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WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

Author Janet Gurtler on VOICE

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I’m thrilled to have good friend and YA Author Janet Gurtler here today. Janet’s newest book, I’M NOT HER is a compelling story of sisters. A terrible cancer diagnosis forces Tess to reevaluate her complex feelings for her perfect sister as she’s pushed into Kristina’s popularity spotlight both at school and at home. Forced to carry an unfair burden of responsibility as her family’s strength crumbles, Tess must fight to remain herself and let her own light shine.

Voice is a huge component of I’M NOT HER, allowing Tess to stand out amid such devastating circumstances, and so Janet is here to share thoughts on this critical, yet complex, element of fiction.

JANET: One thing I heard a lot in the beginning phases of my writing journey (and still hear now) was how important voice was to selling a novel. How imperative nailing voice is to writing a good story. Editors and agents often speak about how they’re looking for a strong voice. Well, I thought back then, I can easily do that. Right?

Of course, first I needed to figure out exactly what this elusive voice thing was. And soon I discovered nailing voice often requires extensive research and always requires careful thought about who your characters are. And how you write best.

VOICE. 

It’s the way a story is told, a distinct style of writing. Maybe you use short choppy sentences and lots of sentence fragments (Hello, Me!) or perhaps your voice sings with long lush prose. The voice creates a tone and the author conveys their own voice in the manner they write in. Clear as my son’s fishbowl that he hasn’t changed the water in for three weeks?

Voice also helps elicit emotion from the reader and sets the mood. It’s not so much what you say, but HOW you say it. There are intelligent humorous voices in Young Adult fiction, like John Green. There are lush literary voices like Malinda Lo. Discovering who you are as a writer and being true to that is part of finding your own voice.

Voice pulls readers into a story by making a story real, no matter what the story is about. Real applies to paranormal and dystopian fiction as well as contemporary. Voice makes characters leap off pages and come alive in a reader’s mind. Voice conjures up vivid, visual settings and invites readers along for the ride. How do you show that to your reader?

Take a moment to listen to the voice in the opening of Libba Bray’s book, GOING BOVINE:

“The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World. I’m sixteen now, so you can imagine that’s left me with quite a few days of major suckage. Like Career Day? Really? Do we need to devote an entire six hours out of the high school year to having “life  counselors” tell you all the jobs you could potentially blow at?”

That small passage is ripe with voice, both Libba’s voice and the voice of her narrator, a sixteen year old boy named Cameron. Right away we kind of get a sense of who Cameron is because of what he tells us and the way he tells us.

Voice embodies the way a character speaks. What they say as well as how they say it. So voice is partly how a character sees his world. A fifteen year old boy does not have the same reaction to events or the same conversations a 25 year old woman would. This character doesn’t use the same words or have the same thoughts as another. The dialogue of different characters should be distinct. Use their voices to convey your own.

An eighteen year old girl who lives on a farm in Canada is not going to view the world the same way an eighteen year old girl from New York is. Nor will they sound alike when they talk. So as an author we need to understand our characters in order to properly convey their voices, which in turn helps to create an author voice.

Character interviews and exercises are helpful if you’re inclined to do that sort of thing, but also try to notice things the same way that your character would notice them. It’s both a conscious and unconscious process. In I’M NOT HER, my main character Tess, is an introverted artist. To convey this I tried to show her viewing the world the way she would as an artist. Here’s a passage where Tess is staring at her sister in her hospital bed:

Her cheek bones look more angular and her collarbones jut out from her blue hospital gown. I’d have to use different techniques to sketch her now. Her essence has changed. She’s less charcoal and more shading.

Another character might describe her completely differently. If Tess were a boy, she might have simply said, “She looks skinny and gross.”

When we write characters it’s important to try to be authentic to their voices. Characters likely do not share the same morals of the author, or even the same likes and dislikes. Sometimes our characters have to say or do things we may fully disapprove of. And that’s okay. An author’s experiences and beliefs might naturally flow into character and story, but learning to filter or rework them to suit a story or character, is part of the conscious process of voice. Listen to your characters.

An author may use multiple first person narrators or tell the story as a memory from an omniscient narrator. The voice of the story is definitely shaped by the POV the author writes in.

Have fun with voice. Make it your own. Better yet, make it shine! 

Reader Interactions

Comments

  5. Marcia says

    Sure, I’d love to win!

    I’m always eager to hear discussions on voice, because it is so elusive.

    marcia at marciahoehne dot com

  6. Terri Tiffany says

    For a very long time, I had no clue about what voice it, but once I did, I look for it in the books I read.Would love to win this book!! terri dot tiffany at yahoo dot com

  7. Rue says

    Some very interesting thoughts and comments here. Thanks for sharing them. Good stuff to think through. Also, thanks for the chance to win!

    ruthann (dot) francis (at) gmail (dot) com

  8. Becca Puglisi says

    What a great post on voice. Man, it’s so hard to figure out how to do it well. I like the idea of thinking in terms of what your character would do or react. I’ve heard that journaling is also a good technique, though I haven’t tried it yet.

    Thank you so much, Janet. I can’t wait to read your book!

  9. Janet Gurtler says

    Thanks to everyone for the comments!

    I can totally relate to not being sure about voice. It’s so intangible in some ways, and probably hard for us to hear in our own work?

    I think like has been said, you know great voice when you read it. Ie- Libba Bray and John Green!

    Good luck on the contest and I hope you like I’M NOT HER (and the voice- grin)

  10. Taffy says

    Thanks for the post and giveaway! Voice can be hard to write. I liked the examples in the post!

    taffy(dot)lovell@gmail.com

  11. Gayle C. Krause says

    Great post about voice. It’s one of the things I’ve struggled with for years. My plots are great. My characters are vibrant. My writer’s voice sucked……until this year.

    I guess my characters got tired of being flat and they drop kicked me in the head, because now I’m writing their voices with confidence. 🙂

    Thanks for your wisdom and the great examples of voice you shared.

  12. Julie Musil says

    Such great advice, thanks. Voice is something I hope shines through my work, but I don’t know for sure.

    I’M NOT HER sounds like my kind of book, and your passage was beautiful.

  13. Matthew MacNish says

    I love that you make the point that the voice of the narrator is not the same thing as the voice of the author. They are separate things, but equally important.

    Thanks Janet, Angela and Becca!

    mattmrush(at)gmail(dot)com

  14. Kelly Hashway says

    Great post! I think voice is so important. I read the first page of a book before I buy it because I need to get a sense of voice right from the start.

    khashway(at)hotmail(dot)com

  16. tracikenworth says

    Glad to see your back up and running!! This is a great interview, lots of insight. I have a post set to go this Tuesday on viewpoint/s so it was fun to see an added layer to that. I particularly liked that she stressed you need to listen to your characters and write through their eyes. Much to learn her!! Thanks for the post!!

  18. Shannon says

    That’s a really cool lay out of Voice. Of course, there is always the chance that if a person writes, say, two series with two very different Voices, they might have to write them under different names (as happened with Ed McBain) so style changes can have their own problems.

  19. ~The Book Pixie says

    Okay I love that passage Janet included! This is an excellent guest post and thanks for the giveaway as I’m Not Her is on my wishlist. 😀

    ~Briana
    thebookpixie[at]yahoo[dot]com

  20. thiswritelife says

    This is excellent advice. Sometimes everything around you drowns out the voice, but taking time to listen, concentrating, and then it just flows. This post helped remind me of that. Thank you.

  22. Deb Marshall says

    Man, great post on voice!! This really resonated for me:

    “It’s not so much what you say, but HOW you say it. There are intelligent humorous voices in Young Adult fiction, like John Green. There are lush literary voices like Malinda Lo. Discovering who you are as a writer and being true to that is part of finding your own voice.”

    And–no need to enter me in contest cause, well, you know…I’m a bridesmaid, bookmaid, zombie bookbride maid or something like that 😛

    Thanks for this!

  24. B. A. Binns says

    I like the idea and theme of your book, and I loved your words about VOICE. it is a huge struggle, especially for me trying to write in a teen BOY voice. It’s always a fight for me to keep myself from the pages and let him emerge. Thanks for writing this.

    binns at babinns dot com.

  27. Lynn says

    I really like the passage showing how Tess sees like her artist character. And sounds like an excellent read all around!
    lp(dot)lynnjdesigns(at)gmail(dot)com

  28. page turner paulina says

    Wow! I have never read a book about an artist’s POV in life. This sounds interesting, and the passage of where Tess is in the hospital bed sounds more beautiful, then disgusting. Congrats on the book Janet, and thanks for the giveaway!

    golaszewski.tw1(at)gmail(dot)com.

  29. Patty Palmer says

    I’ve struggled with voice my whole writing career. Although I understand what a writer must do to create voice, it’s just really hard!
    But I plug on. Keep sharing your great tips…now back to writing!

  31. L.J. Boldyrev says

    Awesome post, thank you for sharing!
    “It’s not so much what you say, but HOW you say it.” — I can not count how many times my mother said this to me growing up. I had to laugh when I read it.

  32. Rosemary Gemmell says

    I loved this post, Janet, as I sometimes write from a teen viewpoint, as does my grown-up daughter. I really like the sound of your novel, but I’m in Scotland so don’t worry about the giveaway.

  34. Claire Dawn says

    Thanks for this! Added to the TBR.

    For me, voice is simply personality. Why do you like your best friend? Well she does these things and is these things, but if you add that all up, something will still be missing.

    Same with books. Add up a great plot, and awesome characters, and grammatically-correct prose. But with the wrong voice, it might not be a good fit for you.