Rhythm and Lyrics: A Million Words post

My latest contribution to The Million Words talks about rhythm and voice.

Finding Your Voice (ConCarolinas 2013 Writing Panel Notes)

Finding Your Voice: A Magical Words Panel
David B. Coe/D.B. Jackson, Faith Hunter, Misty Massey
MagicalWords.net is a website for readers and writers of fantasy that started in January 2008. Faith Hunter, David B. Coe (now also writing as D.B. Jackson), and Misty Massey all met at a convention and clicked, and the concept was born. Over the years they have brought in other writers and related folks. They have many regulars and guests. Enjoy another discussion with the founding members!

Voice: The most amorphous, the least easy to define, and yet probably the most necessary part of any kind of writing. Especially fantasy.

Voice is the distinctive tone, mood, and style that makes any particular piece of writing sound unique.

Voice in the dictionary: You will not find any reference to literary voice. This is a term that gets used in literary circles but doesn’t get used outside of that.

The term gets used in different ways by different people even within writing circles.


Types of Voice

Voice works on different levels, different kinds of voice. There are 3 major types:

Stylistic voice – Personal style and genre influences. Authorial voice (voice of author – can tell different betwen Faulkner and Hemingway – voice of author stands apart.); genre voice (an epic fantasy by Dbc and an urban fantasy by dbc red differently. Different subgenres. Supposed to be diff critters.)

Ambient voice – The mood of the world you’ve created and the book you’re writing. The Jane Yellowrock books read different from the Thorn St. Croix books. Partly because the worlds are different. The narratives are different. The characters are different.

Character voice – Particularly with 1 Point of View character. Character voice is the voice of your narrator, the way they express themselves or tell their story. If the POV skips around, you want different voice between each character, too.

FH: They blend so much, they’re hard to keep separate. Views voice because she writes first person, the voice types blend. Finding the break betwen things is harder to do in first person.

DBC: You as an author have a voice. Someone picking up your book recognizes it as your book.


Which books have influenced your voice?

MM: After reading The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, which was rich and powerful, in-depth and thrilling, she wanted to write something that made somebody feel the way that book made her feel. Also Michael Moorcock. Dark, bitter, angry, cold quest fantasy. She wrote the book she wanted to write. Not by following a commercial trend.

DBC: Steven R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant books. Having read Tolkien it never occurred to him that a character could be dark, bitter, horrible, and still be worth rooting for. And then he read Guy Gavriel Kay and wanted to write like that. When we start, we have nothing to go on besides what we’ve read. But our own voices emerge that are our own unique compendiums of our taste and the writing styles of the books we’ve read. Then when he wrote Thieftaker, he started writing as D.B. Jackson, which was different from his work as David B. Coe. Thieftaker is historical urban fantasy, not epic fantasy. So he went for a different style.

MM: When writing Mad Kestrel, set at sea, she tried to use language that was rolling and moving, like something on a ship. Now she's writing something else set in Nebraska, and so is going for long and distant.

Audience comment: It felt that night and day in Thieftaker were written differently. There was a different voice at night.


Audience question: As you’re writing Chapter 1 of a new series, how much time do you need to invest in the new voice?

DBC: Starts a book, especially a first book in a new series, and finds upon completing a 400 page novel that the start needs to be rewritten the most. He takes time to find characters as he’s writing. Forstalls it by worldbuilding and writing short stories set in that universe. It's important to write stuff that doesn’t matter. Play with the world through short fiction is a fabulous way to start developing that ambience, that mood, for the larger work you’re going to write.

FH: Starts with first page and first line. Once she knows the character’s name and where she wants to go she’ll go back and work on it again and the voice is there.

MM: Doesn’t start with a short story. Loves playing with a world and getting it out in 20pgs or less.

DBC: Thieftaker was originally an alternate-world (epic) fantasy. Although it’s set in Colonial Boston, it has an otherworldly quality.


Audience question: How do you inject life in to something structurally sound that lacks it?

DBC: It helps to have great editors and beta readers. He put the book away because he wasn’t ready to make it the book he wanted it to be. Then he thought about how he could punch it up. How do you breathe life into something like this? He added action, showed the character in action. Made one change to first chapter and it was like a row of dominoes, and that broke him out of the stuff he thought that couldn’t be fixed. It changed his mindset.

Faith: She has to write the story she needed to write. Presented something her editor rejected in a different voice. It was a substantially different book. She was able to take what she wanted and what editor wanted and make a much better story.


Audience question: Character voice – what do you do to differentiate between different characters? Especially when they're from the same culture?

FH: Characters are not just one thing. Voice should be dependent on what your characters have gone through. Where do they come from, what are their histories, what have they lived through?

DBC: Point of view characters: You’re in their heads. It’s not just about dialects or language, you have to get into emotion. Ethan Kaille is broken, and has a history of being broken. Characters are a product of who they are and where they’ve been. E.g. Schlomo the Kosher Vampire.


Audience comment: Faith has a great example of the different voices between Jane Yellowrock and Beast.

Faith: Beast develops vocabulary as she grows. And Jane recognizes her primitivity.

DBC: Jane in Book 6 is not the same as Jane in Book 1. Ethan in Book 4 is different from Ethan in Book 1.

MM: Kestrel, too. She doesn’t have the luxury of the immaturity she had as quartermaster when she becomes captain in Book 2.


DBC to MM: How did you prepare Kestrel as a character before writing the first book? What influenced you?

MM: Kestrel is a street orphan, and Misty knows her origins and background. She comes from the streets and having to survive on her own from such a young age. It hardened her, made her more streetwise and clever than average kid. She knows how to handle people. How to not be afraid of people. How to assess situations and fights, and whether or not she can get out of them. BUT Misty focused on communicating character rather than communicating the background details.


DBC to FH: You didn’t do much prep work with Jane Yellowrock, but that works with story because Jane has no memory.
                                     `+
FH: Yes, and it was a process of discovery. She couldn’t do prep work; if she had, she’d have shared it too early. She’s discovering Jane as she goes. As Jane discovers herself.

DBC: Ethan spends his time as a thieftaker recovering everything he’s lost.


Audience question: What are the benefits of Pantsing versus Outlining?

MM: Pantsing is really really hard. She had to learn how to outline, but it’s so much simpler to have a map. Not necessarily every single detail, but a basic roadmap.

DBC: Do you mean that characters take over, go where we don’t expect? (He re-outlines as he goes along because characters will surprise us with things we can’t anticipate. That doesn’t mean you should avoid having that narrative roadmap. Knowing where the next plot point is gives the characters more freedom.

FH: Writing an outline in the character’s voice told her what her weaknesses were and how to fix it. She solved a plot problem that worked for the character, and fixed it, and made it work for the character’s voice.

When a Change Really Does You(r Story) Good (March Madness Check-In, Day 25) #WIPmadness

"Maybe you weren't ready for that ... but your kids are going to love it."

- Marty McFly, Back to the Future, Part I

I've been enjoying all of the Back to the Future references this month. Kudos to whoever came up with the idea first because it's been a lot of fun. Michael J. Fox has a special place in my heart because he's from my city, and there's even a few buildings around here with his name on it. Little known fact: did you know I have a poster of a young MJF circa 1987, urging kids to read? I think it was part of a series the American Library Association put out back then. The public library I was working at was throwing it out finally in 2007 because they had newer, shinier posters, so they let me take it. It now adorns one corner of my office, and it kind of broke my heart on Friday when two techs came by to install a new scanner and one of them said, "Who's Marty McFly?" Sigh.

So, before anything can happen to tinker with our timeline, I'd better announce another March Madness winner:

Carol Garvin!

Congratulations, Carol!

Now, back to the regularly scheduled madness. ^__^

One of the other awesome actors I had the fortune to see at Emerald City Comicon was none other than Christopher Lloyd, a.k.a. Doc Brown. He was fun to listen to. Before he began the Q&A, he mentioned something that neither me nor my husband knew: that before Michael J. Fox was chosen to play the role of Marty McFly, a significant chunk of the film was shot with a completely different actor.

Whoa. Really? That's a huge change to make for a major motion picture that far into production. But it looks like the decision paid off, because can you imagine the movies any other way?

Okay, so think about that. Have you ever made such a significant change to a writing project that you hadn't expected you'd ever make? Perhaps something that was there from the start that you'd started to ignore in revisions because it was so ingrained into the fibre of your work? Or have you began a project with one premise driving the story only to realize that no, the story needs to go somewhere else, and this thing you started with needs the boot?

One that really sticks out for me, one for the list of amusing tales later on in my writing career, is the fact that I started out writing the manuscript I'm sending to agents soon in an unsuitable POV: First-person present tense. To the point where writing in present tense came naturally to me, felt natural, and felt right. *shudders* I've learned my lesson now. This is not to say that it might work for others (case in point: Hunger Games) but it definitely wasn't meant to be for me. Turns out my characters function much better in the past tense. Realizing that mistake and fixing it was vital, because it helped me rediscover my real voice, not the voice I'd been adopting for all that time.

It was an eye-opener, but I feel so much better for it, and even more confident about my voice. Even though I basically did the equivalent with POV as was done with the actor for Marty McFly.

Marty: "Doc... what if we don't succeed?"
Doc Brown: "We must succeed."

And we will.

That's my two cents madness for the week. How about you? Thanks for checking in here, folks! Now don't forget to stop by Shari's blog tomorrow.

Embracing Change (March Madness Check-In, Day 5)

"Uncomfortable kitteh is ... apparently comfortable"

Welcome to March Madness Mondays! For those of you participating in the challenge, how's progress? For some, I know the weekend meant a break from the madness. For others, it was an opportunity. For me, it was a weird mix of both. I didn't manage quite what I'd intended to accomplish, but I made *some* progress. I'm up to Chapter 15 in my second pass read-through after making a major change. (More on that in a bit.)

Which brings me to my point.

Do you ever get attached to something? An element in your story. A certain creative habit. Even reading in a particular genre. Whatever it is, it's easy to fall into a comfort zone. We like it just the way it is and we don't want to let it go. So when someone tells us it doesn't belong or that we need to stretch ourselves or do things differently, then it rankles and if we're attached enough, the criticism falls on deaf ears.

But what if that means that we get so attached we refuse to make a change when we really need to? (Yoga pants, I am looking at you. Yes, you're comfortable. Fashionable everyday wear? I wish.)

So, what was it for me? Well, I always thought I was pretty flexible. Editorial suggestion? Sure! If something's not working, I can make changes. As long as the essence of the story remains, then if it makes things better, I can do both the story and myself justice by making those fixes. I'm not adverse to learning new things. If I have the opportunity to be a better writer, then I really ought to embrace it, right?

Yeah, but there was one little detail I'd decided was a non-negotiable.

Some of you already know the story, but I might as well explain it from scratch: My WIP, SIGN OF THE STAR, was written in first-person, present-tense. And even though some of my beta group told me that it didn't work for them, I chalked it up to a matter of opinion. The original was written that way. And that's how I wrote the revised version, too. But I clung to the idea that that was how the story was supposed to be. Even when one of the Magical Words folks made an excellent point that present tense comes at a heavy price. (Seriously, check the comments. See Moira Young's—my cursed pen name at the time—naive response.)

Then last month, I had tea with an awesome beta reader who doesn't pull punches, and she nailed the problem I'd been having with it when editing by telling me that "it was like watching through a veil". She had trouble connecting with the characters because the present tense created an artificial distance. Which was exacty not what I was going for.

So I caved. And before February was out, I'd changed the story over to past tense. (Really not hard, even though for awhile there I was mentally changing the tense of any text I encountered. Hooboy.) Now I'm making a second pass for clarity, voice and flow. And I love the story so much more. It feels more accessible. Janni's voice has never been more clear. Did I damage the story's integrity, or change my heartsong? Surprisingly, no.

Sometimes we have to make the change. Sometimes it can be scary. And sometimes it can be exactly what we need.

So, have you gotten stuck on or attached to something in your work? Have you asked yourself what the cost would be to you to try something different? What are the possible rewards? What's the worst that could happen if you gave it a chance? March Madness, #wipmadness, is about putting yourself out there, being daring. Let us embrace all that it can offer.

Update: Forgot to add, don't forget to check-in tomorrow (today actually) at Denise Jaden's blog.