The Elusive Voice

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Over the past few months, I've been working on revisions. While incorporating feedback from various sources on my own work, I've also critiqued pages for others from a wide range of genres. The elusive voice, the unique filter that makes a work our own, strikes me as both the most difficult thing to revise personally and to address for writing partners.

I love the drafting stage of writing because of the freedom it allows. The words flow unhindered because they can be tightened later. My voice as a writer is born during this stage. In the next phase, through learning and experience, I sculpt the story and the sentences. We have these rules drilled into us: use more active verbs, cut all the adverbs, stay within the restrictions of your point of view, and don't pull the audience out of the narrative. These stick out in my mind because not only have I heard them in crits, I've used them with other people. But sometimes. Sometimes we need to break the rules to develop our voice.

Let's take a look at the opening lines of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. The knife had a handle of polished black bone, and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately. 

Gaiman breaks every one of those rules. If I were giving comments on his first page in a blog contest, I could say:

Don't open with passive voice. You could cut this first line to say, A hand in the darkness held a knife. Look, you even cut words that way! You could cut not immediately, too. Watch out for those adverbs! And four adjectives in the second sentence--try to cut that down to only the most important one. In that third sentence, you address the audience. You could change it to say who specifically would not know they'd been cut. I also don't really get a sense of character in your first paragraph. Who is this book about?

I felt guilty writing the above paragraph, even in jest, because Gaiman's opening line and chapter are my absolute favorites. (Not just my favorites of Gaiman's, but my all time favorites.) Who cares if that first sentence is passive? The rhythm and the image set the perfect eerie tone for the rest of the book. Chills ran down my back the moment I read them for the first time, and I was hooked. And in the end, isn't that all that really matters? Being able to hook the reader?

I know we have the rules for a reason. I try to be ruthless with the passive voice and the adverbs. But sometimes we just have to trust our own voice as writers to tell the story in our own way, focusing more on our connection with the reader than on murdering all the darlings.


Music for today: Here Comes Your Man by the Pixies.

Writers on Writing: The Writer's Process

Last week Alison Miller tagged me in the Writer's on Writing blog hop, and today's my day! You can check out her blog here. Thanks, Alison!

1. What are you working on?

My work-in-progress is a YA contemporary about a girl with a disabled father and a mother in prison. She's done a fine job taking care of herself and her dad, thank you very much, until the uncle she blames for her mom's conviction shows up to ruin everything. Again. The writing is going slow, with end of the school year activities on top of work-type editing responsibilities. But I am in love with this character. She's brave and strong and loyal, with a questionable moral compass. The family relationships are complex, and it's exciting to see how their interactions play out. I've readjusted my goal of finishing the first draft from a certain date to sometime this summer.

2. What makes your work different?

Every piece of long fiction I've written takes place mostly in the South. This didn't begin as an intentional choice, yet most pieces take place in north or central Florida, in areas where I've lived for many years. North Florida has a unique flavor, somehow both deep South and lassez-faire, diverse in culture and beliefs, and both literally and figuratively hot and steamy. I hate seeing Southerners depicted as dim-witted and close-minded on television and in movies, and though less often, also in books. I try to bring a different touch of the South to my work, something that enhances the characters without drawing too much attention to itself.

3. Why do you write what you do?

I fell in love with YA while teaching middle school. It started out as a way to stay tuned to what my students were reading. I read everything they recommended, alongside my Anita Shreve and Stephen King. One day, a student came to me and said, "Mrs. D, you have to read this! It's about a boy, and he finds out he's a wizard, and..." Suddenly I wasn't just reading children's books for them anymore. I was one of those people waiting to pick up the next Harry Potter at midnight when it came out. When I started seeking out YA books that were beyond my sixth graders for my personal reading, I knew I was hooked.

Still, when I started writing, my first novel was in the "women's" fiction camp. It took place over twenty plus years, but it began when the main character was a freshman in college. But she didn't act that way. She acted like someone in high school. And it hit me that tapping in to the potential for a life full of wonders and firsts and mistakes, was the sweet spot. The place where I wanted to write. I started reading YA almost exclusively, and writing it, and I haven't looked back since.

4. What is your writing process?

Everything starts with a character. I think about him or her for a while, and I start with jotting down everything. Likes and dislikes, quirks, family background, friends, everything. Once I have a general idea of what the problem will be, I write a rough idea of what the climax will be, usually not knowing how it will end. Next I write more back stories for more characters, and then I just dig in and let those characters take me where they will. So, in short, I'm a pantser.

For my fantasy Trespassers, I have composition books filled with the "rules" of the world, drawings, maps, sticky notes for errant thoughts, the arch of the would-be trilogy, and extensive research of the history on which my magic was based. For my magical realism Perception, everything is cataloged in Word and Excel. (I think for me, the method changes to fit the story.) I do listen to music while drafting, and when I wrote Perception, my playlists included music my MC Evan loved. I edit and revise in quiet, and now that I'm drafting again, I'm having to find new music to suit my girl.

This has been so much fun! Alison also tagged Melanie Stanford today, so please check out her answers. And I'm tagging fellow Florida girl Missy LaRae, so please stop by her blog here for her answers on Thursday, May 29th.