Episode 11: Your Voice is a Flex, So Speak Up!
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Welcome to the Shy Girls Finish Last podcast. I'm Nicole Lathen, a certified shy Black girl. I hope you’ve had a restful day. Let’s get into it!
Hey ya'll, thank you for joining me. Today, I want to talk about Author Voice. It's an official sounding term that you will find on a number of websites or advice blogs about how to write and how to get better at writing. But what is it? How do we get one if we're just starting out? Did you know there were actually three different types? There is a distinct difference between Author Voice, Narrator Voice, and Character Voice and this is how it's used. This is Common Myths and Where to Find Them Part 5: Your Voice is a Flex, So Speak Up!
When I joined my writing community, I had one goal in mind. It was to get better at sharing my work. For so long, I kept my writing to myself and only shared it with trusted friends who were also into storytelling. The idea of sharing my work gave me hives because I was just so nervous to see if my writing could stand up to the general public.
The only thing I could control was what I posted. But I wasn't overly concerned with hitting comment goals or watching my numbers go up. Yes, it was absolutely amazing to post a story and watch the comments roll in. That stuff is like drugs. I wanted more. But even if a story didn't get many hits, I still loved it.
What was truly amazing was that I got to read so many stories from so many people, largely Black women, that imagined these stories with their experiences and shared it with the rest of us. There were people from all over the world, writing sentences in their native language, sharing culture, or sharing the universal idea of Black women in love.
And growing up, when I was first staring to study the craft, I saw that there was this concept of an Author Voice. It popped up everywhere like if you're a writer, you have to have an Author Voice! No one really defined it or went into how you recognize it in your own writing. No one wrote down where to find one, how to develop one, or how to use it in your writing. And as I shared stories in this community, it became clearer.
The Author Voice is your style. You already have it and you've already been developing it. With each new piece you work on, you are developing your style. It's how you, the writer, lets us, the reader, see your personality. It's a combination of what you think and talk about plus how you say it.
The Author's Voice is the collection of words and phrases you choose, the themes you choose to explore again and again, the way you relate certain descriptions and dialogue. It's the subject matter you choose to focus on. I brought up examples in previous episodes about why soft Black girls appeal to me. I choose to focus on Black girls in space, hooking up with vampires, or as spies in a harsh world. At it's core, it's about Black women showing their mushy interior and feeling safe in that vulnerability. So when anybody picks up a book from me, they know what they're getting.
In the same way, whenever I read from someone in the community, I picked up on their particular voice. Their imagery, the language they chose, or the feelings they chose to explore. Some focused heavily on angst or others smut. Some devastated me with a full length novella. Others made me laugh out loud at the humor they injected into these stories. And by engaging and talking with them, I got to see their real personality and how a lot of it is similar to their Author Voice but not always. Some of the funniest people I know write heartbreaking and devastating angst scenes. All of it shines through their work.
It is important to remember, though, that you are not your character. We all have our self-insert characters, our experiences that we've dramatized for the story, or some other element of ourselves in the piece, but at the end of the day, you are not your character. Your character will act independently if you've done a good job of creating and building the character. They have their own wants, needs, and they have their own style.
Part of plotting your piece, is also plotting your narrator. Sometimes, your viewpoint character and your narrator are different. I will go further into these terms later in the podcast, but for this episode, we'll explore how these three are different voices but work together.
Take The Great Gatsby for example. If you're not familiar with it, The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a self-made millionaire named Jay Gatsby and his pursuit of old money heiress Daisy Buchanan set in Jazz Age New York. It's narrated by Nick Carraway, a Yale University graduate who moves to New York to pursue a career in bonds.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is the author. He created the two fictional villages in Long Island by the name of West Egg and East Egg. West Egg is where the newly rich live. The gauche, over the top mini-mansions that are designed to boast how wealthy they are. East Egg is where old money lives. Generational mansions passed down from ancestor to ancestor, wealth so massive that they don't need to flaunt it.
In the novel, Fitzgerald explores many themes, and his use of language is how we navigate this world. In the book, there is a character named Meyer Wolfsheim who fixed the World Series in 1919. That character was based on a real person and event that happened in Fitzgerald's time. He used what he observed around him to influence this story that most of us have come to read in class. He chose to use fictional town names, chose to tell it from Nick's point of view, and created this larger than life character in Jay Gatsby.
Nick Carraway is the narrator. He is the one who views this story and relates it to us. You may have heard the term "Unreliable Narrator". It's assumed that whoever is telling us the story is telling it to us accurately and exactly as it happened. As an author, what's cool is that you can play around with this. Does the narrator have a hidden motive for lying, confusing, or withholding some events to make themselves look better?
Nick is an unreliable narrator in the fact that he primarily focuses on the enigmatic Gatsby. He throws these lavish parties, everyone is intrigued by how he made his money, and Nick is caught up in that orbit as a seemingly innocent bystander. As the novel progresses though, it's clear that everyone is really comfortable telling Nick their secrets. His cousin Daisy reveals to him that she's unhappy with Tom. Daisy's best friend Jordan reveals to him that Tom has a mistress. Tom takes Nick to see his mistress.
What Nick sees, hears, and thinks is different from what F. Scott Fitzgerald sees, hears, and thinks. Nick is the representation of the general public. He is our entry character. He doesn't come from means, he is not part of this world initially, and he's living in West Egg with all the new and upcoming people. We are entering this world with Nick as he navigates the crazy intricacies of the rich. Fitzgerald chose that instead of telling the story from Gatsby's point of view.
Nick, though, is not our main character. The entire novel is about Jay Gatsby. The man who made his money, moved to West Egg, and longed for Daisy Buchanan. He longed to be the kind of man that he thought she needed. Someone wealthy, interesting, and the life of the party. But as the novel goes on, it's clear that Gatsby isn't who he really says he is. He is hiding someone who grew up poor, fought in the Army, was too poor to marry Daisy, and so spent his life trying to get her back by being a bootlegger during Prohibition. And by him not being the point of view character, the audience can guess along with everyone else until the truth is revealed. An intentional choice by Fitzgerald.
Three different voices, one book and one story.
A popular children's book series written by Lemony Snicket called A Series of Unfortunate events was about three orphaned children who lost their parents in an unfortunate fire. They are shuffled from random relative to random relative as they are doggedly pursued by Count Olaf, a villain who wants their enormous fortune by any means necessary.
Though the author is listed as Lemony Snicket, it is a literary persona by author Daniel Handler. Daniel is the author and has experiences, wants, and needs different from those of Lemony Snicket, a mysterious figure that kept his identity secret. Daniel attended events as Snicket's representative, creating reasons why Snicket couldn't attend himself. In the books, Lemony Snicket was like a investigative historian type figure, that documented the misfortunes of the Boudelaire children.
The motives for Lemony Snicket doing this aren't quite clear or if they are, I don't recall and can't research it. But because it was done in this manner, it gives the series a creepy, morose feeling, like maybe these could be a set of children out there in the world. It feeds our morbid curiousity. The 13 book series all begin with a plea to not read and go find something happier, because the book was about misery and ended with misery. He narrates the book with his own observations, his own two cents, as he traces what happened with these children and how they managed to outsmart Count Olaf at every turn.
But, the story is really about these three children. Violet, the oldest, was an inventor. Give her half a second, chewing gum, a rubber band, and a piece of cloth and somehow she'd come up with a slingshot or some other device needed to get them out of trouble. Klaus, the middle child, was a reader. At any moment, he could recall some lesson he learned in a book to help them out of situations, like when they had to make pasta in Count Olaf's filthy kitchen. Sunny, the youngest, is a toddler and just likes to bite things. But, that biting comes in handy for Violet's inventions or to uncover Count Olaf in disguise.
Each character has their own motives and wants. Klaus was angry at his parents for keeping so many secrets. Violet wanted to keep her siblings together no matter what. And Sunny saw the BS for what it was every single time. All three voices working in tandem to bring this story to life and deliver a journey worth going on. All intentional choices by Snicket who we assume is a reliable narrator. If the kids were older, the story would be radically different.
There are some instances where these different voices overlap. Later in the podcast, I will go into the differences between points of view like first person or third person, but take The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. It's a children's series about Percy Jackson, a boy who suffered in school because there were always random occurrences. School buses crashed, aquariums flooded, he had ADHD and dyslexia, and was kicked out of many, many schools.
Later, he finds out that he's a demi-god. A product of the union between Poseidon, god of the seas, and Sally, a regular human who could see through the glamor and witness this other supernatural world. Percy is our entry character. He is the one we start the story with and he's the one we follow to see if he's going to achieve his goal or not of finding Zeus' lightning bolt before war breaks out.
Rick Riordan is the author. He wrote the series to entertain his son who also suffered from ADHD and dyslexia. Rick wanted to show that even someone with those disorders could be a powerful hero. But the narrator is Percy. We see things from his perspective. The imagery and the language used is told from a twelve year old's perspective, navigating this complicated world where gods play with human's lives. Here the narrator and character voice are told through the same person and yet is still distinct enough to separate it out.
As you grow as a writer, you are in tune with these things. You may not have a name for it, but you are honing that skill with each new piece you work on. You are a unique person. You have unique experiences that make only you qualified to write that story in only the way you can tell it.
There are tropes you're drawn to and ones you hate. I love friends to lovers and I shy away from any trope involving babies. Sorry, I'm here to escape. Don't bring them babies around! There are sentence structures you gravitate to. Like I use commas a lot but some other person may love using em dashes more. Some like lengthy, beautiful prose while others prefer a more simpler and wittier description. I like writing sex scenes so I write it in all it's messy, sexy glory. But some may love the fade to black sort of scene. It's all up to you.
That's the beautiful and scary part of writing. You get to choose. You get to play in this proverbial sandbox and build whatever you want to build. All of it boils down to what you think, what you like talking about, and how you convey it to readers. Your voice is a flex. It is how you introduce yourself to the world. It's how you view the world. So speak up, let the rest of us hear you.
Before we wrap up, I invite you to join me. In your journal, jot down what you like to write about. What tropes do you gravitate to? What themes do you like to convey? Why those themes? What do you hate to write about? What makes you roll your eyes, suck your teeth, and avoid it at all costs? Do you know what your style is? Did you know there was a difference between Author, Narrator, and Character Voice? I will post my answer on my Instagram.
See you next time for the last of the mini series, Common Myths and Where to Find Them Part 6: Beware the Plot Bunny. They're alive! And remember, Black girls deserve to be seen.