What Does It Mean to Have a Compelling Voice in Your Story?

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin. Join us on Wednesday, October 8, for the online class Mastering Voice in Fiction.

One of the most frequent pieces of advice authors hear from agents and editors in making their work stand out is that it needs to have voice: strong voice, a unique voice, a compelling voice—or even just be “voicey.”

Voice is arguably among the most important factors in catching the attention of agents, editors, and readers. As literary agent Amy Collins of Talcott Notch says, “Manuscripts may have crisp, engaging dialogue, glorious descriptive scenes, and a great plot… But none of that matters if the tone of the writing is bland or the voice is not unique.”

This is where authors may feel a bit flummoxed. We know voice matters—enormously—in setting our stories apart in a crowded market. But what the hell is it, and what makes it powerful or intriguing or distinct? And if it’s too strong or distinctive, might it not draw attention to itself—like Fergie’s rendition of the National Anthem?

“I understand why authors struggle with it,” Collins admits.

What is voice?

One reason voice is such a tricky concept to grasp is that it’s used to refer to three different elements of storytelling: character voice, narrative voice, and author voice—and they can often overlap.

Character voice is the way your characters express themselves and their personality. In direct-POV stories (first person and deep third), where the character is also the narrator, character and narrator voice are essentially the same.

In indirect POV stories (limited third and omniscient) the narrative voice is distinct from that of the characters and may be neutral and nearly invisible, or distinctive and even specific. Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, for instance, features a narrator who is also a minor character in the story yet takes an omniscient POV with a unique, strong voice, as does Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief, narrated by omniscient, personality-filled Death, also a major player in the tale. [Learn more: Choosing Story Perspective: Direct versus Indirect POV]

And overlaying all of that is author voice—perhaps the most ephemeral and hard-to-define area of voice. Author voice is why, though the characters, setting, genre, and approach may be different in each of an author’s books, they always have a deeply personal stamp on them of the author’s style—and it’s so often why readers repeatedly seek out a favorite author’s work.

Author voice tends to be the trickiest, and the one most authors are grappling with when they feel confused or baffled by what exactly voice is or means or consists of.

Author voice encompasses a wide array of elements: diction and syntax, word choice and language use, rhythm and tone, frame of reference and worldview and themes, and more. In short, it’s the author’s personality and style infusing itself into the work, often subtly or without drawing attention to itself—though not always, as in “metanarrated” stories like William Goldman’s The Princess Bride or Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote de la Mancha, where the conceit is that that the author (or at least a fictionalized version of them) is narrating the story directly.

Confused yet?

Finding your story’s voice

As you’re tackling your stories, much of their voice will be a creative decision you deliberately make in the form of the narrative and character voices. What perspective do you want to tell your story from? What narrative point of view suits your story and intentions and style? What tone, what approach, what level of intimacy are you imagining?

You may know you want a narrative voice that’s separate from the character voice, for instance—the indirect POVs of omniscient or limited third—to allow you a broader narrative vantage point from which to observe and report their actions, thoughts, and the story action rather than the more subjective and limited perspective of the characters themselves.

Or perhaps the story you imagine is firmly planted in the direct perspective of one or more of your main characters—they speak to you, you hear their voice already as the story plays in your head, and you want to give readers direct access to that experience as they live out the events of your story, as if they’re on a ride-along.

It’s okay if you aren’t certain at first about the most effective voice for your story. In writing The Book Thief, set in Nazi Germany during World War II, author Marcus Zusak knew early on what narrative perspective he wanted: “Death is ever-present during war, so here was the perfect choice to narrate The Book Thief,” he says in an interview in the back of the book.

But at first, he says, Death was too mean, supercilious and creepy, and he didn’t feel the narrative/character voice was working for the story. He experimented with other approaches, including changing the POV and narrative perspective, but six months later came back to Death, this time as a character existentially wearied of his morbid job and “telling this story to prove to himself that humans are actually worth it,” with a looser, even humorous tone.

Shelby Van Pelt happened upon a key narrative voice in her first novel as an exercise in a writing class to write from an unusual point of view. When she turned in a brief piece written from the POV of an intelligent, keenly observant, wryly witty octopus, her teacher encouraged her to expand the story, and the result—Remarkably Bright Creatures—grabbed the attention of agents and publishers with Marcellus the octopus’s distinctive opening narrative/character voice, selling for six figures in a multi-house auction and eventually landing on the New York Times bestseller list not once but twice.

Van Pelt has written and spoken of the way Marcellus’s voice came to life in her head, shaping the narrative, yet her multiple-POV story also features two other distinctive narrative/character voices, each in a different POV, broadening her narrative perspective beyond Marcellus’s aquarium tank to allow her more freedom in telling the full story.

How do you see and hear a particular story in your head? Where are you “observing” it from? How do you want your readers to experience it? What tone and perspective feels most natural and comfortable to you?

Alternatively, what might be an intriguing or rewarding narrative voice to try to stretch you beyond that comfort zone?

Your story as you’re imagining it may suggest the kind of strong, specific narrative voice Zusak and Van Pelt settled on, or you might want a more objective perspective, like Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is, a story told in a more neutral omniscient narrative voice that doesn’t draw attention to itself, but allows readers access to each character’s thoughts, reactions, and emotions and focus on the experiences, individually and collectively, of a family with a transgender child.

Narrative voice helps set a story’s tone, feel, mood. It directs the reader’s experience of the story through creating its scale and scope, how much access the reader has to the character, and what perspective they’re viewing and experiencing it from. It can determine whether your story feels casual or more formal, intimate or more removed, objective or subjective.

Like so many questions in craft, there is no “right” answer to which narrative voice is best for a particular story. It’s purely subjective, based on many personal and stylistic factors. All POVs and perspectives are potentially marketable (even Death, as Zuzak proved). Present tense is as popular as past, and neither one is better nor worse, just different.

The “right” narrative voice is the one that feels right to you for the story you want to tell, the way you want to tell it, and the experience you want the reader to have.

Finding your voice

But where does your author voice come into the mix? If you’ve chosen a particular narrative/character voice for your story for the effect it creates on readers, then isn’t “adding in” your own personal creative voice a distraction?

Like the answer to most creative questions, it depends.

Zusak talks about reconsidering and polishing his prose “dozens of times” in his writing and revision process and over long stretches of time, particularly his distinctive use of figurative language: “I like the idea that every page can have a gem on it,” he says.

Pick up any of his writing and you’ll begin to notice consistencies, even across very different stories: that use of powerful imagery and figurative language, dark themes and the exploration of big philosophical questions with a hopeful bent, and humor often laced throughout. He often addresses the reader as if bringing us into the characters’ confidence, and alternates quick-moving short sentences and paragraphs with longer and more introspective prose in stories of characters seeking meaning.

As with most skilled storytellers, Zusak’s authorial voice is distinctive in all his work, and yet it doesn’t pull focus from or define the story itself. It runs beneath the surface of the story like a bass line: Take it out and you’d notice that the story loses much of its richness and texture and depth, but while it’s playing you may never even notice it.

Which sounds great, but how do you do it?

The tone and style and feel of our stories, however deliberately crafted, isn’t something we fabricate from whole cloth. You’ll never find your own powerful authentic voice by copying other people or imposing a crafted voice onto the writing externally; it comes from inside. Voice is hampered and can feel unnatural when you try to “do it.” Intentionally striving for a voice often results in sounding like an imitation of someone else, or stiff and self-conscious, or even pretentious.

Author voice is something you already possess, as does every human on earth. The trick is to discover, develop, and free it on the page.

See if you can identify the characteristics of your own writing in the same way you would analyze other authors’ voice. Do you have recurring themes in your work? What tone do your stories tend to have—light and humorous? deep and lyrical? casual and intimate or more formal? optimistic or cynical? or any of a spectrum of infinite possibilities. What kind of language do you tend to use: your vocabulary and word choice, the rhythm and length of your sentences, how you shape the prose with syntax? Are your stories more action-focused or introspective and character-driven?

My stories, for instance (written under my pen name, Phoebe Fox), tend to explore the topics of family and forgiveness. They tend to be character-driven, have an accessible and informal tone, and incorporate humor. In both my fiction and nonfiction writing, I often write in complex sentences with compound clauses and plenty of em dashes and semicolons; I love language and am deliberate with word choice, am quite free with imagery and figurative language, and often incorporate alliteration as well as rhythms of three (as in fact this sentence does).

If you can’t pinpoint your own authorial voice, ask others to offer you their objective perspective. Ask beta readers, critique partners, or really anyone willing to read you to characterize the tone and feel of your voice, your style, the personality of your writing.

Write a specific excerpt of another author’s story in your own way—how would you relate that passage? Then write an excerpt from your own stories in the style of another author—a great way to identify exactly how it’s different from what you naturally gravitate to. Try this exercise with another author: Have them write something in what they feel is your voice, while you do the same for their work—it’s a practical, hands-on way to identify the components of voice and see what makes each author’s distinctive.

Your voice may be influenced by other artists’ voices—we’re all shaped by our environment, including who and what we love to read. The trick is to let these influences all marinate and lead to your own unique concoction, as choreographer Camille A. Brown talks about in her TED Talk. Her voice takes inspiration and influence from everything from the Jacksons to Broadway musicals to African American social dance. In choreographing her production of Once on This Island, Brown reached out to an expert in Afro-Haitian dance, but then used it as a jumping-off point for her own creation. “This is about me understanding the origins for myself. So then I can use my choreographic voice and riff on that,” she says. “And then when it comes out, it’s something that is Camille and not someone else’s.”

Each of us contains multitudes, and you can tap into different aspects of your author voice from story to story, just as we access different aspects of our personality in various social groups. And your author voice may evolve as you deepen your understanding of craft and as you grow as a person.

Final thoughts

As Amy Collins says, “Authors need to identify and lean into their voice so that their scenes and chapters are not neutral and beige. The authors may have unique backstory or twists, but if the voice is null or bland, then I am out.”

Voice takes courage and confidence and practice. Trust that you are enough—your authentic self. It may not be Hemingway or King or Saunders or whoever you admire, but we already have that. What the world doesn’t have is you and your distinctive, singular, unique voice.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to join us on Wednesday, October 8, for the online class Mastering Voice in Fiction.