Finding Your Voice

FINDING YOUR VOICE
By Cynthia Sterling

Ask any editor what he or she is looking for in a new writer and, nine times out of ten, the answer will be “a fresh voice.” Then ask those same editors to define voice and their answers will be variations of “I can't put it into words, but I'll know it when I see it.”

Webster's defines voice as “distinction of form.” Voice is what makes your writing distinct from any other author's. It's the unique way you put words on paper. Some voices are more distinctive than others. See if you can match the following examples to their authors.

Gertrude Barkley stepped out of the Dooley Shaving Parlor and Tonsorial Surgery at the corner of Main Street and B Avenue. The several wide-eyed males loitering in the doorway gave the locally infamous spinster a wide berth. She smiled at the fellows, almost ruefully. “Good morning, gentlemen.” Her greeting met with mumbled response from the few who had not been struck mute by the sight before them. The rest continued to stare with as much astonishment and awe as when the circus elephant had been paraded down Main Street last spring. Gertrude knew, without their shocked expressions, that she had done it again. The quiet town of Venice, Missouri, was fated for another uproar. And once again she was the cause. —Pamela Morsi, Something Shady

The wind blew fitfully out of the east, as the carrier let Jeannette down, hot, tired, and dusty, in front of the house, instead of at the rear as he should have. But it was the large, bedraggled mourning wreath, like a tear on the gray, ragstone face of the Elizabethan manor house, that drew Miss Saincoeur to the wrong door. That, and habit. She was not yet used to thinking of front doors as a piece of her past.

The wreath beckoned in the bright sunlight, a mute expression of a grief so deep it had been left hanging for all who passed to see. The black silk ribbons were wind-tattered and gray with dust, the paper flowers tired, the dingy paper gloves upon which had once been written the name and age of the deceased, faded into illegibility. This evidence of a grief, not yet dimmed enough to see clear to removing such an eyesore, touched upon a tender place deep within Jeannette's heart, a tender place that still made her wince on occasion. Here was kinship with the man who was to be her master, before even they were met. Here, in the wilds of Kent, of all places, for the first time since crossing the Channel, was a connection with home—the thin thread of grief. —Elisabeth Fairchild, Lord Endicott's Appetite

Louisa Brannigan looked up at her ceiling and tried to control the anger that was bubbling inside her. It was four-thirty in the morning and the idiot upstairs had just gotten another call. He got them all night long. Not that she cared, but her bedside portable phone picked up his signal. The phone rang a second time, sending her flying from the bed in a rage. "That's it!" she shouted. “I can't take it anymore. I need my sleep. I need quiet. I need . . .” She stood with hands and teeth clenched, eyes narrowed, nose wrinkled, but she couldn't think what else she needed, so she snatched the phone from her night table, marched into the bathroom, threw the phone into the toilet, and closed the lid. Almost at once, peace descended on her. "Much better," she said. —Janet Evanovich, Naughty Neighbor

Each of the above authors has a very distinctive voice. Their word choices, sentence structures, settings and characters are all hallmarks of their particular voices.

Pamela Morsi's character thinks of the staring men outside the barbershop as fellows, while Janet Evanovich's heroine thinks of her neighbor as an idiot. Elisabeth Fairchild uses long compound sentences that give an almost lyrical quality to her prose while Janet Evanovich writes short, snappy sentences. Both Pamela Morsi and Elisabeth Fairchild introduce the reader to women who are breaking the rules—-Pam's character has just cut off her long hair and Elisabeth's character is a servant knocking at the front door of the house where she seeks employment.

But each woman is very different from the other: Pamela's character accepts her role as a rebel with quiet good humor, while Elisabeth's servant responds with gentle resignation to her fate. These choices, most likely unconscious ones made by the writers, make up the voice of each author.

How do you find your own fresh voice that will have editors and readers clamoring for your work? Here are some things you may find helpful.

Turn off the internal editor. Find a way to shut up the devil who sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear that you're doing it all wrong. Forget about what's right or proper. Don't worry about spelling and grammar at this stage of the game. Uncovering your voice is like digging for treasure—-you can't afford to be worried about a little dirt as you wield your shovel.

Take a look at some of your informal writing. Reread old letters or e-mail posts that you have written. E-mail is especially useful, since we tend to approach it more like conversation. Have you ever had an e-mail friend whose posts you always recognized, even before seeing their signature line? You recognized that person's voice. Reading your own e-mail may reveal your voice to you.

Keep a journal. Journaling is an excellent way to develop your voice. Knowing we are the only ones who will ever read the words on a journal page, we can feel free to experiment. Write letters to yourself in your journal. Experiment with free-writing-—putting down whatever comes into your head. Without the constraints of rigid form or worries about what others will think, your voice may sing out loud and clear.

Experiment with different styles. My own voice comes through most when I'm writing humor. Maybe it's because I relax more, or because I feel freer to experiment. I never would have discovered this if I hadn't tried to write a humorous novel. Different kinds of writing may reveal different aspects of your own voice. Try comedy, mystery, and angst-filled drama in both historical and contemporary settings.

Write in first person. I wrote and sold confession stories for many years and I believe this writing honed my voice more than anything else. First person writing forces you to become the character. Like letters, e-mail and journaling, first person prose has a certain informality that can lure your true voice out of hiding.

Speak your words into a tape recorder. Reading your work aloud and playing it back on a tape recorder can help you spot certain speech patterns, sentence structures and rhythms that identify your voice. Do you write lots of short, snappy sentences, or long, languid phrases? Both of these are attributes of certain voices. Rewrite favorite passages in your own words. A useful exercise for developing your voice is to select a passage from a favorite author and rewrite it in your own words. The words you choose, the style you use, will be in your unique voice.

Edit judiciously. Many people start to write with strong, unique voices, then make the mistake of editing the life out of their prose. Certainly you will want to clean up misspellings, correct your grammar, and erase ambiguity in your writing, but be careful not to remove all signs of life from your words. If an incomplete sentence sounds best to you, leave it in. If your character uses slang, don't correct their speech unless it’s impossible for the reader to understand. If beginning a sentence with
and sounds right to you, don't change it because of a critique partner's objections or to correspond with a writing rule you read somewhere. When the time comes and your editor suggests you change things, then you can reconsider. For now, you have the final say in your words. Your decisions reflect your unique voice-—the one editors are looking for.

Cynthia Sterling is the author of A WILLING SPIRIT, a June 1999 release from Berkley/Jove. Watch for GREAT CAEASAR'S GHOST in January 2000.