Finding Your Voice

by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

Yesterday I read a great piece by Lev Grossman (author of the Magicians trilogy) on finding his author voice through writing fantasy fiction (‘Finding my Voice in Fantasy‘). He admitted that he felt something was missing in the two ‘literary’ novels he had published and that, when he was producing those works, the writing came slow and hard as if he hadn’t quite found his ‘voice’ yet. For Grossman it was writing fantasy, and the liberation of writing against the literary expectations he had imposed on himself, that gave him the chance to discover his true ‘voice’ in his writing.

For Grossman “it was the most profound, intense writing experience I’d ever had. The icy grip of reality on my fiction cracked, and a torrent of magic came rushing out”. I love that line – for it encapsulates beautifully the experience of truly being in the writing ‘zone’ when your author voice takes over and allows the story to emerge. 

I’ve recently delved into the writing world of YA and middle grade fiction and what occurred to me was most surprising. I expected my YA voice would be an easier one to access (I still feel most days like I’m 16 after all…) but instead, it was the middle grade world that set my voice free. Maybe it’s because I feel attuned to my nine year old twin boys’ world, perhaps it’s because I still read aloud to them each night and these books tend to be for the most part middle grade fantasy novels…who knows? Whatever the reason I felt the exact sense of liberation that Grossman describes. 

I remember when I was writing my first book, Consequences of Sin, I certainly felt as if I was channeling the voice of my heroine Ursula Marlow – and when I returned to writing the third book in the series, Unlikely Traitors, that voice was inside me, ready to be channeled once more. I hesitated before deciding to write a middle grade book because I wasn’t really sure I’d be able to access that kind of ‘voice’ within me.  To my surprise the voice that emerged was just as strong as Ursula’s. 

The upshot of all this, is that I think many writers need to dabble in different genres to explore aspects of ‘voice’ which they may never have expected. I know plenty of writers who consider themselves ‘literary’ and, by default, superior to those of us who write commercial or genre fiction. For many of them the act of writing is a struggle (sometimes I wonder if they feel that the angst of it all somehow adds to the mystique). I wonder, if they allowed themselves the freedom to explore other genres, whether they would discover a new and more accessible ‘voice’ within them. I can only hope that others take Grossman’s lead and realize, as he did that: 

“Writing about magic felt like magic. It was as if all my life I’d been writing in a foreign language that I wasn’t quite fluent in, and now I’d found my mother tongue. It turned out I did have a voice after all. I’d had it all along. I just wasn’t looking for it in the right place.”


Isn’t that great?!

So tell me TKZers how did you discover your writer’s voice?

Books and Movies: Forever Entwined

By John Gilstrap
NOTE: I’ll not be much of an active participant in my own blog day today because I won’t have access to a computer or even my iPhone.  Why, you ask?  Because I will be getting a VIP tour of the Navy SEALs compound in Virginia Beach, and they don’t let you take cell phones with you.  For the record, that’s not a moast.  That’s a pure neener-neener outright brag.

Now, on to today’s post:

Reading Joe Moore’s excellent post on Wednesday about the importance of setting, it was interesting to see how many examples of setting were in fact taken from movies.  In the context of Kathryn Lilley’s great post about Finding Your Voice, I got to thinking about how much movies have influenced books over the years.

As a writer of commercial novels (not to be confused with lit’rateur (read that word with a New England elite accent)), I am obsessive about pacing, imagery and snappy dialogue–the holy trinity of screenwriting.  I think in scenes, making every effort to begin and end on action.  I believe in jump cuts, taking the reader from one scene to another quickly.  Even my contribution to the voice discussion focused on “camera placement” as a means of keeping POV consistent.

So, how does a writer fulfill the goals of pacing, imagery and snappy dialogue?  It’s all about voice, baby.  And voice is inexorably linked to point of view.  Consider these two descriptions of the same scene:

1. Finally, he arrived at the desert.  He stepped out of the car, stretched his back and closed his eyes, letting the heat and the dry air soak into his skin.  If he used his imagination, he could smell the aroma of purple coneflower and Easter lilly cactus carried on the constant breeze.

2. He’d arrived.  There was no putting it off anymore.  He climbed out of his car into the blistering moonscape, somehow sensing that he’d stepped two rungs lower on the food chain.  Between rattlesnakes, scorpions and a climate that sucks the moisture from your bones, this was a place for the dead, not the living.  It’s no wonder that we tested nukes here.

To my eye and ear, those examples illustrate how an author’s voice simultaneously drives action, imagery and characterization–in this case in the form of inner monologue.  At least, I think that’s what it’s called.  Through description alone, filtered through the voice of the POV character, we get a glimpse at two entirely different personality types.  In both examples we learn that we’re in the desert, and that it’s hot.  The rest is all characterization.

And for me, all else being equal, I have all I need to know about the setting for this moment in whatever story this would turn out to be.  I’ve given the reader enough to take it from here and develop it further in his or her imagination.  This is a stylistic thing for me, but once that scene is set, it’s time for the character to do something, lest the pacing slow.

People are used to experiencing thrillers–my genre–on the screen.  In order to compete, I need to provide that same kinetic experience on the page, but with the addition of deeper character development.

What do you think? Do movies affect the way books are written?  Is our addiction to entertainment from the screen the reason why thrillers from the past feel sorta slow when we read them today?