A Short Primer on Voice and Style
I’m going to do my best to give you an idea of how to define these two ephemeral elements for yourself, and indeed, you will need to define them for yourself. Everyone seems to have a different definition for one or the other, usually both.
That sounds intimidating and crazy, but it’s the solid truth.
Describing voice and style is a little like describing the wind. I know it when I see it, er, um, feel it rather.
Hopefully, we can get to a point where you have a passing acquaintance with what voice and style are, and as you go along, you can deepen your understanding.
Style
Your writing style refers to the unique way that you combine word choice, sentence structure, imagery, dialogue, etc. One writer can write with multiple styles, depending on what they are writing.
Below are a few snippets from short stories that I’ve been working on. I’d love to show samples of Stephen King and Mickey Spillane and John Irving, but I don’t want to anger the copyright gods. So you’ll have to look those guys up on your own.
In my personal examples, look to see how my writing style varies with point of view, tense, and character. Style is essentially the character distilled through the author’s voice. Each of the snippets below is from a different story with different characters. It might be subtle, but see if you can see the differences in my style samples. Then download a bunch of Kindle samples (if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download the app from Amazon for free). Look at a variety of authors: the good, the bad, and the boring. Investigate how an author’s choices can vary writing style.
Take your favorite sample and rewrite it in your own words. Then compare your style to your favorite author. It’s a fun game to play (if you’re a writing nerd like me).
Horror Story
She jigged and raved and shook, moving around the floor in a senseless dance of terror. Finally, she tilted her head back and gave a long scream, a scream to reverberate through the ages, a scream to warn the children of the future not to fuck with the Pied Piper, be he of Hamlin, or of Chicago.
Detective Story
He must look more upstanding than he thought.
But he didn’t feel upstanding while he rapped on Mrs. Flannigan’s door for the umpteenth time. He kept checking his watch, pacing while he waited, running his hands through his ever-sparser hair and grabbing great handfuls of it in frustration.
Maybe that habit was why the stuff kept swirling down the drain.
Fairy Tale Retold
Back in the day, in the suburbs of Chicago, next to a forest preserve with a long winding river, there lived a brother and sister. The two were devoted to each other since their mother died and no longer scuffled in the back seat of the car during long drives, or pinched each other until one cried. Instead, the sister, Hannah, and the brother, George, held each other when they cried for missing their mother and spent long, quiet hours playing on the edges of the forest.
Ghost Story I
Lord knows that the idea of seeing those walls day after day after day turned my stomach to lead. I’d lost maybe forty pounds over the last two years. Part of it was being sick of who I’d become and how I’d got here. The rest was just looking at those walls. I had no appetite.
Ghost Story II
The fact that their mother had to take in wash at all was a source of embarrassment for the boys. So they trudged off the road into town, populated as it was with the boys they had gone to school with in their younger years. The rich boys. Boys with shoes. Boys whose fathers did not come home with coal dust trapped within every line and crevice of their skin. Pure white boys with no Indian blood. Boys whiter and cleaner than Will and Woody could ever hope to be, or to remain, so long as they lived in the dirty little coal town.
Voice
Voice is the cumulative work of an author and what it says to the world. It embodies writing style, subject matter, and the writer’s unique perspective. It might also weigh the impact of their writing on society.
Charles Dickens wrote several stories that are still celebrated today, the most popular of which is The Christmas Carol, which has had innumerable screen adaptations. His voice might be said to be swirling with dry wit, impoverished Victorian children, and Christmas ghosts.
Stephen King’s voice reels with the common man caught in an uncommon situation. He uses simple prose. His endings are sometimes rushed. But his characterization is excellent, and he has a knack for keeping story tension.
I could go on and on, because every writer’s voice is as unique as a fingerprint.
Some use different descriptions for style and voice. In fact, in his craft book, Voice: The Secret Power of Great Writing, James Scott Bell defines voice as “CHARACTER background and language filtered through the AUTHOR’S heart, and rendered with craft on the PAGE = VOICE”, which is similar to my definition for style.
I told you, it’s like describing the wind, and in the end, you’ll have to decide upon your definitions for yourself. I’m just here lighting a candle and holding it at the beginning of your path.
How to Develop Your Voice
Read a lot. Write a lot. Edit a lot. Those are the critical steps. There are some tricks to speed it along a little, though.
The next time you read something that doesn’t thrill you, why not try editing it? (Dear Lord, don’t try to publish it! This is just an exercise.) You don’t have to edit the whole book, but why not try it with a short chapter? See how you can make it better. That can help to build your skills by showing you what not to do, which is important.
Some writers copy other writers’ work in longhand. You don’t want to ever try to imitate another writer. You will only end up reading like a weak impersonation at best. But this exercise will help you to see how that writer does things, and you can take bits and pieces of a dozen other writers and meld their techniques into your own writing.
If you keep at it, your voice will develop and grow, and in time will flower into something unique and beautiful.
For now, as always, happy writing.
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