Language is how we communicate, whether in written or spoken word. It’s how we, as writers and authors, express ourselves and paint the picture for the reader. What happens if we fail to capture their interest and give them a clear picture? Or conversely, what happens if we paint a clear picture bereft of all tone and what I would argue is an authorial voice?
I recently read a craft book — or rather — am in the midst of one by Harry Bingham called How to Write a Novel. The main crux of the book is about words, and how or how not to use them.
As I was reading the chapter on Precision, I found myself resisting what he had to say. A lot. His examples are good. You want to be clear for your readers, whether you write fiction or nonfiction. My struggle had to do with being precise vs being me. Writing as me. If I stripped out all the adverbs and adjectives, would I stand out from any other author?
I recently DNF’d a very popular traditionally published book because the writer spent so much time adding descriptive terms, adjectives, and adverbs that it bogged down the story for me and I didn’t feel the connection to the characters. And yet here I was fighting the words of someone who’s been writing longer and more successfully for me for those very same reasons.
So, I performed a test. I took my paranormal cozy manuscript I was about to publish on Kindle Vella and massacred the first chapter. At least, that was what it felt like. I took out all adjectives and adverbs. Rewrote sentences to focus on the key parts, killed my darlings, and then stepped back to judge what was left.
It was stark and a little staid. I wondered whether I had removed my author’s voice in the process.
And, if my voice was that weak, did it exist at all?
What is an Author’s Voice?
Before I could answer that question, I needed to figure out what an author’s voice even was and what I found out is that it is hard to describe, but has nothing to do with descriptive terms and everything to do with those things that appear consistent across your writing. Your personality, the way you express your thoughts (even if it’s a character that is doing it), the terms you use versus others, etc.
Masterclass put it best (at least for me) when they defined it as: “voice” refers to the rhetorical mixture of vocabulary, tone, point of view, and syntax that makes phrases, sentences, and paragraphs flow in a particular manner.
The voice of the author and the voice of the character should be different, even though we can analyze both under this definition. A character behaves because of the traits and challenges the author has laid out for them. The voice of a character could have facets of the author’s personality, but they are (or should be) separate from the author.
Some of my characters are very different from who I am and how I interact in the world, and that’s a good thing. No one wants to read a book with five characters all acting like me. But, some of my characters act in a way I wish I could, a sort of theatrical exercise where I get to play them on the page rather than in real life. So are they me, or are they a fantastical version of me? I think they may be a bit of both, which narrows down my definition of an author’s voice.
The author’s voice comes through the themes they tackle in the book, the way they lay out their sentences, the structure of their paragraphs or chapters. For example, I tend to include impact statements or questions on their own lines (e.g., “And if my voice is that weak, does it exist at all?” above). I also like to do that at the end of the chapter. It’s not something I read somewhere (at least I don’t think I’m copying that from an author I’ve read a lot of), but something that comes naturally to me. That rhythm is part of my authorial voice.
In a way, it’s much like the way you choose to dress, whether that is full on, mixing colors and patterns like a friend of mine, or choosing fun socks under your corporate attire — still blending, but expressing yourself as well. It’s how we perceive the world and how it falls on to the page, the experiences we’ve had, and the way we’ve grown from it. And it can change as we learn more, develop more, read more. It’s like a signature of who we are at any given moment, captured on the page in black and white.
If you read the first novel of any multi-work author, you’ll see that where they start and where they get to by book six, nine, or even twenty-nine is very different. They’ve grown, learned how to express themselves better, and maybe even found more confidence in their author’s voice.
So where did that leave me?
The Takeaway
When I finished brutalizing my first chapter, I noticed a few things. First, it was much more concise. I cut out the fat, the repetition, or those things that a reader would sense without needing to be told. This was all good.
The chapter also lost much of my character’s personality, the flavor of the book, the tone of it. So, I added a few bits back in but rewrote them with precision in mind. After all, the first chapter sets the stage, and I needed it to reflect the most accurate first impression of the character I could. If her personality was bleak, how would the reader reconcile it with the more colorful version later on?
Lastly, and this was the best part about the exercise, it showed me I can write in more genres than I thought I could. That my author’s voice wasn’t restricted to the books and characters I’d written so far. I had thought that to be the case, that I should stay in my lane and only do the thing I thought I was best at.
But I was wrong.
Because I’d created a stark image in that first chapter, one that beautifully represented the character’s journey, but one that fit more in thrillers or darker mystery stories than the paranormal cozy I’d set out to write. I’ve kept that image in the book because it works, but I’ve softened it and created a more cozy feel by adding in some internal narrative, a few adjectives (but not too many!), and some imprecision as well.
Will I be more precise in future chapters? I hope so. Will I be successful every time? Probably not. Writing better takes practice, something I’m working on but I’m not always good at right out of the box. And I don’t think I want to strip out everything like I did in that first chapter. But I’m going to give it my best shot as I go, finding precision where I can.
Learning to write better is a goal I believe all writers should have. We should strive to express ourselves more cleanly, clearly, and also, maybe more poetically. We should try other genres, unless the one we write in is the only genre where our passion lies. And we should refine and deepen our author’s voice as we refine and deepen as humans.
After all, isn’t the author’s voice what ties an author’s work together no matter the genre?