This turned into more of a rant than an actual question.
TL;DR - How do you balance voice and tight prose?
Lately (last few days) I've been pondering the idea of narrative voice a bit. It's an idea I like, that what I'm writing reads differently than to what someone else is writing, even if we're writing the same scene.
At first I figured this was something subconscious that happened automatically when you wrote, based on your personality, but now I'm not so sure. I believe it's something that you can have an impact on if you pay attention and set your mind to it.
My issue at the moment is that the more active and efficient your prose is, the less room there is for narrative voice. I'm not saying there's no room for it, but I think that with tighter writing there's less space for the little fluff that gives your language its character. You can probably still have a distinctive voice even with extremely tight writing, but I believe it's probably more difficult. That said, when it does work, it probably works really well.
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What spawned this post is the thread about words to cut out of your writing. It eventually caused me to go through my own stories and check where I'd used those words. I'd used most of them, and in most of the cases where I found them I could probably have cut them out and achieved an effect of the same or similar kind.
In some cases I felt the bad words added to the voice of the sentence. They didn't add anything to the information conveyed, but they slightly changed the tone in which it was conveyed.
My thinking is that this change of tone, if maintained throughout the story, will have an impact on the readers overall experience of the book. It won't have any impact on plot or story or events, but it'll create some kind of feeling that they will associate with the book and the story and the characters.
I believe this is a good thing.
To my understanding the concept of voice is something quite intangible. Something that there aren't really any rules for and which develops over time as you get more experienced as a writer. I do think that once you get a grasp of it you can use it to great effect to alter the mood of both scenes and stories.
The difficulty at the moment lies in judging the balance between characteristic writing (voice) and efficient writing (lean, active prose). I feel I've got a decent grip on the voice I'm going for at the moment, but I'm easily carried away into a vague, indistinct purple haze that doesn't really bring the story forward.
Is anyone else having issues with this, or even thinking about it? What's your take on it?
TL;DR - How do you balance voice and tight prose?
Lately (last few days) I've been pondering the idea of narrative voice a bit. It's an idea I like, that what I'm writing reads differently than to what someone else is writing, even if we're writing the same scene.
At first I figured this was something subconscious that happened automatically when you wrote, based on your personality, but now I'm not so sure. I believe it's something that you can have an impact on if you pay attention and set your mind to it.
My issue at the moment is that the more active and efficient your prose is, the less room there is for narrative voice. I'm not saying there's no room for it, but I think that with tighter writing there's less space for the little fluff that gives your language its character. You can probably still have a distinctive voice even with extremely tight writing, but I believe it's probably more difficult. That said, when it does work, it probably works really well.
---
What spawned this post is the thread about words to cut out of your writing. It eventually caused me to go through my own stories and check where I'd used those words. I'd used most of them, and in most of the cases where I found them I could probably have cut them out and achieved an effect of the same or similar kind.
In some cases I felt the bad words added to the voice of the sentence. They didn't add anything to the information conveyed, but they slightly changed the tone in which it was conveyed.
My thinking is that this change of tone, if maintained throughout the story, will have an impact on the readers overall experience of the book. It won't have any impact on plot or story or events, but it'll create some kind of feeling that they will associate with the book and the story and the characters.
I believe this is a good thing.
To my understanding the concept of voice is something quite intangible. Something that there aren't really any rules for and which develops over time as you get more experienced as a writer. I do think that once you get a grasp of it you can use it to great effect to alter the mood of both scenes and stories.
The difficulty at the moment lies in judging the balance between characteristic writing (voice) and efficient writing (lean, active prose). I feel I've got a decent grip on the voice I'm going for at the moment, but I'm easily carried away into a vague, indistinct purple haze that doesn't really bring the story forward.
Is anyone else having issues with this, or even thinking about it? What's your take on it?