A Writer's Voice

I'm still mining the book Story Engineering, by Larry Brooks for the good bits. He offers six core competencies of a great story. Today's blog post is brought to you by core competency six: Voice. Every writer has a voice. But is it good enough to get you published? I don't know. Let's see what Brooks has to say about it.

 (This voice courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

Brooks says the number one problem with voice is overwriting: too many adjectives and adverbs, not enough power verbs, and simply tries too hard. Trying to sound eloquent with fat sentences full of beauty and eloquence that just don't sound right. Trying to imitate your favorite author, but going too far. Brooks equates it to wearing a clown suit to the Oscars. He sums it up with this: "Less is more."

Once you've learned to pare down the prose and say exactly what you want to say, you're left with sentences that reveal you, the author. The way you string your words together, the similes and metaphors you choose, the attitude you convey, is all unique. That's your voice. It's what makes your writing sound like you and not some other writer. Even if you've unconsciously tried to imitate your favorite author, you will still read/sound like you. 

Brooks goes on to say that voice is the least challenging of the six core competencies. Why? Because it will flow naturally from the author once ego, fear, and/or overzealousness get out of the way. The key there is natural. Once your writing sounds natural, not contrived, then you've found your voice. Side note from me (though I am NOT an expert at any of this), your natural voice can sound different from piece to piece. For example, my writing voice in my fantasy novels is very different from my voice in my mystery/thriller novels. I'm the same author, but changing genres and POV makes them sound very different. That's not a bad thing--I've found my voice and I'm happy with it, and soon I will drag an agent and/or publisher to my way of thinking.

I've read lots of different books on developing voice, learning to edit and revise and polish, but here's the advice I found the most helpful (and I'm terribly sorry, but I can't remember who said it, so I can't give them credit): Find an author whose writing style you admire, then study it. Not just read, but study. Look at how they handle dialogue. Study the beats they use between dialogue. Diagram how they intersperse scenery or monologue or backstory into the current action. You will learn a ton by doing that. Take a few minutes to copy one of their pages--just type it onto your computer and pay attention to every word choice. After you've finished, bring up your work-in-progress and try to implement some of the things you've learned. You'll be surprised what you've picked up.

I've really gone off track, so let me get back to the book. Brooks offers this paradox: "It [voice] is at once the most likely of the elements that will bar you from the inner circle of the published, while being least among the criteria that allows you entry to it." What he means is that agents and publishers know within one page if your writing is professional enough to be published. They'll need a lot more than one page to see if you can create a great character, or pull off a great plot twist, or create a structurally sound story. But voice shows up immediately. "If it [the story] compels, if it flows or doesn't overwhelm, it passes muster as acceptable. And that's all that's required of voice."

"Writing voice must be... earned. Discovered. Grown into. It must evolve into a signature cadence and tonality, with colors and nuances that imbue it with subtle energy and a textured essence of depth and humanity. Effortlessly, Simply. Cleanly. Without the slightest hue of purple. It must become something that is completely and totally yours."

You only get that by practicing. So close down your Internet connection or your RSS reader or whatever you're reading this on, open your work-in-progress, and get to work. 

-Sonja

Implementing Theme

Story Engineering, by Larry Brooks, offers six core competencies of a great story. In my last post, I started discussing theme. I'd like to finish it off now and move on. Like I've said before, theme is difficult for me to understand, so I'm going to rely heavily on Mr. Brooks and his ideas for implementing theme.

Mr. Brooks says something very comforting on the first page of this chapter: "If you have complete control over the character arc... theme can sometimes take care of itself. You don't have to have an agenda to speak to the truth of life, you simply need to explore and illuminate the experiences of your characters and the consequences of their choices."

You've got to be careful to not turn your novel into a soapbox or a sermon, though. Hitting theme TOO hard will turn away readers faster than a roach sandwich. Think of theme as a continuum, a scale from 0 to 10. A zero has absolutely no theme (like the TV show Seinfeld). A 10 is outright propaganda, like something from L. Ron Hubbard (he's selling you his worldview). Exploration of theme would fall in the mid-zone, and that's exactly where you want to be. 

By exploring your character's feelings and experiences through the novel, you build theme. "If your hero learns a lesson or two over the course of your story, it stands to reason that the reader has been exposed to that very same lesson." For example, your hero abuses alcohol because he was abused as a child by alcoholic parents. In the story, he's got goals: He Must Save The Day. In order to do so, he must conquer his alcohol abuse problem. By exploring that inner demon, by showing the reader how the hero tries and fails and tries and fails and finally conquers, you've woven a theme into your novel. (Side note: having your hero wake up one day and decide to join AA would not do it. There's got to be a great motivator, a natural choice, some emotional or physical impetus, a lesson learned the hard way, that drives your hero to seek help. Don't make it too easy to conquer that inner problem, or the story will fall flat.)

In summary, "Simply having the hero explore and experience an issue, and then conquer the inner forces that would otherwise defeat him, becomes the execution of theme." 

I think we can all do that.

-Sonja

Defining Theme

 Larry Brooks's book, Story Engineering, offers six core competencies of a great story. I've covered the first two (concept and character). In my last post, I said my next post was going to be more about character. I've changed my mind. I'm skipping the rest of the stuff Mr. Brooks said about character and moving straight into the third core competency, which is theme. 

(This is a theme park. Not the same thing as theme. And my friend took this photo, so I don't have to pay a royalty for using someone else's pic of Disneyland. Isn't technology fabulous?)

For me, theme is trickiest of the core competencies. I have a hard time defining it in my own words. I have a hard time figuring it out when someone else uses their own words to define it. Mr. Brooks says theme is "what the story means. How it relates to reality and life in general. What it says about life and the infinite roster of issues, facets, challenges, and experiences it presents... theme is the relevance of your story to life...Theme is what makes you think," he continues, "what makes you feel... what will make [readers] remember it and treasure it." 

Theme is what the reader takes from the story.

I've heard many writers say that they don't worry about incorporating theme into their stories. They write what they write, and at the end, theme emerges. I'll admit I've done that very thing, mainly because I had no clue HOW to create a theme on purpose. My beta readers said they loved the theme of my book... and I have no clue it got in there, because I didn't consciously put it there. It just appeared, as if by magic.

It's not magic. I think, at some subconscious level, I must understand theme enough to make it emerge from my stories. The hard part is figuring out how that happened so I can do it again, and even more importantly, teach other writers how to do it. That's the topic of my next post, because that's what the next chapter is about. So stay tuned for "implementing theme."

Questions? Comments?

-Sonja