A Matter Of Voice

[Demesnedenoir]

All right, not all fantasy, just everything except for Martin. I hope you don't mind if I express some skepticism on judgment passed on the majority of fantasy fiction from someone who doesn't bother to read it?

You don't need to doubt my opinion, you should declare it wrong from your perspective or agree with it from your perspective. There is no need to be wishy washy. But at the same time, you can't claim it is truly wrong because it is... opinion, therefore neither of us is right or wrong in a pure sense. I'm only reading Martin now, I've read plenty over time. Some good, some not so good, mostly entertaining. Heck, I understand why people hate Martin, or hate Tolkien, or CS Lewis, Tad Williams, or you name it... even me! Gasp. Heck, I'd love to be hated by most of the fantasy lit world, it would mean they know my name, LOL. I also understand why people like Salvatore and all kinds of pulp fantasy from D&D... but I will continue to not be wishy washy, and potentially over-judgmental, and say that most of it isn't very good.

I do flip through a lot of beginnings to fantasy books, they are most often disappointing, although when I get the time to actually sit and read instead of working on my own stuff, some of those you mentioned are on my short list of things to check out.

 

[Nimue]

It's not wishy-washiness, it's sarcasm. xD I have my own overabundance of opinions, certainly don't worry yourself about that. While I understand that from a practical perspective, "most books aren't good" is statistically correct as far as that kind of statement can go, the expression of that opinion seems far more likely to be aimed to rile or make a statement of superiority than to actually point to a dull truth. If that really, really wasn't your intent, and your response was truly surprise and not defensiveness, you're something of an unusual breed for an online forum...

Those are genuine recommendations, though. Kay and Micklem are probably closest to Martin--Tigana or Song for Arbonne for Kay, Firethorn for Micklem. The last one has the additional similarity benefit of being an unfinished series that I have absolutely no idea where it's going. None of those authors are actually one of my favorites, though (I've never cared to read past Game of Thrones), but McMaster-Bujold absolutely is. The Chalion books for her, and Paladin of Souls absolutely.

Notice how CM said that her best work has come from not rewriting anything, from getting it right the first time. Imo, getting it right the first time is something that takes time to get used to, which is why you need to keep writing.

This is the sort of conflicting advice, aimed at different people and different situations, that rubs me the wrong way, though. Do you mean to say that no one should rewrite things, and that you can only ever work with your first draft? Or just that after a certain point, you learn to write things correctly the first time? Is, then, rewriting something the sign of a bad writer and weak writing, and how on earth can that be true, during the necessity of drafts and editing? See, I always wonder in threads like this about what's observation of someone's personal experience and what actually is generalizable advice. It can be confusing.

EDIT: I wanted to add that you must finish your projects. Must. And what you learn from working on a specific project you then add to the next, and the next, etc. If you don't finish what you start then how can you write better work? Finishing is just as important as anything else, probably more so.

Okay, I understand the general application and goodness of this advice. But quite frankly, the slavish devotion to finishing something is what trapped me in an awful, slagging project for the last four years. At a certain point I no longer liked it, I no longer had a vision for it, and it was far, far too large in scope for me to plough through, but I continued to intermittently slap writing on it for a long time. The second I put it down for good, I found a much, much better story that I am currently slicing through. The old project literally made me depressed. This one makes me happy. Isn't that learning, too?

I might modify that advice to say: Finish what you write, and if you realize that you can't, write something you can finish.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Just an aside - how to recognise your own voice? Get an editor. Then as they send you back their edited version of your draft sit there and think about evey change they make. Those changes that you can't make because they feel wrong to you are fairly much your voice. So for example they may hate run on sentences. You can't change them? That's because that's how it feels right to you - and that's your voice.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Chessie]

I'm not saying that rewriting is the sign of a bad writer. But I am saying that it destroys the original creative voice you put into that first draft in the first place. However, that's my opinion. I'm not alone in that opinion. But that's not what this thread is about, it's about trusting your own voice once you discover what that is.

If what I'm saying is rubbing you the wrong way, Nimue, then that's not something I have control over. I started this thread to get a good discussion going and help inspire others. Get people thinking about their own writing journeys. What works for you and I doesn't work for anyone else here. We're all different. I wouldn't spend 4 years on a novel and never have. I've never rewritten a book in my entire life. Still though, I've learned a lot and continue to do so. If you believe that rewriting has helped you learn, then that's awesome and I'm glad for you. But I'm trying to genuinely help others have more faith in themselves, not telling them to do things the way I have.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I noticed practice is the best way to get it "righter" the first time, too. My Clichea entry isn't a style many folks probably love to read, but it works for a short. it would be a terribly tedious read for a novel-length work, though. But that's why I loved it so much. It had a really distinct POV and the only reason I had the balls to do it was because it was probably the hundredth short story I wrote. I was secure in my decisions, though I know the writing style won't be palatable for a large amount of readers.

When I look at other people's work, I feel more drawn into the stories that feature a strong POV. Simple as that. I'm less inspired and engaged by the typical "voice' most newer writers use, and indeed the one I use when I vanilla down my work into an edited copy. but the thing with that voice is that it will appeal to a wider variety of readers. The trick I think with using a more "normal" tone and voice is to then write creatively. Putting in deep POV details and letting the cleverness of the story and style shine through not only in the voice, but also in the choices we have to make as writers of what to include and what to omit.

A middle of the road voice is simply the best choice for stories with multiple PsOV, in many cases, and i'm not one to argue that. If I wrote Written in Red with really strong viewpoints for each of the POV characters, I'd soon have a sloppy and confusing mess. Each chapter from Yvette would be heavily slanted to her jaded outlook. Each scene with Rafe would be broody and over-emotional, tinged with dread. Each Dani section would be comparatively light and self-centered. Vincenzo would bring too much dry contemplation. While I think it's fine to hint at each of those, going in with both barrels on every scene and hammering home each unique POV's intimate details would soon be an overkill. It might be great for each character, but the greater story would feel like a pit fight with no rules. If I instead tone down each POV so it sits comfortably within the scope of a more powerful narrator's interpretation, and merely give a respectful nod to each individual character, I hope it'll keep the work from appearing schizophrenic and unmanageable.

I think in the case of this particular work, my goal needs to be in line with letting each character add their own spice, but gently remind them that we're all cooking the same pot of chili. If I don't watch each character and keep him in line, I'll soon have a tragic meal no one will want to eat. And since the goal of a work firstly needs to be palatable to a reader, I can't presume to delight anyone by giving the characters' voices top priority. I need to use my own voice as the narrator to accomplish what must be done, or this thing will get away from me. I have often compared this work with The Lies of Locke Lamora, which I think has a wonderful voice, but the main difference between the two is that I chose a deep third MPOV for my own story, and Scott Lynch chose an omniscient narrator. That alone allowed one voice to shine foremost, as he was the narrator, whereas in my story, each character is narrating their own scenes, but I have to be the driver with the reins in a way. SO yeah, I'd love to give each character voice more weight, but since there are no sections in which a narrator truly takes over in place of the characters, I don't have the same options. I guess by that i mean that in Lynch's book, whenever a scene is set, it's obviously told by a narrator. It isn't from Locke's POV when he opens with: "On the night Locke Lamora came to live under the hill..." That's all narrator. Whereas in my book, when I set a scene, it's directly through the perspective of the character entering the room. I suppose my book might be better from an omniscient POV, in a way, but I feel like using so many characters as the POV is the right choice because it segregates each scene more and keeps the intimacy I feel more confident in and more comfortable with. Basically, that choice I made because my story has a whole lot of secrets. I would find it terribly difficult to maintain the secrets if I were an omniscient narrator. Perhaps that's just because I lack Lunch's greater perspective and talent, but omniscience wasn't the right POV for me to take on this work. but I can see the benefits of using a single writerly voice and telling whatever needs to be told.

Something I don't think a lot of newer writers give a lot of thought to is POV and how that affects voice. It's easy to understand the voice choices in FPOV, because you are seated perfectly squarely within only one POV for the length of a story, and a reader will expect the voice to belong to the character (as my favorite PsOV stories show: Clichea, A Winter to Remember (published in Iron Pen Anthology), and The Diablarist). In those, since they were FPOV and short stories, I only had a character voice to deal with. In Warrior's Heart, I have two main POV characters, a teenage boy and a teenage girl, and then I show a couple remote scenes from a narrator POV and those scenes are there only for reader benefit. I intentionally stepped away from a unique voice for those because they weren't part of my MCs' perspectives.

POV is a great factor in how your writer voice will translate the material appearing on the page. When you select a first person character narration, you can go in guns blazing, because we all know as the reader that we're in the one head. But as soon as you choose multiple PsOV, you have to try to mitigate the negative side-effects in a way, and I think the easiest way to keep a work from appearing confused to a reader, is to tone down your writer tone of voice and allow the characters a loose leash, still imparting their lens, but controlling it with one stronger writer voice that will keep the characters in line so the work can feel cohesive.

I hope that makes sense. I read a lot for other people, and I write a shit ton of my own stories, and the one thing I think sets great writing apart from good, is whether the writer has made strong POV choices and where those strong PsOV are tamed down just a touch to incorporate strong characters, but within the constraints of a single compelling story-telling voice, given solely by the narrator...in most cases just the writer conveying the tale. When that balance gets too skewed, it becomes a bit of a mess for the reader.

On the other hand, I can say without question, that in the novel i mentioned, Written in Red, some of the scenes I got the most positive feedback on are the scenes in which I allowed the characters and their voices to shine a little brighter. So maybe I'm just talking out my ass and my decisions to vanilla down some of the other passages were the wrong choice. I'm still learning, and editing is really hard work. Maybe I'll look back at this story in ten years and wonder what in the hell I was thinking, not using an omniscient narrator to tell the tale from 5 people's POV?

 

[kennyc]

.....When Donald Maas speaks about author voice he states that a good author voice demands your attention in some way. You know when you are at a party and there is some one there who is just a great story teller? They can tell you all about their truck accident and it is hilarious and engaging and you want to drink beers with that person all night? Then you end up trapped with someone's old aunt who tries to tell you about her truck crash, but she is dry and boring and waffles around the details and keeps going on and on about her sore back? Author voice is like that. Engaging, demanding your attention. Standing tall and saying "I have a story to tell."

He says "it isn't words alone that do that, I find, but rather the outlook, opinions, details, delivery, and original perspectives that an author brings to his tale." (Fire in fiction, pg 130).
....

That's ONE writing book I don't have. LOL! Just checking it out on Amazon and am intrigued by the introduction where he talks about "Status Seekers vs Storytellers"

I guessing you would recommend reading this book? Did it provide you with additional information/tools/insight?

Thanks!

 

[Heliotrope]

Yes, all of his books are really good, but that one was my favourite.

 

[kennyc]

Yes, all of his books are really good, but that one was my favourite.

Thanks!
I'm gonna hold you to that!

 

[Demesnedenoir]

That's ONE writing book I don't have. LOL! Just checking it out on Amazon and am intrigued by the introduction where he talks about "Status Seekers vs Storytellers"

I guessing you would recommend reading this book? Did it provide you with additional information/tools/insight?

Thanks!

I recommend the book, but it depends on if you have his others. In general it's useful. But I've heard, if you have all the others, it might get a bit repetitive. I didn't have the rest of his books, so found it good.

 

[kennyc]

I recommend the book, but it depends on if you have his others. In general it's useful. But I've heard, if you have all the others, it might get a bit repetitive. I didn't have the rest of his books, so found it good.

Thanks. I know that repetitive thing way too much....so many of the 'how to write' books just parrot one another and single authors seem to cut and paste almost from one book to the next -- this can be particularly bad in those 'Writer's Digest Books' of which this is one and the impetus for my question.

For what it's worth, after many many years of pursuing this 'learning to write' thing I seem to have 2 or 3 favorite/best books at this point - The Making of a Story - Alice LaPlante, Reading like a Writer - Francine Prose, and Writing Fiction - Janet Burroway....

 

[Russ]

Thanks. I know that repetitive thing way too much....so many of the 'how to write' books just parrot one another and single authors seem to cut and paste almost from one book to the next -- this can be particularly bad in those 'Writer's Digest Books' of which this is one and the impetus for my question.

For what it's worth, after many many years of pursuing this 'learning to write' thing I seem to have 2 or 3 favorite/best books at this point - The Making of a Story - Alice LaPlante, Reading like a Writer - Francine Prose, and Writing Fiction - Janet Burroway....

Donald is not the kind of guy who simply parrots or reflects the general market of "how to" books. He is a thoughtful, well spoken guy with a very good track record of success. I recommend his books as well.

 

[Russ]

I'm not saying that rewriting is the sign of a bad writer. But I am saying that it destroys the original creative voice you put into that first draft in the first place. However, that's my opinion. I'm not alone in that opinion. But that's not what this thread is about, it's about trusting your own voice once you discover what that is.

If what I'm saying is rubbing you the wrong way, Nimue, then that's not something I have control over. I started this thread to get a good discussion going and help inspire others. Get people thinking about their own writing journeys. What works for you and I doesn't work for anyone else here. We're all different. I wouldn't spend 4 years on a novel and never have. I've never rewritten a book in my entire life. Still though, I've learned a lot and continue to do so. If you believe that rewriting has helped you learn, then that's awesome and I'm glad for you. But I'm trying to genuinely help others have more faith in themselves, not telling them to do things the way I have.

I do agree with you that as a writer matures they often get a better handle on their own voice and that recognizing your own voice and making decisions about what you want your voice to be are very important things.

But I do have to disagree with your approach about rewriting.

Firstly, good rewriting should not destroy your original creative voice that you try to project in the first draft, it should enhance it. The presumption behind your position is that the first draft is the best and purest version of your voice possible. I think that is simply incorrect. The first draft is a raw product. For virtually everyone it is not the best version possible of their work in voice or any other aspect. Many pros call the first draft the "vommitt draft" and for good reason. Many pros tell you the real work does not even begin until the first draft is done.

Now you say you are not alone in that opinion, but if I put you in a hall with a large number of working professional writers and you asked them if they adopt your approach to rewriting you would be very, very, very lonely indeed, perhaps alone.

People also talk like one's writing voice is something genetic or mystical and it is what it is and you have to "discover" it. I am not sold on this either. I think an inexperienced writer who does not have mastery of their skills and craft may find that they write or sound a certain way that can be called their voice. They may discover they have tendencies that can be called their voice. The question then becomes is that voice what they want? Just because you have developed tendencies does not mean that they are good tendencies that make you a better writer.

Voice can be developed and changed and improved. I think the way that CM expresses the fact that she writes with different voices for different works shows a wise philosophy in this regard. A writer's voice is not fixed and is just another tool in the story teller's toolbox. Different voices work better with different stories, and a more developed writer can deploy more and better voices in their goal of writing a good story.

I am sorry you have had some bad experiences with critiquing, but I am a firm believer that a writer gets better by receiving thoughtful feedback and adopting the good parts of it. I have owned some very crappy cars, but I have not given up on the automobile as a means of transportation.

 

[Chessie]

Russ, I appreciate your opinion. However, I don't believe in the vomit draft. I edit as I go, meaning I write and cycle back to check the work, fix things, continue writing and cycle back only to do it over again. By the time I'm done my draft is the cleanest I can make it before it goes out to get checked by whoever is editing my work. You're assuming that I'm throwing paint on the canvas and calling crap good. Not at all.

And no, I'm not alone in that view. Ever heard of pulp writers? They didn't have time to rewrite. I cheat on Mythic Scribes by hanging out on another site with professional writers...yes...the kind that make a living from their writing and the majority of them don't rewrite. True story.

 

[kennyc]

Russ, I appreciate your opinion. However, I don't believe in the vomit draft. I edit as I go, meaning I write and cycle back to check the work, fix things, continue writing and cycle back only to do it over again. By the time I'm done my draft is the cleanest I can make it before it goes out to get checked by whoever is editing my work. You're assuming that I'm throwing paint on the canvas and calling crap good. Not at all.

And no, I'm not alone in that view. Ever heard of pulp writers? They didn't have time to rewrite. I cheat on Mythic Scribes by hanging out on another site with professional writers...yes...the kind that make a living from their writing and the majority of them don't rewrite. True story.

And editing and re-writing are different things to me. Editing is changing/clarifying a draft or even a finished piece, whereas re-writing would be restarting completely from scratch and tell the same story in a different way, from a different perspective or point of view (i.e. completely changing the presentation).

Editing should not substantially change your voice/narration, though it could if done extensively. Re-Writing could completely change the voice.

For me voice is not something inherently associated with an author, but with a story/narrator of that story.

Sure some authors have an identifiable voice that they use over and over in story after story or novel after novel, but some so not and some parts of that voice might or might not be the same.

And while this thread is not about it, style is another of those authory things that is difficult to define/identify as associated with an author or story and it is different than voice.

 

[Russ]

Russ, I appreciate your opinion. However, I don't believe in the vomit draft. I edit as I go, meaning I write and cycle back to check the work, fix things, continue writing and cycle back only to do it over again. By the time I'm done my draft is the cleanest I can make it before it goes out to get checked by whoever is editing my work. You're assuming that I'm throwing paint on the canvas and calling crap good. Not at all.

And no, I'm not alone in that view. Ever heard of pulp writers? They didn't have time to rewrite. I cheat on Mythic Scribes by hanging out on another site with professional writers...yes...the kind that make a living from their writing and the majority of them don't rewrite. True story.

Actually my favourite writer used to be a virtual king of pulp fiction, Michael Moorcock. But pulp writing, such as it now still exists, is considered a lower standard of fiction and quality of writing. There are a few exceptions but most of that material was fairly exploitative and forgettable. There are plenty of journalists who don't have time to do many drafts either, but that doesn't mean that their work is the best version it can be.

I think if you took a survey of novelists today who make a living at writing, and ask how many don't rewrite or edit heavily you would find that they are a tiny minority. In fact it sounds like you are doing virtually that, just not all in one go at the end.

 

[Chessie]

But pulp writing, such as it now still exists, is considered a lower standard of fiction and quality of writing.

And who gets to decide that? Readers? Because there are authors out there writing several novels a year and earning a living from it thanks to the support from their readership.

Let me clarify. To me, rewriting is moving things around in an existing manuscript. A few sentences or paragraphs here, a dialogue scene there, taking scenes in and out, putting new ones in, redoing an entire beginning, etc. Editing as I go is fixing typos, clarifying the narrative if even I'm having a hard time understanding it, fixing things my betas or critique partners point out, spelling, etc. I don't redo existing scenes, take things out, put new scenes in, none of that. I do, however, go back and add details in to enrich the setting since I tend to get straight to the point (bad habit) instead of giving readers something to chew on.

But I don't want to take the thread into a different direction than the original intention. All I can end with is this: everyone writes differently and we're all at different levels/goals in our craft. As I've said before, there is no way that I'm telling everyone to do it like this. From the beginning, I just wanted others to think about where they are in their craft and have faith in themselves. But of course, things are never simple on the internet, are they?

 

[Caged Maiden]

Okay, I've caught up with all the posts on the thread.

Notice how CM said that her best work has come from not rewriting anything, from getting it right the first time. Imo, getting it right the first time is something that takes time to get used to, which is why you need to keep writing.

This is the sort of conflicting advice, aimed at different people and different situations, that rubs me the wrong way, though. Do you mean to say that no one should rewrite things, and that you can only ever work with your first draft? Or just that after a certain point, you learn to write things correctly the first time? Is, then, rewriting something the sign of a bad writer and weak writing, and how on earth can that be true, during the necessity of drafts and editing? See, I always wonder in threads like this about what's observation of someone's personal experience and what actually is generalizable advice. It can be confusing.

Okay, I just wanted to address this, because I think there was a bit of miscommunication. What I meant to say was that my best "voice" came from work I didn't tamper with overmuch. I edit everything. Usually a short story will have three or four editing passes, but what I mean to say (because I don't want Nimue to get the wrong idea and be more confused), is that I don't care. I literally don't care like a crazy person cares about their novel. When I work on my novel, this is how my thought process goes:

"Hm, this section with Yvette and Claudia attending the garden party looks good to me, but four betas have said it doesn't really draw them in. What could it be missing? What's going wrong?"

Later: "Okay, I've now put in more details about why they're there, jazzed up the dialogue so it's snappier and the rollercoaster really gains momentum quick and if that doesn't snap a reader's neck, I don't know what will."

Even Later: "Alright, still not hitting a home run with betas. Now they say it's boring because I have too much detail in what the characters are doing, and then they say the pacing is too unbalanced because they aren't feeling connected to the characters, despite my putting in funny dialogue and scary moments of tension. WTF?"

Later Still: "OMG what's wrong with my betas? One wants more character detail, another wants me to step up the action, but if I put the action any more front and center, they'll basically walk out into the garden and step right into an ass-kicking. Is that really what people want? It can't be. NO. Wait, is it?"

And then I have a long think, and go crazy for a few days, and sometimes use a lifeline and phone a friend, to get some perspective on what is going wrong.

Present Day: "Okay, so the problem with the garden party (by my best estimation) is that I'm introducing these women too quickly. Their snappy dialogue isn't being allowed to work on the reader because the reader doesn't understand why they're there (thought I state it clearly as soon as they enter the mansion), and then their connection to the characters is further hampered by the fact that I cut all the soft moments and eliminated all the "getting to know you" parts in favor of some scary tension and dangerous dialogue. So I need to revert that back to an easier transition into why they're there, who they are to each other, and why they need to get information at this party and nowhere else. Okay, I can do that. I mean, I know why they're there, right? I know who they are to each other, right? Sure. They're there to get information, by overhearing it, and they're a courtesan and a spy. Easy peasy...shit. That's all I know. I guess I don't know enough to give the right impression to the reader. Maybe I better take a little time and think about this so I can decide whether this scene even ought to be in the book. Yeah, I'll start there..."

Okay, so that's a glimpse of crazy. Here's the exact editing process I undertook for Clichea:

Sent a half-written draft to my writing friend who has a certain tolerance for a belabored, thesaurus-pounding version of story-telling, the perfect person to read the very atypical example of my writing. I didn't think many people would like the way I used big words and twisted the cold and calculating POV into something so self-serving and animalistic (I mean, it was a dragon, after all). So I sent it to this one person and asked what he thought, because it was half finished and I wanted a quick opinion on whether I was headed in the right direction. Here were his comments:

"I think the idea for the Clichea challenge is about using the world as a prompt. You had a lot of mentions of places, but you didn't use them in a meaningful way. Maybe you want to do that?"

So then I figured my character was okay, and I put in the meaningful details about the world.

After it was finished, I gave it a couple passes, cutting, first of all. Basically, I find that in a first draft, we tend to have ideas that are very strong to us. For me, it was the dragon's hunger and its pleasure in eating people, who are an easy to obtain food source. I looked at every mention of eating people or eating in general, and let's say I counted ten mentions, I trimmed that to five, saving the best five and eliminating the rest. I want it to be a big theme and exhibit it as the character's goal, but I don't want to hammer the reader in the brain with the concept. So that's the kind of trimming I did. I used a thesaurus to include bigger, better words, and I verified that each word I selected originally and in the edit was used to mean the correct thing (because as you rework sentences, your brain can become mush and you start just throwing words around). Anyways, so I did a couple quick passes of cutting, then I read it through out loud a few times, made some more adjustments, and then when it made me smile to read, I finished the last little tweaks, things like, "Hm, this word feels redundant, cut it," or "dang it, I need a little pause here, I better put in a touch of reflection so this scene pacing feels better."

And that was it. No rounds of betas. No worrying whether I had all the important background information spelled out in notebooks. It was a short story, and I didn't care. That's not to say I didn't do my best. I absolutely did my best. I gave it a few passes of my best, and I decided on a unique voice and a belabored way of expressing the dragon's thoughts, as if it thought itself a terribly complex and interesting individual, and I just owned that.

When i look at my novels, I overcomplicate the writing and especially the editing to an extreme degree. It's easy to do. Multiple main settings in two discrete worlds (city and country), two distinct stories bridged with a single character caught between two lives, themes that carry throughout 150k words? Forty-two chapters, five POV characters, a failing marriage, a plot to convict the religious leader of the republic of treason, a murdered son, a murdered neighbor, a selfish girl who lies to get what she wants and thinks herself terribly clever? Holy crap, it's so much more than a hungry dragon with a self-importance problem and a paranoia that the humans will run out and it'll have to start working for food.

And that's what I suppose I meant. I didn't care about the dragon (though I love the story, now). I didn't care about its world, or the details, because I could make anything up on the fly that I wanted. It was only a challenge, a game. If the voice was haughty and polarizing, all the better, because some folks will love it (like me) and some folks will hate it, but i'm only making them sit through it for about ten minutes. So not true with my 150k word novel. Or my fantasy series. With those, I have to give careful thought to how I present information and how I use my writer's voice. I have to create a comfortable environment for a potential reader.

Some folks think that a novel would be a great place to wow a reader with one's creative visuals of their extremely detailed and unusual world. Or to impress a reader with how hard they can hit with the thesaurus. Or that it's an opportunity to show how clever one is in creating their own fantasy language, or making characters that are so unique no one's ever seen anything like them before, or that great writing is choosing shocking subjects and showing them in vivid detail (how many of those threads appear on this site?). But great writing (to me), is nothing more than practicing with the microscope and the telescope, getting really good at determining what to show big and what to show small, and then showing it in a way that it's obvious to the reader it has passed through the character filter.

 

[Caged Maiden]

If you (not anyone specifically, just a general "you") don't have a lot of work written, it's harder to understand the full spectrum of what you can be capable of. For example, I never knew what existed until I started competing in challenges here. When you write something like thirty or forty shorts in a year, you quickly become bored with yourself and your tool box if all you do is pick a bounty hunter on the trail of a unicorn molester (I got handed that prompt, not from my mind), a soul-collector who talks to ravens, an ex-pirate who uses his crew to sink ships, a thief looking for a stolen jewel, a treasure hunter who tries to outsmart a goddess. You start to do weird things, to keep yourself interested in what you're doing. A non-believer tasked with returning the gods to the world, Odin's raven's brother is missing and their master is afraid Ragnarok has begun, a story written in reverse order, inanimate objects as POV characters, stories that are unrelated but share themes and sort of tell a bigger story, a collaborative world project with a friend or on a forum, etc. an so on.

Every time you do something you "don't care about," you have this amazing opportunity to get so much better, because you aren't hemming and hawing over every little thing. You just write it, experiment, and if it doesn't work out, you get over it in like two seconds, and go on to the next thing. With novels that we have dreamed up big and then did a bunch of background on, fell in love with, or have been writing for years, the luxury of not caring simply doesn't exist. And that's why it's so hard to get better at it.

One more little anecdote before I run. There was a woman in Britain that my friend told me about as we were talking about our own journeys (mine was that I wrote 100k words in 8 weeks, and it was crap beyond crap, and technically, I still haven't edited it and have spent too much time working on it, but it's my REAL learning project, so whatever). Anyways, this woman had an idea for a novel. She spent some years writing it, and then she decided to be a career writer. She quit her job and stayed home, learning all she could about writing and working on her novel, and striving toward her goal of being a self-sufficient writer.

It took twelve years to reach her goal, but in the end, she was a published author. She had written her book and it was complete, and it found a publisher, and she had met her goal.

But...it took twelve years and she had one finished novel. If that was time well spent...well...I don't even have an analogy because I'm so blown away with the thought of it. Technically, I wrote my first book in 2001. But you have to understand, I wrote it because I hated my job. I had to fill the long hours at a car dealership while we waited for clients. I wrote to stop from slitting my wrists from boredom and to avoid talking with the sharks I shared an office with. And for about six years, I wrote for fun, churning out about 100k-125k word novels every year, not worrying about a darn thing, just having fun. When I had eight novels "finished", I thought maybe some of them were good enough to think about sharing. I joined up here in 2011, when I had ten books done, and I had changed course, from a hobby writer who entertained herself while staying at home and writing during baby nap times, to a person who genuinely wanted to learn about the craft and see if she had what it takes.

And holy crap, I'm not sure I do! It's darn hard, writing and editing, and staying on track, and churning out words. It can be soul-crushing when you're tired and just need a solution to your plot problem. It can be exhausting when you've sent a six-month revision to your betas and they still complain about all the same things as the first round reads and you just want to bash your skull in with your laptop and quit forever. This is a hard task to accomplish for any normal person (not taking those asshole prodigies into account). And practice is the only way to get good at it, and practice isn't rewriting the same material, because it doesn't get you to stop caring. What it does, is makes you care even more, to a crazy level. And you become that woman with 12 years on one novel, rather than a person who has 12 novels in 12 years, and the first four are complete garbage, but the last three or four are pretty good, and the middle ones are perhaps salvageable. The thing is, when you look at those two people (and no, I'm not advocating doing this the way I did, because I recognize I knew ABSOLUTELY nothing about writing when I began, and I've had to overcome a huge amount of challenges as the horse that got stuck in the gate, so don't be like me, be better than me), if you look at those two scenarios, the person who will have gotten more out of their journey, is the one who wrote more. Took more risks. Experimented with different types of characters. Etc. etc. etc. More writing=better odds of getting good, being publishable, and overall feeling successful for the time vs. output equation.

Writer voice is one of those things that comes easier when you try using a flea as your POV character (told you it got weird). Or you write a really jealous brother. Or a wolf allowed to participate in his pack's spiritual tradition for the first time. Or a hungry asexual agender sea dragon because you couldn't decide whether to make it male or female based on its voice. I think when I start writing shorts, it's so easy to pick a voice, because all I usually have is a snippet of character concept and a voice. No world, no background. Just the here and now of what I need to accomplish, and short story writing forces you to get into a head fast and make every word count. I was just talking with a trusted writing partner about this the other day, about how much I suck at beginnings. Why can't novels be as easy as short stories? It's so frustrating, but often the beginning is where you have to make your choices for your voice, and it's glaringly obvious when you edit into a polished draft, that you've dropped the ball in that department. And I have. And beginnings can bite my butt.

Best wishes to all those who are trying to find their voice. I know critique isn't the easiest thing to do if you have had bad experiences with it, but I'd encourage everyone to try it again if they can benefit from it. When i read for my partners, I totally have their voice in mind and every suggestion I make contains my best attempts to preserve their voice while also accomplishing what I think needs to be accomplished. Not all crit partners will insert themselves into their suggestions. I mentioned this in my Critique How-To article. A good critique partner will tell you what can be improved, a great critique partner will help you pick out missed opportunities. The only way you can get a partner like that is by fostering a relationship and finding someone who shares your commitment level. But if you can find one, they'll help you to improve your voice and make it into a centerpiece on the dining table of your novel. not everyone wants a huge floral centerpiece. Maybe your novel needs an antler centerpiece, or a lantern made with soy candles and recycled paper. Each novel needs its own thing, and great crit partners will help you to move toward YOUR goal and in YOUR voice. Here's some of my comments I've made: "You have such a knack for descriptions that are short and sweet, and this paragraph feels jarring in the way it meanders and doesn't say much. Is that a choice you made for a reason?" OR, "...a sound like a dozen dogs running on a hardwood floor...I really felt this metaphor described a sound I could immediately picture, and the words you chose to use SO convey to me the life experiences of the POV boy. Awesome." Look for crit partners or groups that understand voice as you understand it. It doesn't do anyone any good if you don't mesh with the group. And don't feel like you ever have to frequent a group that doesn't share your ideals. There are online forums like this one where people can meet or begin groups. You are never limited by geography in the internet world.

Hope my very long rambling might help someone who is struggling to find their voice. This took me like two hours to write.

 

[Russ]

And who gets to decide that? Readers? Because there are authors out there writing several novels a year and earning a living from it thanks to the support from their readership.

Let me clarify. To me, rewriting is moving things around in an existing manuscript. A few sentences or paragraphs here, a dialogue scene there, taking scenes in and out, putting new ones in, redoing an entire beginning, etc. Editing as I go is fixing typos, clarifying the narrative if even I'm having a hard time understanding it, fixing things my betas or critique partners point out, spelling, etc. I don't redo existing scenes, take things out, put new scenes in, none of that. I do, however, go back and add details in to enrich the setting since I tend to get straight to the point (bad habit) instead of giving readers something to chew on.

But I don't want to take the thread into a different direction than the original intention. All I can end with is this: everyone writes differently and we're all at different levels/goals in our craft. As I've said before, there is no way that I'm telling everyone to do it like this. From the beginning, I just wanted others to think about where they are in their craft and have faith in themselves. But of course, things are never simple on the internet, are they?

I say "pulps" are generally an inferior form because that term refers to a period in literary history and a certain type of writing and publishing that via many decades of study, reflection and consideration has been adjudged to be an inferior or mass production form with little focus on quality. If you mean something different by the word "pulp" than I am happy to consider it differently, but pulp fiction is a term with a meaning.

There is no doubt there are people making a living putting out several books a year with minimal editing. I think the place where you see this the most is category romance. I have a friend you raised her children by banging out 4-6 category fiction books a year. But it is not that person's best work, nor do I think it is for the other authors.

Everybody does write differently and have different goals. I have many times on this site expressed how difficult it is to give people writing advice without them clearly articulating their goals. Until they tell me otherwise (like someone who says they are writing a world for their RP campaign or some different form) I operate on the assumption that people are striving to do their best work that will someday be destined for the consumption of others.

I would suggest that the level of editing you have adopted is "lighter" than most successful novelists publishing these days.

And from time to time we all give our opinions about the path to writing success. Even this might fit that category:

First off, it takes practice. Years of practice. Sorry. A lot of beginning writers don't like to hear this crap. I can't tell you how many wannabe writers have told me that they just write when they're inspired. They don't try to improve. They don't make writing a habit. Well, all of our writing goals are different, right? Some of us want to sell big time. Some of us just care that a few people read our work. Others of us want big publishing contracts and thousands of fans. It doesn't matter what your goals in the writing business or not are─what matters is that we improve with every manuscript we finish. And how do we do that? Practice.

Write daily or write often. There's no way around that.

I am not sure if nothing is simple on the internet, but I am quite convinced nothing is simple in the field of writing!

 

[Chessie]

If you (not anyone specifically, just a general "you") don't have a lot of work written, it's harder to understand the full spectrum of what you can be capable of.

This +1. I'm really glad you mentioned it.