The art of voice

As a writer you hear a lot about voice. These are often vague concepts. People can tell you whether they like your voice or not but can't tell you what it is or how to fix it. For the purposes of this blog, I'll define voice as the music of your prose. Vague, right? Broken down it becomes about the words that you choose and the length of your sentences and the way you put your paragraphs together. Some people write in long lyrical prose while others write in short choppy sentences. Some love interesting words while others go for more common place words to express the story they want to tell. No two writers choose the same words. And that, my friends, is voice.

What do you want to accomplish with your voice? You want to seduce the reader.

How do you do this?

Choose your words, paragraph breaks and scenes carefully. Think about them. For instance: need to speed up your pacing in certain areas? Short choppy sentences intensify a scene. One or two syllable words punctuate a dark moment or a bit of humor. very your sentence lengths to engage the readers eye. Your word choice makes all the difference.

Finally, clean up your style with the following five rules:

1) Know the actual definition of the words you choose. Often times someone will write, "the gorge rose in her throat in revulsion." If you look of the definition of the word gorge- it is the throat or gullet in this instance. In other words, the writer is saying that the throat rose in her throat.

2) Do your best to create a clean manuscript free from typos, spelling and grammar errors. (As I've talked about before, this is nearly impossible in a 90,000 manuscript, but you have to really try. More than one proof reader is always a good way to tackle this.)

3) Do your research. There should be no cell phones in the 1920's.

4) Don't forget your theme and premise. Every word, sentence, paragraph and scene must tie directly back to your plot.

5) Omit needless words and repetitive words.

Voice is the ability to lead the reader into your story world using their imagination. Choose your words carefully and do the work of style revision. Remember, the art of voice is found in the white space between the words where the reader's mind creates their own personal connection to the story.