This month’s freebie wallpaper features a quote from The Book Thief, one of my all-time favorite books. Fits 1440 x 900.
Want it? Click on it. You’ll see a page with just the image, which you can then right click and “save image as…”
Photo by Anna Gutermuth
Following last week’s post on how to find your voice, here are the first 100-ish words from five books with unique and strong voices; a mix of first and third person, and of new and classic authors.
Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge Signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.
Unnecessary words like “of my own knowledge,” “myself,” and “emphatically.” Beginning sentences with articles and ending them with prepositions! And of course his completely pointless rabbit trail about the door nail. Yet none of it is truly pointless. By breaking these rules in the way he did, Mr. Dickens makes the story conversational. We’re not simply reading a story; we’re hearing it told by a charming, if slightly wordy, English gentleman.
First the colors.
Then the humans.
That’s usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try.
***Here is a small fact***
You are going to die.
I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that’s only the A’s. Just don’t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.
***Reaction to the aforementioned fact***
Does this worry you? I urge you—don’t be afraid. I’m nothing if not fair.
You can tell at a glance that Mr. Zusak is different. His bold interruptions to his own prose are a fascinating quirk all by themselves. Add the narrator’s somewhat depressed sense of humor and subtle conveyance of authority, and you become hooked. Notice the things he says and doesn’t say. He doesn’t say who or what he is, but we can infer from what he does say (“Then the humans.”) that he is not human and (“I’m nothing if not fair.”) that he has some control over whether we live or die.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has—or rather had—a problem. Which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
Note the intentional wordiness, the amusing use of adverbs, how quickly he zeroes in from the hugeness of the universe to the ordinariness of digital watches. Mr. Adams has a unique way of looking at life, the universe, and everything—it is all absurd to him, and he enjoys the simple pleasure of sharing that absurdity with the rest of us.
You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunty Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas, is all told about in that book—which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.
Breaking rules left and right here. Note the atrocious grammar and the way he interrupts and repeats himself. Mr. Twain puts us right in the room with Huck Finn. Simply the way it is worded helps us to both hear the accent and see the boy—before ever being told what he sounds or looks like.
All my life I’ve wanted to go to Earth. Not to live, of course—just to see it. As everybody knows, Terra is a wonderful place to visit but not to live. Not truly suited to human habitation.
Personally, I’m not convinced that the human race originated on Earth. I mean to say, how much reliance should you place on the evidence of a few pounds of old bones plus the opinions of anthropologists who usually contradict each other anyhow when what you are being asked to swallow so obviously flies in the face of all common sense?
Look at how long that last sentence is, with only one comma, and how it makes you read straight through it without breathing—and how subtly it conveys the talkative teenage girl. Mr. Heinlein achieves the ultimate victory in turning himself into an underage female.
Which of your favorite books have unique voices? Post an excerpt in the comments, or on your blog and link it back here!
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WANT HELP FINDING YOUR VOICE? Join us for Voice Week 2014, September 22-26
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The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak, is one of the greatest books I have ever read. This was a big surprise, because it was published in 2005 by a thirty-something author, and I’m not often impressed by modern literature. But this book belongs among the classics.
What drives me nuts is that even though most people who read it love it, few seem to have a clue why – and thus cannot fully appreciate its awesomeness. Basically, it is a perfect example of one of the finer aspects of Show, Don’t Tell: trick your readers into paying attention.
The classic authors, the ones who evolved storytelling from folk art into fine art, found new ways to describe everyday things. They looked at the world with poet’s eyes and then wrote it in a way that hit their readers in the gut. New authors, however, generally just copy the old ones, and what was once creative has now become cliché.
Here’s an example:
Snow blanketed the ground like a great white sheet. Next to the train line, there was a trail of deep footprints. Trees were coated in ice.
There is nothing wrong with this. The imagery is really good – at least, it was the first time some writer looked at snow and said “hmm, that looks like a blanket.” But how many times have you seen “snow blanketed the ground/mountains/landscape” in a book? Chances are, you’ve seen it so many times, that you glaze over it. Consider instead Zusak’s version:
It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it had pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.
Notice he uses the same concept as in the first excerpt – he even uses the word “blanket” – but he does it in a new way. He personalizes the simile (“the way you would pull on a sweater”), and compares snow with clothing in an active way that gives inanimate objects a human quality. The globe pulled on a sweater. Footprints sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets.
The plane was still spewing smoke. A black haze poured from the engines. When it crashed, it had made three deep gashes in the earth, and its wings had been ripped from its body.
Again, not bad. Terms like spewing, poured, gashes, and ripped from its body make it interesting. But all that has been done before. Let’s try Zusak:
The plane was still coughing. Smoke was leaking from both its lungs. When it crashed, three deep gashes were made in the earth. Its wings were now sawn-off arms. No more flapping. Not for this metallic little bird.
Notice again the human qualities he gives the plane, even though he goes on to compare it with a bird. Coughing. Lungs. Arms. It’s so strange, you have to slow down to decipher it; you have to pay attention. Which, in turn, makes you feel every word.
Writing this way is hard. You can’t just pour it out – you have to think about it. But it can mean the difference between great writing, and okay writing. I read somewhere that Zusak tried to put one great thing on every page. My advice is to do the same. Also, read The Book Thief.
