The Voice
Right after the muse, “voice” seems to be the most elusive and difficult to define. An abstract idea, it is one of those things where I will know it when I see it.
A writer’s voice is similar to a thumbprint or a snowflake in that no two are alike. And if you are lucky, your voice might even have that certain “it” factor which leads to commercial success.
But what is voice?
To me, voice is the unique style or tone the writer conveys to his character(s). Voice is the character’s way of speaking and thinking and this does not merely imply dialogue or the writer’s own way of thinking or speaking.ย Voice belongs to the characterย and not to the writer.
In a book where there are multiple points of view, there will be multiple voices. And whether your book has one viewpoint or multiple viewpoints, the key isย consistency and for more than one voice, separateness. With more than one voice, it would be easy for the lines to become blurred, the separateness to dissolve into one big melting pot of a voice.
There are three things to do to create your character’s voice:
- One is to create your character on paper, like a blueprint. This was covered in an earlier post of How Well Do You Know Your Character?
- Second, realize that it is trial and error with writing, you have to keep doing it to get better at it and this applies to finding your character’s voice too.
- And lastly, trust your intuition. Even if that means going against all the logic and the facts at hand. Your gut feeling should not be so easily dismissed. You need to trust yourself that when you have exhausted the first two and have arrived at the point where it feels right, that you will listen to your own inner voice.