Where’s The Story’s Voice?

Here are the other two links on Voice if you care to read more: : Your Writer’s Voice Makes Old Stories Fresh & Writing Voice–Finding it, Using it.

So I’ve shared about using our writing voice and what that voice does as a story unfolds. We may build our projects from research, personal experience, etc, but we don’t want to intrude in them. Expressing how each character experiences the events, and world around them makes our story real for the reader. The author’s voice and character’s point of view together create the new voice, and this combination brings a freshness that a reader can’t help but enjoy. Recognize it, nurture it, so your story voice, comes alive and you as the author disappear.

Once all the hard work is done (outlining, researching, etc) and neatly tucked away in the back of our minds, its ready to use. Somehow all that information merges with personal experience and creates another incredible resource to draw from as we write. It fractures into characters that express our story through the player’s points of view. Guided by one premise, extra effort and care is required here to make the characters unique, each representing some aspect of the whole. If done correctly, we disappear leaving only vibrant players behind.

Here is where the character’s senses become crucial to our story. Every character is a tool to express another angle of the world around them.  They see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and react to everything and everyone. Using their point of view, they express not just that the sky is blue, but it’s a pale blue of the coldest day in their memory. Breaking apart our writing voice creates our story’s voice.

Because the story’s voice is as unique as each of us, the project you work on will also have a freshness that all readers–editors and agents included—long for. Put as much of yourself as you dare into your work. Use every tool at your disposal. Hold nothing back, claw out every aspect from deep within, and your story will be like none other. These are stories only you can write.

Know this, recognize it, nurture it, creation is in all of us. When I think about creativity, I think universal miracle. The human being amazes me. For as wide and deep the universe is it has nothing on the depth of human imagination. Take the time to uncover, to discover, your own abilities and watch your stories unfold.

Something else you might like to read: The Difference Between Voice and Style in Writing from Writer’s Digest.