FAQ - Where Does VOICE Come From?

An aspiring author recently asked me about the thing writers call Voice.  "What is it?" she asked.   "You mentioned 'finding your voice and being solidly in it.' How did you 'find' yours?  Is it consistent in your novels? "

Ahh.  That's what I get for tossing about terms, the meaning of which I have only a hazy idea. My initial reaction was to say that I had no more idea where my 'voice' comes from than I can account for those tiny circles like planets round the sun in the picture above.

That's not entirely true. I suspect the circles are reflections -- and I know what I mean by voice. But I went looking round the web for a more official definition.

About.com  had this to say:

• Voice is the author's style, the quality that makes his or her writing unique, and which conveys the author's attitude, personality, and character; or
• Voice is the characteristic speech and thought patterns of a first-person narrator; a persona. Because voice has so much to do with the reader's experience of a work of literature, it is one of the most important elements of a piece of writing.

Okay. Keeping those definitions in mind, where does voice come from?

The first sort of voice -- the style of the author -- I believe comes from the experiences of the author. In my case, that experience includes years of reading all sorts of things from Jane Austen and Thackery to Mark Twain and Wodehouse -- with a hefty dose of Douglas Adams, Lee Smith, Rumer Goden and, as they say, many, many more.

My style includes a slight tendency to be pedantic (yes, I was an English major and a teacher and I love big words,) as well as a touch of playfulness. There's also a Southern childhood, my particular generation (will I ever get beyond saying that things are 'neat' or 'cool'?) and my thirty-plus years absorbing the culture of rural Appalachia.  All of these things contribute to a multi-layered effect. (I suspect that this blog is a fair example of my natural voice. )

The second definition -- the voice of a first person character -- is what I was talking about when I spoke of 'finding my voice.' What I really meant was finding Elizabeth's voice.

My protagonist Elizabeth not only lives on a farm that is very much like where I live, she also shares my Southern past and the English major thing. She's ten years younger than I and she doesn't (or shouldn't) say 'neat' and 'cool.' In fact, she shares so much of my world view that for the first four books, I chose to write her in third person point of view -- not wanting to have her quite so identified with me.

But by the time I got to the fifth Elizabeth book, my protagonist had become a fully-realized character -- a bit like me still, but with a whole set of experiences that were uniquely her own.  So at last I began to write Elizabeth in first person. And her voice as a character is substantially different from my own -- at least, I think it is.

When I write my novels, the overall style is pretty much similar to my natural voice but I try to suppress or let free various elements as seems appropriate.  The pedantic voice had a field day with the character of The Professor in In a Dark Season. The Appalachian culture is, of course, the basis for many of my characters -- Miss Birdie, of course, and Cletus and Bib and quite a few others.

Very often I have an idea for a character and I think to myself -- this person is going to be a  lot like ____. Sometimes I fill in the blank with the name of a friend or acquaintance; sometimes it's a character in a book.  And as I write this character, I'm always thinking, What would ___ do in this situation? What would they say? How would they say it?

 I keep a file on my computer of interesting scraps of conversation or descriptions.  And I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting characters

 As for that last question --Is the voice consistent in my novels? -- I think so -- but one day I may surprise myself and write something very different.

This post will be added to the FAQ page over at my Day of Small Things blog.