read about the eerily empty house from the beginning.

 

The furnace is blazing, the bellows are blowing; a man must stand amid adversity and forge his own fortune.

From LLD Fiction. Read thoughts from the New World from the beginning.

 

He suddenly feels so young, so burdened. A wish burns within his chest—a heart-pounding desire that this sword remain lodged in place, a stubborn tribute to a monarch who could not possibly be him.

From Love The Bad Buy. Read the voices of the Aurthurian legend from the beginning.

 

Sunken, skeletal features look hollowly back.

You’re so fat, I hate you. You are a weak pathetic loser.

You had three grapes today, that is a small victory, but don’t backslide.

From Mr. Perfect. Read the voices of hunger from the beginning.

 

Do these words I’m reciting mean something to them?  Or is it just background noise?

From The Imaginator. Read thoughts from the gravesite from the beginning.

 

I am used to indifference; but how to confront love which is thicker and quicker than blood?

From The Inner Zone. Read about the boy who found his family from the beginning.

 

I can see the medics watching me. They’re waiting for me to fall down so they can run in and help. Stop watching me, you vultures.

From Writing Sprint. Read about the last leg of the race from the beginning.

 

Subconsciously I go to twist the gold band on my ring finger -except it’s not there, I look down at my hand, diverting my eyes from the phone; an indentation of the ring screams stark realisations to me…it also explains Tom’s cold cup of coffee each morning and the dinner he never eats.  It makes sense, but it does not…

From Yikici. Read a wife’s reactions to a life-altering phone call from the beginning.

 

The Prize

Remember that? The random number generator gave me #2, which make Christina Kann the lucky winner of a lovely hardcover copy of one of my favorite voice-ridden books, The Book Thief! Christina, I’ll be emailing you for your address so I can send it to you!

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What were some of your favorite moments from Voice Week? Tell me in the comments!

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October Wallpaper: Voices (what else?)

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Voice Week 2013 is just a little over a week away! Now’s the time to sign up – tell me in the comments if you want to. You can actually sign up right through November 4, but the earlier the better!

Aaaand here’s some wallpaper. I like the faces. Though at a glance it looks kind of creepy.

1440×900

Photos by Greeblie, Nadia, Seth Woodworth, Arielle Calderon and The US Army.

 

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