Voice (Writerly Thread)

[cloudy]

I'll try.

Cloudy's works contain an ebb and flow that is distinctive. We talk often about pacing of a story, carrying the build up and back ground through stages to a climax. Cloudy's works have a pacing that I find distinctive, not repeticious or formulamatic, but a more cat and mouse approach to reaching the climax, with advances and retreats, as opposed to many who build like a wave, growing stronger as it gets closer to the climax.

She also has a distinctive descriptive style, visually more nebulous, but still producing strong pictures in the mind.

It's hard to put in words, but that's my humble best effort.

Thanks, sweetheart.

You've always said you could recognize my work - now I know why.

(and, wow! thanks for the nice things, too!)

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm the same way when I write. Who the hell cares what kind of clothes they're wearing? When I'm reading porn, I want them naked anyway.

SJ

I do. I love knowing what the women in my story are wearing. It says so much about them, and I can just imagine what she feels like when she's wearing when she's wearing them. I love getting her undressed too. I savor every button, every zipper. And the way the clothes come off, whether she lets her blouse whisper off her arms or whether she rips the buttons off in her haste to get naked. I love every bit of it.

I know my voice. Like Earl I favor long sentences and rhythms, colons and semicolons and conjunctions. My rhythms change as I get excited, and often times the final paragraph of a sex scene is one, long sentence, spilling and tumbling over itself.

I'm very descriptive and I like sensuality. As I said, I can get hung up on the feel of a kind of fabric on someone's skin or the way the hair on the back of a woman's neck stands up when she's aroused. I look for the telling detail, the little thing that means more than it says. I pay a lot of attention to light and shadow and weather, the things that give mood to a story. I'm hung up on mood. In fact, the germ of most of my stuff is a mood, not an idea or a plot.

My plots are usually very simple, and what I'm interested in is not so much the things that happen, but the way people feel about the things that happen. My characters are very passionate and get swept away by their passions. They learn about themselves through sex, and my sex scenes always have a lot of the characters' feelings and thoughts in them.

---dr.M.

 

[Boota]

I find it difficult to define voice, and even more difficult to pin down mine. I write different things different ways on purpose. My main writing is comedy and I write that in punchy sentences. I use fragments in order to make the timing right. It's hard enough to tell a joke with good comic timing, writing one is a real bitch sometimes. My first novel and the one I'm currently working on are in first person and it's two different characters. I've worked hard on making sure that I write like two different characters. Lenny Kapowski, from the first novel, is a foul mouthed smart ass. Butchie, in the second one, is more serious, somber smart ass. LOL. I think my style will show through in both books, but hopefully no one feels like they are reading Lenny in Butchie.

When I write third person pieces it has an entirely different flow. The comic novella I wrote is in third person and I didn't have to use the fragments to punch it up. My more seriously based fiction flows differently than even that.

Looking at voice as signature, I would say my signature is sparse description of a character's physicality and emphasis on story in as normal every day words as possible. I don't know anyone who reads for pleasure who is looking for a vocabulary lesson.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

I narrate outloud what I want to write and then just type that.

I've never edited anything I've ever written, except for spelling maybe. Never gone back and added something, taken something out, etc. I write exactly how I talk (informally, anyway, how I talk in a classroom or conference is totally different), and as such have never gotten comfortable with anything but first-person.

I think the best writing comes in the form of something that you could be told.

 

[davidwatts]

My voice?


Like a goose fart on an especially cloudy morn.


You stop, and search the sky.

Perplexed, you turn to your partner and tilt your head a bit.

"Did you hear that?" you ask.

"Hear what?" your partner replies.

"Never mind, it was nothing" you respond as you go on your merry way.

 

[DrFreud]

Interesting thread Lou, thanks
I wanted to dissect "own voice" into "own" and "voice".

What most people addressed in this thread is the "voice" part, or the author's characteristic style that readers learn to recognize and hopefully like.

There is the "own" part which I think of as the way the voice sounds inside the author's head but not necessarily the way it sounds to the reader.
That "own" voice is more difficult to convey because even your real (phonetic) voice sounds different to you than to other people. Anyone who has listened to a tape of himself/herself has obviously noticed that.

My 2 cents.

 

[carsonshepherd]

I've been told I have great voice in my stories, but I could not tell you what it is.

I think voice is like pornography: You know it when you see it.

 

[impressive]

I love impressive's stuff, and there's a crafty quality and a fine pace. But I'm not sure I could pick it out of a lineup. The concept is a subtle one.

Thanks!

I'm not sure I have a "voice" as much as a desire to make the reader THINK about something they may've taken for granted ... or, as Charley said, a need for profundity ... whether it be in WHAT I've written or HOW I've written it.

The recent monthly poetry contests over on the Poetry forum have challenged me to examine poems for such a voice. Because they're posted anonymously, I think it really levels the playing field. It's always an eye-opener when the poets are revealed at the end of the contest -- and there are invariably many pleasant surprises.

Perhaps we should consider such challenges here. 500-word blurbs on a chosen topic PMed to a rotating moderator and posted anonymously with a poll. It would be very interesting to try to match prose to author.

 

[Guest]

Perhaps we should consider such challenges here. 500-word blurbs on a chosen topic PMed to a rotating moderator and posted anonymously with a poll. It would be very interesting to try to match prose to author.

Imp, that's a very, very good idea! Would be very interesting indeed, and could well help us learn more about each other's writing, and our own.

You volunteering?

Thanks all, for the brilliant responses in this thread. I have read them all, but don't have time to reply to each individually right now.

Lou

 

[cantdog]

I was afraid someone were going to say this. I do understand the temptation of the idea, but don't we all write differently in short directed pieces? There was a series of writer challenge threads not so very long ago. Do a sunset, whatever. This was directly after the latest brawl about "We look just like the GB! There's no relief from the politics and the flirting! Where are the writerly threads, o woe is me that it should come to this!" There were seven or eight of those challenges.

So you have your raw materials, moderator, should you choose to accept the staff and miter of that role. And, you know, if you can find the threads.

I think it's tangential, but I couldn't say why I do.

 

[Guest]

I was afraid someone were going to say this. I do understand the temptation of the idea, but don't we all write differently in short directed pieces? There was a series of writer challenge threads not so very long ago. Do a sunset, whatever. This was directly after the latest brawl about "We look just like the GB! There's no relief from the politics and the flirting! Where are the writerly threads, o woe is me that it should come to this!" There were seven or eight of those challenges.

So you have your raw materials, moderator, should you choose to accept the staff and miter of that role. And, you know, if you can find the threads.

I think it's tangential, but I couldn't say why I do.

Yeah, I get you, Cant, and I do agree. More writing challenge threads is not what we need.

(Btw, even I agree now with the looking like the GB thing. HA! Stick that up your bums. )

Anyway, I digress...

We probably shouldn't do it as a challenge, where we have to write something new, about a particular topic, but it would be interesting if someone posted excerpts of people's writing (pieces from the current short or novel they're working on, or whatever), and they were posted and read "blind". Then other posters gave their opinion about who they thought wrote what.

Could be fun anyway.

Lou

 

[eric shawn listo]

Yeah, I get you, Cant, and I do agree. More writing challenge threads is not what we need.

(Btw, even I agree now with the looking like the GB thing. HA! Stick that up your bums. )

Anyway, I digress...

We probably shouldn't do it as a challenge, where we have to write something new, about a particular topic, but it would be interesting if someone posted excerpts of people's writing (pieces from the current short or novel they're working on, or whatever), and they were posted and read "blind". Then other posters gave their opinion about who they thought wrote what.

Could be fun anyway.

Lou

That's a cool idea, Lou. Just a paragraph or section of dialog out of no where to see how the writing stands by itself. Fun.

But, I do love a mystery.

 

[cantdog]

I wonder if anyone should even say, "I'll do that!"?

Will you accept PMs, or shall we place the onus on impressive?

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Anyway, I digress...

We probably shouldn't do it as a challenge, where we have to write something new, about a particular topic, but it would be interesting if someone posted excerpts of people's writing (pieces from the current short or novel they're working on, or whatever), and they were posted and read "blind". Then other posters gave their opinion about who they thought wrote what.

Could be fun anyway.

Lou

This sounds interesting to me. Perhaps I find it appealing because I have written relatively few stories and don't really believe that I have a 'voice' yet. It would be interesting to find out if someone could peg me as the writer of a passage without any help.

 

[cloudy]

I'd participate.

Colly could probably peg my stuff, but it would be interesting to see if anyone else could.

 

[Guest]

I wonder if anyone should even say, "I'll do that!"?

Will you accept PMs, or shall we place the onus on impressive?

Yes, Impressive. Definitely.

ANYONE WHO WANTS, PM IMPRESSIVE A SHORT PIECE OF YOUR WRITING (UP TO 500 WORDS), AND, WHEN I HAVE TEN, I'LL POST THEM, WITH A LIST OF WHOSE WORK APPEARS IN THE THREAD.

Sorry to shout, I want to be heard.

... I'm a twat...

Lou

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Oh, go on then.

I have about 157 things to do right now, but what the fuck.

ANYONE WHO WANTS, PM ME A SHORT PIECE OF YOUR WRITING (UP TO 500 WORDS), AND, WHEN I HAVE TEN, I'LL POST THEM, WITH A LIST OF WHOSE WORK APPEARS IN THE THREAD.

Sorry to shout, I want to be heard.

(Apologies Imp, for hijacking your idea, I'm a twat like that. You take it away next? )

Lou

I was just going to volunteer, but since you already did...

 

[Guest]

I was just going to volunteer, but since you already did...

Bollocks. Impressive is doing it anyway.

 

[eric shawn listo]

Oh, go on then.

I have about 157 things to do right now, but what the fuck.

ANYONE WHO WANTS, PM ME A SHORT PIECE OF YOUR WRITING (UP TO 500 WORDS), AND, WHEN I HAVE TEN, I'LL POST THEM, WITH A LIST OF WHOSE WORK APPEARS IN THE THREAD.

Sorry to shout, I want to be heard.

(Apologies Imp, for hijacking your idea, I'm a twat like that. You take it away next? )

Lou

New stuff only? Or something already published here or somewhere else? I suppose if it were here some one could track it down.

But maybe I'm playing detective too much. If a promise was made not to search for the peice it could work, I guess.

 

[Guest]

New stuff only? Or something already published here or somewhere else? I suppose if it were here some one could track it down.

But maybe I'm playing detective too much. If a promise was made not to search for the peice it could work, I guess.

Quite!

It would have to be something not posted here really. Someone might have read it and recognise it that way. It should be completely blind.

 

[impressive]

Imp, that's a very, very good idea! Would be very interesting indeed, and could well help us learn more about each other's writing, and our own.

You volunteering?

I'll handle the first round, sure. (I'd better finished reading this thread first.)

 

[impressive]

I wonder if anyone should even say, "I'll do that!"?

Will you accept PMs, or shall we place the onus on impressive?

I've never had an onus on me ... but I'm willing.

 

[eric shawn listo]

Quite!

It would have to be something not posted here really. Someone might have read it and recognise it that way. It should be completely blind.

Oh...okay.


~quietly putting away old toys~

 

[Guest]

I'll handle the first round, sure. (I'd better finished reading this thread first.)

I'm editing my post, above.

It's your baby.



(Two people have PM'd me already, I'll forward them to you, and be a good girl when you post them all).

 

[impressive]

Okay, who's handling round 1? We need a new thread with the "rules" ... and I do NOT think the participating authors should be listed. Let folks GUESS.

The master thread can then link to the threads with polls (in lots of 10).

I do think we should have a topic as a guide ... one per month.