the enchanted 15: voice

Dictonary.com: The distinctive style or manner of expression of an author or of a character in a book.

In writing you often come across the concept of "voice" and the related concept of "tone".  This is probably something I struggle with most, and I am beginning to grasp the reason WHY I struggle with it.  The reason WHY I struggle with voice and tone is because there is a myth that every writer has a unique voice.  This is patently false--I think every writer has multiple voices.  

Think about it.  Do you talk to your three year old neighbor in the same voice and the same tone as you talk to your best friend from high school?  Do you use the same language in talking to 20-something graduate students as you do in talking to your mother? 

I believe there is a romance of individualism in writing, a sense that the successful writer is one who is true to himself--but this is of course nonsesne.  David Mamet, for instance, as an essay writer, has an identifiable voice, but it is a voice that has shifted over time, something hard to identify but a clear evolution from early essay to current voice, which may have more than a little to do with his reversion to tradtional Judaism.  And certainly, he is able to create characters in his plays with multiple voices, different aspects of himself.  Writer Hilaire Belloc, in The Four Men, was able to splinter his own person into four  unique characters, each with their own voice.  

One of my biggest shifts has been in writing for an academic audience toward writing to a more generalized audience.  Both voices are me--but both voices are different.  I'm not sure if someone who reads one of my academic essays, or has read one of my comedies, and then comes to this blog would be able to identify one consistent voice; and yet they are all me.  I am developing yet another voice in my fantasy novel.  And when I was studying and writing poetry at the graduate level, I developed multiple voices depending on the style and the content I was trying to communicate.  A colleague called me Sybill. I have had a tendency to view this as a problem but not so much any longer.    

I believe this idea of voice has come with the commodification of literature--the idea that you have to increasingly specialize yourself in order to corner a niche market that you can dominate.  There are certain ways in which the New Media is making this even more true.  But I have great optimism that it is making it even less true.  There are ways in which New Media, through grouping us into tribes of specialized interest, are making us fractured and splintered, enabling us to create multiple online personalities that may or may not have relationship to each other.  But given that the very nature of New Media is that all people are allowed a central space (or spaces) where all of those identities and specialized interests converge, it is providing a new, pluralistic sense of self, channeled through the model of a web, where multiple trajectories converge on one space, in this case the space is the self.    

I'm struggling here to discover what this actually has to do with voice--I have a hunch that it is at the very heart of it, the myth of the single writerly voice.  And if, through time pressure, I am now forced to come up with an answer it would be this: the persistent element is not truly your "voice" but yourself--and the multiple voices that emanate from you.  It is you that reaches out to your readers, not your voice or even your stories but yourself.  The perfect example of the trap of "voice" is Stephen King's story Misery, which one doesn't have to work terribly hard hard to discover is the story of how Stephen King feels about his own "voice" himself.  The main character, Paul, feels completely imprisioned by the authorial voice he has created as a commodity for sale--and he relishes in the destruction of it. But the audience he has created with his unnaturally narrow voice has different ideas about that, an idea they are literally willing to weild a sledge hammer to communicate.  

Stephen King himself has created alter egos to write under, because, I assume, he felt he had a different voice to try on.  And you see--I think part of the appeal of writing is trying on different voices, different styles, and adopting different tones.  

I'm rushing to a conclusion here--I am offering my own very confused thoughts on the problem/issue of voice in writing.  It's not something I've really made peace with myself.  What are your thoughts on voice?  

Comments

[Christine Messier]

Debbie

You bring up some interesting points here. Yes, we speak (and write) differently based on our audiences, but in essence, I believe we do have distinctive voices. I have found that my clients have unique diction, speech patterns and tones; all of which I try my best to honor when collaborating with them either in writing or editing.

For instance, when I am hired to write a Forward to someone's book on behalf of a third party, I have to capture that voice so that it is authentic to them. The content and concepts are theirs, but the words come from me only after I have mastered their style.

I have found that recording my writing sessions with clients has been an excellent way of capturing their patterns as I mentioned in my blog post http://bit.ly/reKOe .

Very interesting commentary.

Christine
Chief Creative Officer
Your Voice, Inc
www.yourvoiceinc.com

[Carol Coven Grannick]

The concept of voice is so broad and deep, so varied depending on who is defining it, that it is hard to pinpoint one right answer. And should we? Or does believing that there should be one right answer simply result in the kind of problem you describe having had - i.e., that we spend energy telling ourselves we're 'wrong' about something when we could be saving energy being at peace with it, as you are now. Doesn't being at peace with how we need to write, even how we need to write a particular story, result in more productivity?...

[Two Girls on a Bench]

Voice is like the golden ticket, because when it finally clicks, it just feels authentic and that is usually why an audience (in our opinion) of any kind will gravitate to a particular author. We agree with your points on how you may use different words for different audiences, but the question is whether you are still at the core, projecting your essence out there. So if you say, for example, to an adult "you jerk, give me your beer" you may say something in a similar tone, but maybe not exactly the same way to a kid, "you sandwich head, give me your juice." Same voice, different audience.

[Blog Nerd]

Christine: I don't know if you are addressing me (the author of this post) or someone else? My name is Jen as it says on the banner. LOL this is why I am confused.

I think the confusion here is saying that "your voice" is the same as "your self" and what I'm challenging is the notion that we all have one unique voice when really we have at least several and possibly an infinite number of "voices" as long as you are willing to adjust, alter, and innovate.

As a writer in the developing New Media, I'm finding the necessity of writing in multiple voices across disciplines and genres and the idea of developing my singular voice has confused me and delayed me a bit as Carol points out in terms of productivity.

Where I'll agree with you, Christine, is the idea that voice is useful as a technical term in writing, and it is certainly a term I use frequently in editing and writing for editors.

In creating a ghost-writing market I guess it's a term that's essential.

Where it becomes a problem is if it stultifies a writer's creative talent or limits the potential for writing in multiple formats across multiple disciplines and genres.

[twitter.com/jessiepoet]

I also find myself getting tired of the constant need to put things into categories but then I do it myself. I do agree that writers have more than one voice that they use depending on the situation, but sadly, I also think the word voice is turning into the word "irony" it just doesn't hold any concrete definition...

[Blog Nerd]

Hi Jessie:

Yes I agree--it is rather nebulous. Is voice determined by tone and style or content? In terms of content I have more overlap across genres and disciplines. There are certain threads of interest and belief that repeat and interpenetrate. I basically say an emabrassingly small number of "things" in a many, many different ways.

But in terms of tone and style, I don't know if I have overlap that way. Certainly, in certain genres I am self-consistent but from genre to genre I am not. I don't think.