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:
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!
Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.
As Always–GREAT POST! And Janet is a talented writer for sure. Whoever wins will be very lucky to have her book! 🙂
Great post with excellent advice. Voice is such a struggle. Thanks for this.
Trish.
Sounds like exactly the kind of book I love to read!
~Debbie
Voice is one component of writing that is difficult to master. I love this post.
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
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
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
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!
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)
Thanks for the post and giveaway! Voice can be hard to write. I liked the examples in the post!
taffy(dot)lovell@gmail.com
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.
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.
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
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
I love when voice shines through in just a paragraph! This books looks great! 🙂
laurapauling@yahoo.com
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!!
Great interview! Voice is so important and so hard to pinpoint. So LOVE GOING BOVINE. Great example. 😀
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.
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
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.
Thanks so much for the advice! This bit–“She’s less charcoal and more shading”– is a great example!
whatinabox at gmail dot com
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!
Great examples of voice! And the snippet from your book makes me want to read it even more. It sounds lovely.
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.
A bold subject to take on! Kids think they are invulnerable so it is so helpful for those kids forced into such circumstances to have books that deal with death and loss.
rene.peterson@yahoo.com
Excellent post, love the extract you’ve chosen to illustrate it.
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
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.
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!
Wow – I appreciate all this great info on Voice, Janet! And thanks for the contest.
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.
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.
I am interested in this plot. thank-you for your introduction to this author.
beallcomp@aol.com
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.
Thanks for the great post. I’ll definitely be putting I’M NOT HER on my TBR list.
kebirch@hotmail.com
Voice is something I have struggled with, but I think I’m starting to get it with this round of revisions. Great post.
Great post with loads of wonderful advice. The book sounds good.
Sounds like a great book 🙂
quixoticdreamer(at)hotmail(dot)com
Great post and adice! Voice is so hard to nail, but when you do, you know it ;o)