Writing Beyond Good

[Steerpike]

Voice is defined as that which makes writing good (by, in your case, connecting the reader to the POV). Therefore, all great books have a great voice.

I think that's a convenient mis-reading of what is being said that is intended to support your own viewpoint

 

[Caged Maiden]

I do not believe in one concept making the adverse true merely by flipping the conclusion. So, if you read a great book, it MOST LIKELY had a good voice that you either didn't notice consciously, or weren't looking for until recently. You THINK you were wowed by characters who were so easy to connect to, but what about them made them easy to connect to? Was it their riveting background story? Or was it the way it was presented? I'm putting forth that the WAY an author makes those characters so memorable, is by using deep POV, which relies heavily on "voice". Those little things like analogies, how your character perceives a dragon the first time he sees one, etc. Does an author have a voice if he merely says the character sees a dragon with "burning eyes and seventy feet from nose to tail. Two great wings jutting from its back and scales like spun copper"? Or is it better to actually use the moment to define the character? Stay in his head and use voice and POV to give the reader more?

 

[Feo Takahari]

I've found that if an author has a distinctive writing style, it tends to get in the way of the story. It becomes a distraction. Very few authors have the power to dazzle purely by writing style - the likes of Patrick Rothfuss, maybe, but even then a lot of readers dismiss his work as pretentious twaddle.

This right here is why I prefer Christopher Paolini to Guy Gavriel Kay--

Seriously, Paolini has an actively bad voice, sometimes drawing me out of the story, but he's at least short-winded. Kay seems to be in love with his own voice, allowing it free reign even when this gets in the way of the story's progression. I'd definitely pick Paolini as the more interesting read.

Edit: Caged Maiden, are you sure you don't agree with BW Foster? You seem to be saying he should do the same thing he says he'd rather do than what Steerpike's saying should be done.

 

[BWFoster78]

I think that's a convenient mis-reading of what is being said that is intended to support your own viewpoint

No, I think it's a problem trying to argue something so nebulously defined.

For example, Caged Maiden, as far as I read, feels that Deep POV and voice go hand and hand. That would imply that "good writing" requires a Deep POV.

I know Steerpike, who is on the same side of the good writing required a voice argument, however, to feel that Deep POV is not required for good writing.

I truly see each of you as taking "voice" to be this "quality" that brings excellence to writing. I don't feel that either of you necessarily mean the same thing when discussing it, however.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Let's take another tack at this. Every writer who has ever written anything puts his personal touch on the work, even if it's a little as using "from" instead of "out of." We all have a particular syntax, cadence, etc.

I contend that these elements simply aren't that important.

This is something I don't agree with. I believe these little things actually do matter. They don't matter much in and of themselves, but over the course of a story I believe little details like that does have an impact. It's an intangible thing that's hard to put a finger on.
I think this is one of those cases where the saying "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" applies.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Part of the problem here, and it's been raised in this thread a ton, is the difficulty of defining voice. There are a lot of aspects and variables that go into one's opinion on what constitutes voice. On top of that, it's rather subjective.

Still, to me voice is the way a particular author tells stories. There are commonalities within story telling like characters, conflict & resolution, POV choices, things we've already mentioned. Yet storytelling methods vary from writer to writer, beyond those fundamentals.

I guarantee that if we took a set of well-defined characters (sketched out to the hilt), a common and detailed setting, and identical plots, then assigned everyone in this thread to tell that story (adhering to the above), the stories would read vastly different. That is voice. It's you're own unique storytelling method. While they may share similarities with other writers, they aren't identical.

I also believe this is the reason it takes so long to develop voice. It takes a lot of writing before we fall into the story telling patterns that are truly ours. Often new writers emulate the authors of stories they love, eventually (with enough creative writing & experimentation) they break into their own processes of telling stories.

EDIT: Looks like I got ninja'd by another entire thread...lol

 

[Caged Maiden]

I think I'm done here. I just spent two hours writing posts to try to define something that I think is exceptionally important for story-telling. I did it to help you, and you are arguing because I haven't defined something the exact same way as Steerpike. Okay... if you believe after reading my posts, that my examples, definitions, and opinions have no validity, then maybe I'm just an idiot. Or maybe I'm an idiot for spending my time posting rather than writing.

If you cannot accept an idea until it has become an undeniable theory, then I encourage you to try it both ways and run a double-blind study and let the results speak for themselves. To continue to debate semantics is a waste of time, for all of us. If Steerpike doesn't like deep POV (which he writes, so I don't know why he would DISLIKE it), then I can't argue that. I however, know his style is both captivating, has a voice, and has deep POV. So I'm not sure what you meant. THat the two can't be mutually exclusive? I'm sure there's ways. For example, the newspaper one he wrote. It certainly had a voice, but lacked a POV, because it was set up as an article. BUT actually, I'd say it had a POV too, in the writer of the article. I'm not sure what you quoted Steerpike as saying, but I'd say everything I know about him suggests we see eye to eye on this and are speaking different words.

Fair enough, disagree. It won't hurt me, I promise. I'll continue to do what I do, and I'm almost certain Steerpike will too. I hope other people have derived some understanding of how to create or define a "voice" from reading this thread.

 

[BWFoster78]

I think I'm done here. I just spent two hours writing posts to try to define something that I think is exceptionally important for story-telling. I did it to help you, and you are arguing because I haven't defined something the exact same way as Steerpike.

I was simply trying to say, for the past several posts, that the conversation is kinda pointless because everyone is defining voice differently.

You feel the Deep POV is extremely important to good writing and that "voice" is crucial in developing that Deep POV.

Steerpike feels that Deep POV isn't important to good writing but that "voice" is.

You are both, presumably arguing for the same thing, that voice is crucial for good writing, but your viewpoints about what it is and what make it important are opposed.

If Steerpike doesn't like deep POV (which he writes, so I don't know why he would DISLIKE it), then I can't argue that.

I never said that he didn't like it. I said that he believes it isn't crucial for good writing.

To continue to debate semantics is a waste of time, for all of us.

I agree completely. That's why I was advocating that an agreement be reached on exactly what "voice" is. As it was, it seemed to be defined as a magical quality that makes writing good.

I hope other people have derived some understanding of how to create or define a "voice" from reading this thread.

It's hard to imagine how. I still think each poster on this thread has a different opinion of what voice is and why it might be important. I can't see how anyone would reasonable get from that point to learning how to create a voice of their own.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

It's in every description, every internal thought, and my favorite, every analogy. I just got a piece judged and got compliments on "voice". I highlighted all the "voice" choices I made in red. At least as far as I understand the concept. I hope I'm not terribly lost in my thinking. I notice, a lot of times people talk theory here on the forums, but usually we don't dare risk looking like idiots by trying to enact our theories for the world to see. Well, I'll risk looking like that idiot. If I'm misunderstanding the concept or "voice" and deep POV, please let me know. here it is:

This thread has rampaged way past this post, but I don't want to let it go without a couple of comments.

Firstly, thank you so much for taking the time to *show* what you mean by voice, rather than *telling* ;-) An example is many times more useful to me than abstract discussion. I've crawled over your sample every which way, and I have to confess I still don't see the distinction between voice and deep POV that is so clear to you. For instance, the word 'endured', which you describe as a voice decision, seems to me exactly the sort of word the character would choose, making it a POV decision.

So I'm going to accept that you and many others here see something that is completely invisible to me (just as trained musicians 'hear' music differently and artists see layers in a work of art that I don't).

Regardless of what you call it, I loved your sample, and look forward to reading your published work in the future.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Thanks Pauline. I actually detailed exactly what you are asking in the "defining voice' thread. I hope that clarifies it for you, where I again wrote a little passage and pointed it out clearer. I think the way you see it is exactly how I do. It's a point of view choice, for the most part, but also the ability to impart your narrator with that same voice. Please look at the other post, I think it will clarify.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Okay, my definition: "Voice" is the way an author writes a narrator POV in harmony with a character POV, to facilitate deep POV. I feel a bland narrator lacks voice. And while a POV character is great, if all narrative comes through as a dissemination of static information, it makes for a bland story, no matter how interesting the character is. My former example was kinda cheaty because it's first person and lacks a narrator other than the character. Sorry for the confusion. I posted it because it was complimented for "voice".

Personally, I feel voice also carries through to the construction of descriptions. the way characters notice things at times, and how a narrator describes at others. And probably even how they structure the description. And in dialogues. Where to put dialogue tags, descriptions, and beats and which to use.

So for me, a writer can either use a bland, monotonous sort of way to do those things, or they can convey many more things within the same text, without resorting to info dumps or long narratives, but using a unique tone of voice to convey more about the character or situation. Even if we're not technically within the character's POV.

I'd even imagine that "voice" begins with the concept. For example, an epic battle between orcs and elves might require a certain voice, while a journey following a thief, running for his life from the law, might require another. Hmm... what would that second one sound like, narrated by Gandalf? haha okay I didn't really mean that. But I think concept forms a voice too. and you know what? People who have read for me a lot, can pick my work out of a pile. What is that if not voice? It certainly isn't me reusing the same material. It's phrases I like to use to convey certain things and probably the general meter I prefer to use. Devor wrote a bunch of short sentences to convey a voice, and I think it worked well as that example.

 

[The Dark One]

People who have read for me a lot, can pick my work out of a pile. What is that if not voice?

That is the quintessence of voice.