What is Voice?

Don’t even think about it. 

I’m writing these entries for writers in the process of writing. I’m sharing what I’ve learned to help other writers.

I’m not helping critics. I’m not trying to help people who review finished books or movies.

And voice is something that only people judging finished products should think about . . . and maybe not even then.

I’ve been a critic and a reviewer and a judge. Those are wildly different roles from the role of a writer. As a critic, you’re not writing drafts of the story, novel, or movie. You’re appreciating the finished story, novel, or movie. That’s very, very different from the role of a writer in the middle of developing a story.

Reviewers and critics and others may talk about voice and think about voice and say a book has voice, a script has voice, a movie has a voice. Whatever.

Writers, please let it gooooo, let it go!

I wanted to add this note about voice because I wrote the last entry on your unique DNA as a storyteller. That’s totally different from voice. Who you are as a storyteller is something you’ll discover and create as you write and improve and learn more about yourself. You have to write stories — lots of them — in order to discover the kinds of stories you’re drawn to. This inclination is already in you. You just have to pay attention to the stories you’re compelled to write. 

Voice is not that. Your unique DNA as a storyteller is about what you write. Voice is about how you write. Voice is an external judgment about who you are based on an impression given by the way you write.

So . . . what is voice?

Voice in the best sense can be thought of as writing style. It refers to the way a writer puts words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into . . . and so on. But voice is also thought of as the effect of style on the reader, and the effect on the reader is a sense of an author’s personality. So voice in its worst sense is the revelation of who the author really is.

Holy crap, that’s a dangerous thing for a writer to ever think about.

If you’re a writer, and someone just told you that the way you write your story is going to reveal your genuine personality — and therefore if you kind of suck at writing right now, then that’s going to reveal that you have no genuine personality worth a ding-dong — then oh, man, you feel the pressure, you feel the heartache, you feel the anxiety and the dread and . . . yeah, the pressure.

I worry, as a teacher of writing, that if I make a writer believe that their writing style needs to reveal their unique personality, I will kill that writer’s spirit. 

I will make them want to quit. When you’re a teacher, especially of students in middle and high school and, well, even college and graduate school, you have to think about ways to inspire students to try and to fail and to keep going. You want them to have fun writing, have fun rewriting, and in fact have fun during the whole process. I make sure I focus on the experience of the entire writing process. I don’t want them to focus on what other people will say about their finished product.

Remember I’m a teacher. I’m not a gatekeeper. If you’re a gatekeeper, you can shame writers by judging their voice. As a teacher, I never do that.

Students judge themselves against other people so much, so often, and so mercilessly that I have to be the antidote. I don’t want them to quit. I want them to enjoy the process of becoming whoever they want to become. And that means we’re going to write, write, and write some more, and we’re not going to stop because we’re afraid of what other people might say about us.

You’re a writer because you write, not because other people think you have “a voice.”

So write.

But what if you WANT to think about voice?

Voice is like confidence or happiness. You don’t get it because you say it. You get it because you’ve done something to earn it. You have to do something that gives you confidence. You have to do something that gives you happiness.

Voice, like confidence or happiness, is an effect of a previous effort.

Voice is a judgment about writing style. Voice is not a tool for helping writers develop a story.

Voice is not a strategy or a goal. It’s not something you can force or touch or plan.

In fact, voice is an obstacle. 

Voice is a wall in front of you. Voice intimidates! It can block you from even starting. If you think about voice during the process of writing, you’ll freeze up. Voice is basically a judgment of what other people will one day think about you because of your writing style.

Oh, my. The horror.

You haven’t even finished — or maybe you haven’t even started — and you’re already worried about being judged for your writing style or your essence or your X factor or lack thereof? If you start worrying about what other people will think about your writing because that’s what they’ll think about you, you’re dead. It’s over.

And that’s why, as a writing teacher, I never talk about voice.

Think of a pitcher on the mound. If they start thinking about every movement of their body and prejudge the effect on the trajectory of the pitch of every movement of their body, the pitcher will tighten up, freeze up, and choke.

Think of a golfer. If they start thinking about every movement of their body — their backswing, their knees, their hips — they’re going to carve a divot or slice into the woods or miss the ball completely.

Pitchers and golfers are best when they don’t break down their movements into individual parts. They’re best when they don’t think about throwing a ball or hitting a ball. They’re best when they don’t focus on willing the ball into the catcher’s mitt or onto the green. That’s too much head-think, and this is body-feel. They can’t control the baseball or batter, the golf ball or the green. They can only control themselves. 

So they think about the totality of the movement, the feel of the whole pitch, the feel of the swing itself.

Thinking about voice can make you break down your writing into way too many little parts because you think each part contributes in an important way to creating an impression of your personality in the mind of the reader.

Willing yourself to have a voice can make you choke.

So forget it. Work on the story. Write your first draft.

Don’t worry about what effects on the reader your paragraphs and sentences and words and punctuation will have. That’s giving way too much meaning to the little stuff. 

Don’t press your nose against the laptop screen and take a whiff of the compound sentence you just wrote and worry what its odor reveals about your soul.

You’re going to rewrite your story a dozen times later, in ways big (chapters) and small (sentences). You have so much time to craft your prose or your script. Your job is to power through the process.

Okay, so what SHOULD you think about?

Do what athletes do. Focus on your role in the game. Love what you’re doing. Get into it. Get into body-feel more than head-think.

Look instead to the end of the story, the act, the chapter, the scene. Your characters need you! They’re waiting for you! Think about them. Help them get to the end of the scene.

Once you have a goal you can reach for, you will feel pulled toward it. You will race toward it. You’ll feel what your characters are feeling, and you’ll write in the way you need to write in that moment for that character or for that scene.

Write because it feels good to move your characters through the conflict of the scene.

Don’t think about how you sound.

Think about what your characters are experiencing.

Project yourself into their world and live through them.

Your characters don’t care what you sound like. Your characters need you to make them come alive! So focus on THEIR experience.

That’s the thrill of writing fiction in the first place. You get to vicariously experience the world from the points of view of different characters. 

They’re not here for you. You’re here for them.

That’s what helps me, anyway. I need to focus on my characters, on what they want in the story but also — pedal to the metal — on what they want in this scene, and that’s how I get to the end of the scene. That’s my goal. Write to the end of this scene . . . and the next scene . . . and the next. . . .

And that’s what sounds good to me.

_____

PHOTO: I took a photo of sheep during a school field trip.