Good Writing and Voice

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Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2003 23:08:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Megan Lynn Isaac"

I've been puzzling a bit over the question of what makes good writing for me, especially in children's literature, and have decided that my problem answering the question comes from the fact that my standards aren't consistent. So here are my musings on the topic:

I love some books because they so successfully transported me as a child or young adult. I read and reread books by Maud Hart Lovelace, Elizabeth Enright, Lloyd Alexander, L. Frank Baum, Elizabeth Speare, Elizabeth Goudge, and many others when I was young. Some I would still recommend to nearly anyone, but others seem awfully dated in their ideologies now, and though I still find them to be good books for my own reasons, I wouldn't expect readers new to them to necessarily find them to be well written.

I place a high premium on plot. Books that I find predictable or derivative are rarely going to be "top drawer" books for me, even if the style of the writing is lovely. This means that I probably have become more particular as I grow older and a wider range of books becomes predictable or derivative.

I also tend to prefer longer books over shorter ones. I understand that theoretically a small book can be as well written as a large one, and that many long books are guilty of being long-winded as much as anything else. Yet, I like densely developed worlds--whether fantastical, historical, or realistic, so being rich in detail and ancillary characters often equates with being well written for me. I know other readers will take the completely opposite point of view on this characteristic! I loved and still love Sylvia Louise Engdahl's writing because it so richly constructs other worlds, but I know one of the reasons she has probably failed to become as well known as other science fiction writers of the same caliber is because she writes "long."

Character and voice have grown ever more important to me. My favorite read this season has, so far, been Polly Horvath's The Canning Season because both the young characters and the older ones are so idiosyncratic. I also admire the fact the Horvath doesn't seem to be writing to meet any group's or school's expectations (or limitations). {Brief and minor spoiler to follow in this paragraph.} Midbook, one of her characters suddenly spouts a strong expletive. The effect in this children's book is completely hilarious and utterly realistic. The character intends to offend decorum and to startle her child listeners, and she does. She startles the reader too, but I don't believe she really shocks any reader because real people, even polite ones, have been known to burst out with a colorful term or two on occasion as well--and kids know this. And the use of one expletive works to give the speaker a much more complex personality than she would have had without it.

I like books with various levels or facets to them. The Giver, which I think can be enjoyed by 5th graders and 10th graders alike, though both probably get quite different things out of it is a good example of this style of writing. More recently, Pullman's books fit this description. Lyra and Will's world is rich with allusions to literature and history and religion that expand the story for older readers, but they don't slow down the plot or the pace for less experienced readers. The ability to write this kind of text is among those I most admire--because it is so hard for me to imagine doing it with any grace myself.

Anything that smacks of bibliotherapy tends to lose my respect immediately. I do believe books can be wonderfully therapeutic, but I don't like books that seem aimed at either solving or explicating specific problems or traumas. E.R. Frank has had a lot of good press lately, but both America and Friction have this failing for me. Laurie Halse Andersen's Speak managed not to fall into this trap, but her newest novel (rats, I forgot the name, but it might have had to do with fire), stumbled in just this way.

I look forward to refining these thoughts as more people chime in with their views on what makes good writing.

Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 05:31:28 +0000
From: "Christina Mosteller"

Greetings From Never Posts Girl,

I am a big sucker for interesting plots and good characters. I can give up a lot stylewise (is this a real word-is that how you'd spell it?) as a reader if those two elements are tight. I think that's why sometimes I can read things with joy that other people may not think are well written at all. Certainly, the style can be so bad I can't concentrate on the plot, but then I won't read anyway. Of course, like everyone I'm in awe of writers who have slick style, great characters and nice pacing. It's great to read a book with one or two phrases that just melt me and still the piece keeps truckin' along.

Laurie Halse Anderson's latest book is Catalyst-I haven't read it yet, but Speak rocked my world. I also got the chance to meet her at a conference. She was cool.

I've posted stuff on here more than once and no one responded. There could have been a million reasons. Sometimes things grab people's interest sometimes they don't.

Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 09:23:41 -0500
From: "Jane Kurtz"

Frances says, "If you mean a geographically specific community - neighborhood, town, etc., Jane Kurtz's "River Friendly, River Wild."

Right! When I read the post I was wracking my brain to think about which book of mine keeps being used in "community" units, and that was it...because it's not only about suriving flood but about One Terrific Neighborhood...and how neighbors and far-flung supporters sometimes reach out to each other in the face of natural (or manmade) disasters. Megan Isaac says, "This means that I probably have become more particular as I grow older and a wider range of books becomes predictable or derivative." I think it was on child_lit that someone pinpointed something important to me...what is "predictable" or "derivative" to us, as long-time readers, isn't necessarily to a child or even a young adult. I often found this problem in discussing novels with college students in my adolescent literature classes. It makes OUR community's critical task a tough one at times, I think: witness the many people who decry the Newbery books as "not really for kids."

Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 10:22:41 -0500
From: "Matlock, Teresa M." Good writing …

…is charismatic. It makes you feel as though you’re in a room full of holy rollers, all of whom are reaching skyward while speaking in tongues, and even though a part of you remains in control and fully aware of the location of each of the exits, you eventually allow yourself to succumb to the temptation to flail your arms and legs, or perhaps just a teeny-tiny part of your psyche – why, sometimes even the part you usually keep tightly wrapped in a brown paper wrapper.

…makes connections in new and strange ways. It may do this with words you’ve never heard before – sometimes ones the author has made up, but whose source you can clearly recognize even though there’s fog and mist and two egrets in the way – or it may do this with a few well-placed metaphors. Metaphors are the meat and potatoes of good writing because they represent connections you’ve never thought of. Or perhaps you had thought of them, but only in the context of trying to cross the street, and now the author has made the brilliant suggestion that some of the same premises apply when you’re faced with the difficulty of a cactus stuck to a squawking chicken.

…somehow, some way, takes you somewhere. Depending on where you are in life, you may prefer happy endings to sad, or three-door endings to the ones whose final scene unequivocally shows the lady firmly clamped between the tiger’s once merely furry, and now rather bloody, jaws. If your intelligence is one that Howard Gardner would call kinesthetic, you like your some way to be full of action-driven plot and snowballs that knock down all the dominoes as they roll downhill gathering speed, in spite of the fact that they began life as a few frozen water particles wrapped around a pebble. If your culture has so inclined you, you may prefer some ways that are elliptical, circular, full of red herrings, or perhaps anchored in the day as you love and know it. (“This morning while I was hanging my lingerie out to dry in the now-cool, blessedly mosquito-free forest, it occurred to me that…”)

…is subjective and also not. “The cat sat on the hat,” works when you are three and need to polish your phonemic awareness skills, but as you age, and as you are exposed to a wider variety of phonemes, you usually find yourself wanting both your hat and your cat to be more, do more, know more, suggest more, and not always disappear just because your mother came home from the store.

…both is and causes idiopathic responses. Its “causes are not well-understood,” but critics of all ages can spend endless hours discussing its symptoms without ever agreeing on an absolute, ironclad definition. Perhaps the strangest effect good writing has been known to have – at least, according to the archives of Child_lit – is when it results in readers who cannot fall asleep unless they know that the chances are very high that sometime during the darker hours, they’ll find themselves knocking their knees up against the hard edges of a well-thumbed book.

…takes us a little closer to understanding something…anything. Story is something we begin to use about the time we’re able to sit up without pillows for props. As we’re tossing our bowl of peas onto the floor for the third time, we begin to understand beginnings, middles and ends. As the wet washcloth wipes our face for the umpteenth time, we begin to see the glimmer of cause-and-effect and eventually we realize that when it comes to the story of mashed peas, overcooked spinach will work just as well.

,,,does not need to resort to bullet points in order to tell a story.

Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 09:19:13 -0700 From: "Nikki Tate"

This is an endlessly fascinating topic because, as an author, it is that desire to write something truly 'good' that convinces me to stare down yet another sheet of white paper and start writing another book.

For me, the craft of writing fiction exists only to serve the funtion of eliciting a visceral/emotional reaction in the reader. If the reader is not drawn into the story, doesn't care what happens to the characters,loses interest, doesn't believe in the world I have created, then I have failed, no matter how brilliantly crafted my sentences, how creative my word choices, how profound my thematic premises. I don't think one can abstract the constructive process from the end result - a happy, involved, reader. So, what is it that makes a piece of technically adequate writing, one where pages turn and readers keep coming back for more (I'm thinking here of ghost written, formulaic fiction which, to my horror as a bookseller, flies of the shelves while other, 'better' books languish despite my best efforts to get them into the hands of young readers...) less good than a more substantial page-turner (something like Pullman's Dark Materials)?

This balance between the profound and the gripping, the meaningful and entertaining, the story and the message, language and content - finding this balance in order to fully engage the reader is the elusive brass ring I consider 'good' writing. It's one of those things that's hard (impossible?) to deconstruct because, when successful, the whole somehow transcends the elements of characterization, pacing, plot, description, etc.

I know that academics are fond of reductionism, but it was the idealistic notion that great fiction illuminates the murky confusion of human existence better than the process of breaking down the complexities of behaviour into measurable/analyzable pieces that made me ignore my academic training in science/neuropsychology and turn, instead, to storytelling... (sorry... a bloody convoluted, poorly constructed, awkward sentence that should be edited and crafted into something a bit better, but will have to stand as I have to go!) (I realize, after a quick re-reading of the above, that it might sound as if I don't agree with the notion of literary analysis - I do, I've been known to engage in it myself! My point is, literary analysis shouldn't ignore -or separate from craft- the reader response - even though reader response is impossible to quantify/neatly analyze).

Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 13:45:42 -0400
From:JENNIFER-ARMSTRONG

Everyone talks about voice, but nobody ever does anything about it.

Actually, last month a bunch of writers did try to do something about it, i.e. figure out what it is. This is probably one of those writerly terms that means different things to different people, but a group of us at CLNE (including Monica) batted around the following suggestions:

1. Voice is not the same as style. It’s not the narrative voice. It’s not the narrator. It’s not Titus’s distinctive narration in Feed.

2. Rather, voice is the author’s baggage – the themes, conflicts, puzzles the author returns to in book after book; that you cannot tell a writer’s voice by one book, but that a body of work reveals the author’s voice, the central idea or ideas that the writer pivots on during a career. You can tell a Katherine Paterson book after all these years, because Katherine Paterson writes with her own voice. You can tell a Susan Cooper book, because after all these years you can hear Susan Cooper’s voice in her books.

I think perhaps what makes good writing is when the author has a distinct voice. You may not discern what it is in one book, but you may discern or intuit that it is there – that there is a deep core of conviction and attention to something that is an integral part of the story, the characters, the conflict, the setting, etc. This is one reason I enjoyed Hoot so much – because even though it was Hiaasen’s first children’s book, it was so resoundingly a Carl Hiaasen book. It was his voice, clear as a bell.

I have been examining my own work in light of this definition, trying to see if I ( *gulp* ) have a voice. I think I do. Whether this definition of voice is the agreed upon one, it certainly offers one way to look at good writing and test its mettle.

Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 11:11:15 -0700 From: "Catherine Guy" Hi Everyone:

First, thank you for all of the responses to my "community picture book" request. I very much appreciate it.

Second, I read a statement once by the actress Helen Hunt (Mad About You), where she said that (I don't remember exactly the statement, I'm only paraphrasing) television creates the illusion that we are "good friends" with the characters, that the characters are part of our lives, therefore creating the need for autographs etc...

I think good writing does the same. Very few books have done this for me, but I truly think a piece of work is "good" when I don't want it to end. I don't want to say good bye to the characters. I want them to continue to be part of my life. I am truly sad to say good bye.

I love it when a book can do that for me.

Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 15:20:08 -0400
From: "Jane Buchanan"

Sorry I missed the discussion, Jennifer. Voice is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. Your post reminds me a bit of the classic Unitarian dilemma of defining themselves by what they're not! ;)

I do think that great writing has to have voice, but I'm not sure it's necessarily absent in bad writing (or lesser writing). That is, if voice is "the author's baggage - the themes, conflicts, puzzles the author returns to in book after book," surely the author can carry this baggage into books that are poorly written, too.

It seems to me, too, that this definition would preclude a first book having voice (and thus being great), and I'm not sure that's true, either.

I think there has got to be some of the author's style involved, some of the way he or she strings words and ideas together. And maybe that comes under the heading of writerly "baggage," that is ways of phrasing things that the writer has gathered over the years along with those themes, conflicts and puzzles. It seems to me that many writers deal with similar themes and conflicts, yet their ways of expressing them are distinct, and so their voices are distinct.

I'd love to hear more thoughts on this.

Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 17:39:09 -0700
From: "Carol Edwards"

I am enjoying this topic. I must say that I take for granted that a writer for children will have a good plot and interesting characters. What lifts a book above others if it's ilk is the way the writer uses language concisely and innovatively to express the ideas and the story. It means that when I reread I don't suddenly become aware of 'clinkers' and I begin to find hidden depths I might not have noticed the first time around. That's good writing. A writer needs to have something to say and the ability to convey it in an interesting way. Good writing also doesn't sit up and scream, "LOOK AT ME! I am writing this so wonderfully!"

Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 04:30:42 -0400
From: "Charles Butler"

(In response to Jennifer's 2 points in VOICE)

It's an interesting question. I suspect it's 'all of the above', really. Your number 2 makes it sound a little as if Voice is the same as 'subject matter' or 'preoccupations' - and that's certainly involved, but surely not so as to preclude considerations of style, etc.

Would an analogy with another art form be useful? Such as painting? We might talk about a painter's 'eye', I think, in much the same way as a writer's 'voice'. It too, is not purely a matter of style, or of subject matter: Picasso utilized many styles of painting and painted many different subjects, but they're all distinctively Picasso. And what that means has, to my mind, more to do with what I can only vaguely call his 'angle of approach', a quality that combines subject matter and style - i.e. his own experiences and beliefs, 'where he's coming from', and also - not unconnectedly - the ways in which it will occur to him to see and illuminate a subject.

All rather vague - but like the man said, whereof we cannot speak thereof we must busk it.

Ever since working with an administrator in our district who is hot on Six Traits of Writing, I have been teaching voice to children. For those who don't know 6 traits (or Write Traits) came out of the NW Regional lab which looked at tons of writing samples and came up with six crucial to writing: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency and conventions (punc./grammmar,etc). I was thrilled to see voice on that list at first as I think it's one of the most writing-changing elements, but it's really hard to teach and I tell children, "not even adults understand this"!

For two years I have struggled with voice and it's so great someone on line is talking about this.

Six traits explains it as the way the author involves the reader in the writing. But it's so much more than that and children (and adults) tend to get it confused with dialogue. I have tried several different things. I have talked about it being the personality of a story, as if we're meeting someone for the first time and we might notice outstanding characteristics. (Funny, full of feelings, spicy...) I have had children move the way the think the voice would act if it walked into a room. I use illustrative voice to compare. And comparison of voices is the most successful way to teach it. I also have students rate it's importance to story success on a scale of 0-5. I think it is teachable in terms of identifying but one of my curiosities, is it teachable? I think it may be that inborn gift many writers have.

While Six Traits lists it as one of the traits, I think it is a composite of all the style elements...the way the author uses, words and patterns, etc. What do you think about this?

Of late, because it is so hard to describe and teach, I have been trying to think of a replacement word and Jennifer, your post was affirming, because nothing (tone, mood, style) really sums up voice.

You also identify my problem for me. A good part of my work (and the book I've just finished) is in helping children "see as writers" and "write like writers" is to break writing down into small pieces that build to a whole. I've developed a slew of child-based strategies, and materials, but what I see that the best success comes from making concepts as concrete as possible. Because you all define voice as ellusive...you also define much of the problem I've been having. And the teaching question I've been struggling with for over a year!

If anyone has any good thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them!

I'm also appreciative of the good writing works...so timely for me. I'm teaching a two session reading-writing workshop with Duke students and a question they asked me was how to choose books that will be successful. Before I'd even begun my list, you all were adding to it...but mostly I hear novels in your comments. Anyone have comments on picture books?

Again....I welcome any and all illumination!

Susie,

I found your post quite interesting. I've taught voice at the college level in both literature and composition classes as "the stylistic suggestion that the author has a personality." I'm not sure either that it's possible to teach a student to include voice in writing, but I suspect that recognizing it in other authors is a first step. We certainly cover that in class, and I try to acknowledge a voice whenever I see it in a student paper. In composition, we have the added benefit of the idea of "ethical proof," i.e., _ethos_ or the speaker's character as an issue in persuasion. According to classical rhetoric, a speaker needed to present himself (usually the speaker was male, though women could write letters) as moral, well-informed, and well-intentioned towards his audience.

I'd love to hear more about your approach to teaching voice, perhaps offlist, though I'm sure there are others who would appreciate a few URLs and certainly a reminder about your recent book. What I've done in literature classes is to give them 8 paragraph-length selections from various works of fiction and nonfiction and have them guess as much as possible about the speaker. I've never included any passages from children's literature, though I do have a paragraph of Holden Caulfield in _The Catcher in the Rye_. Now it occurs to me that passages from half-forgotten children's books might be particularly useful. Even if they recognize the text--which would usefully boost their enthusiasm for the exercise--they may have never thought about its voice. In composition classes, the idea of _ethos_ is particularly attractive, as these are students who have been told all their life not to use the first person; we talk about when it is appropriate to do so. We also use as our reader _The New Yorker_ magazine, where authorial voice is quite marked.

Susie Wilde,

I am one of the least analytical of writers, but, struggling to come up with a definition of "voice," I think it translates into the author's worldview.

It isn't exactly the author's personality, though I like the idea of it being the story's personality. Curiously enough, I think that some authors have more than one voice, though most of us have to be content with only one.

Patrice said:

- I am one of the least analytical of writers, but, struggling to come up with a definition of "voice," I think it translates into the author's worldview.

It isn't exactly the author's personality, though I like the idea of it being the story's personality. Curiously enough, I think that some authors have more than one voice, though most of us have to be content with only one. --

end Patrice quote.

This may be what I was getting at in my groping way in my original post. If voice is something like the author's worldview, then it is going to be difficult to pin down by reading only one book; but as (someone else, sorry, I forget who) said, over time you learn to recognize Picasso, no matter the medium, the style, the content, etc. Perhaps this explains why teaching voice is so difficult: you'd have to do an intensive study of one or two authors to begin to pick up what it is that all Thomas Hardy novels, or all Philip Pullman novels, or all Virginia Hamilton novels have in common, beyond subject matter, beyond style.

When we say "write what you know" it may be that what we mean is "use your own voice," or "find a story that expresses your unique worldview and find a manner of telling that story in a way that also expresses your unique worldview" -- which may be why derivative or market-driven literature fails, because the author is assuming a false or insincere voice.

Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 08:56:12 -0400
From: "Danna Brickell"

I have also used Six Traits for several years, both as a classroom teacher and as our school system's trainer. As you stated, sometimes recognizing voice is best accomplished by looking at what it's NOT. For this I often use instruction manuals, insurance policies, and (sad but true) textbooks. Several years ago I served on the state writing assessment team to score anchor papers. When the consultant talked to us about the differences in papers that received scores of 5 or 6 rather than a 4, she said that those top papers have "sparkle", a quality you can't teach but that you can recognize when you read it. I disagree. Voice CAN be taught by first teaching students to RECOGNIZE it and then by immersing them in many examples of "voice rich" kinds of writing. One of the most rewarding experiences I ever had in a classroom occurred as I walked around monitoring students as they scored their peers' papers and discussed them. The comment that made my YEAR was when a young man turned to a classmate and said, "Your ideas and organization are good, but it ain't got NO voice!" For those of you who are not familiar with six traits, go to NWREL's website (www.nwrel.org) and search SIX TRAITS.

Ah...the ever elusive but oh-so-vital concept of voice. Ask an editor at a writing conference (as writers always do), "What are you looking for?" and "voice" is about the only thing many editors say. Writers longing to be published, as well as teachers and students, struggle desperately to figure out just what that means, so I've tried to figure out how to describe "voice," too. I like what you say, here, Susie:

"I have talked about it being the personality of a story, as if we're meeting someone for the first time and we might notice outstanding characteristics. (Funny, full of feelings, spicy...) I have had children move the way the think the voice would act if it walked into a room."

I've asked people to notice if there are certain people whose gossip is always extra intriguing :>, certain people who know how to hold forth about something that happened to them in a way that makes the listeners' ears perk up and start to smolder a bit at the top. LOL. Obviously different things can be captivating...for one yakker it might be the swagger and for another the hyperbole and for another the earnestness and then there's that person who somehow puts words together in such an interesting, idiocyncratic way. Those things show up in writing, too. I've been reading a book about Max Perkins so can't help thinking about how different Hemingway sounds on paper than Fitzgerald...and their voices on paper did reflect their pesonalities and interests and "takes" on the world...

I definitely think it's possible to teach kids to recognize a piece that has a strong sense of voice, although I agree that I don't know for sure whether every single-bingle young writer can be taught how to incorporate voice. Can every person be taught to talk in an interesting way? At one point in my life, I was reading a lot of work by those wanna-be-published writers I referred to in the first paragraph, and I still vividly remember reading one piece and saying out loud, "Wow. Now this is dripping with VOICE, and if this writer doesn't get published soon, I'll be astonished." I'm sure some of you have read that writer's first two books that, in fact, were published a few years later--FREEDOM SUMMER and LOVE RUBY LAVENDER--and know just what I mean when I say that even in a piece that never got published (yet), Deborah Wiles's voice made me sit up and take notice.

For my creative writing students, I sometimes say that when a reader picks up something and skims a few words, that reader may very well judge right away whether to put him or herself into the hands of this storyteller...is it going to be worth going along for the ride? Is this person going to entertain me or stir my emotions or teach me something or...all of the above? I think that's the author's voice.

I don't think you can have a voice if you don't have an ear, and it won't work if it's a tin ear. One example of a tin ear can be found in the school cafeteria. It's coming from the boy in the battery-powered tennis shoes who was raised near a barn but insists on trying to use the word "jiggy" as he asks his tablemates if they're enjoying their jello. Tin ears can also be found in funeral parlors. People who spend their days selling insurance policies or lecturing captive audiences will often linger next to the casket, where they're either shaking their fingers at the corpse or telling the widow that those shoes really don't do much for her ankles.

Voices can be nasal or high-strung, or both, and publishers know better than to write a check to any author who insists that nasal and high-strung is a good way to tell a story. The difference between a painter's voice and a writer's is that painter's don't have to do dialogue -- or at least not in the sense that writers do. Writers whose ears are only large enough to hear their own voices can't do dialogue very well. Which is when they start to use adverbs, in all kinds of jiggy ways.

On Tuesday, September 09, 2003 janekurtz@EARTHLINK.NET (Jane Kurtz) wrote:

"At one point in my life, I was reading a lot of work by those wanna-be-published writers"

I've been there, too, Jane, and one thing that I struggled with were those stories that had a beginning, middle, and end, and characters that had to overcome obstacles, and who changed in the end as a result of those struggles but, when the story was done, I just didn't give a whit. It was almost as though the author were trying to present an objective account of what happened. It was all very cerebral.

Carol Bly talks about the importance of surprise in good writing, and I think that's at least a part of what voice is. Good writers surprise us with their descriptions, their word choices, their fresh insights. I think that's some of where the delight mentioned in an earlier post comes in.

I wonder if voice happens when a writer becomes less self-conscious, more comfortable in her writing skin, and allows herself to write through her characters instead of about them. Someone talked about writing that screams, "Look at me!" I always think of that as self-conscious writing; the writer who is so aware of the fact that she is writing that you can see it in her work.

Jane says, "I've been there, too, and one thing that I struggled with were those stories that had a beginning, middle, and end, and characters that had to overcome obstacles, and who changed in the end as a result of those struggles but, when the story was done, I just didn't give a whit."

Hmm...me too. Me too. I wonder if there's some way to mimic this learning experience in the classroom. From reading lots of deadly pieces where there is NO VOICE, wouldn't most writers start to see its importance? Wait...someone said that in this conversation, right? I'm suddenly remembering a teacher who would have students take a lively bit from a picture book or a particularly wonderful paragraph from a novel and rewrite in Textbook Voice...which is to say no voice...and it struck me as a wonderful thing to try in the classroom.

I love that idea of surprise. It's one of the things I've put my finger on from reading a great deal of mediocre writing, too--if you only give your reader what he or she already expects, how do you expect the reader to stay engaged? But, then, of course we're back with that issue that an inexperienced reader is going to find the OBVIOUS not nearly as obvious as we will. I think maybe this is especially an issue with novels for the younger end of the "middle grade novel," which is maybe why those novels have such a hard time getting critical recognition. Another Jane

BTW, I can buy the idea that almost anyone could improve in the area of voice...from immersion in all these great things Susie and others are doing in classrooms...but in some cases voice also involves tremendous risk. Safe writing is rarely zingy writing. And zingy writing can sometimes make a person feel vulnerable or look like a fool. Hmmm....Well, I guess risk-taking can be supported in classrooms, too. I remember my high school English teacher who had a belly laugh when one of us would write or say someting unexpected--even sassy--in our responses, and he made a huge difference in my life as a writer.

I read solely for voice. I want the writer to tell me something about herself. I want a character whose voice is distinct. I want to know what happens, yes, but the recitation of events without voice is the textbook some of you have mentioned in this discussion.

Voice can be developed, I feel, rather than "taught," but if you think I am being semantic, know that I liken a writer's voice to a sense of humor--you either have one or you don't. No amount of training can fan the flames of a nonexistent spark.

Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 13:34:48 -0400
From: "Julius Lester"

As a writer I do not think about author's voice. I think about the voice(s) of the characters/book. The writing does not begin to flow until I've found the voice(s) of that particular book. The voices used in the Uncle Remus books and other folktale retellings is not the same voice as used in "Othello: A Novel" and the voice used there is not the same as the voice in "Pharaoh's Daughter" and the voices of "When Dad Killed Mom" is distinct from the two books mentioned above.

As individuals we speak in many voices and our voices vary depending on the person to whom we are talking, the situation, etc. I want books to reflect this reality.

What is voice? I don't think I know but when I write I know that I have found the voice(s) for that book when the words speak with that music which comes only from the soul.

Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 14:59:41 -0400
From: "Michael Joseph"

Eliot's essay on voice notes the existence of three voices involving the relationship of poet to audience. in one voice, the poet addresses an other, or others (wife, mistress, friends, posterity, foes, sleeping son, etc.); in the second voice, the poet addresses nobody, but thinks aloud, his or her voice an effect of a total immersion in an emotion or contemplation; in the third, dramatic, voice, the poet is submerged in the interplay among characters. The poet dramatist really has no voice, because every voice is traceable to a character within the play.

Robt Graves's "The POrtrait" begins with a nice comment on voice (I am quoting from memory, so I'm sure I've gotten something wrong.)

She speaks always in her own voice Even to strangers But those other women use borrowed or false voices Even on sons and daughters.

The suggestion is that voice is more a matter of sincerity, of living right, and hence something one could admire in a person but should perhaps scrutinize skeptically in a book or politician, where it is liable to be - and maybe it had better be -- a calculated effect.

Michael,
Regarding Eliot, I heard that he do the police in different voices.
:-)

In "Crafting Stories for Children,"(Writers Digest Books, 2000) Nancy Lamb (www.nancylamb.com) devotes an entire chapter to the distinction between voice and tone. Her examples (specific titles and quotes from Richard Peck, Philip Pullman, Robert Cormier, Walter Dean Myers, Lois Duncan and others), along with suggested practice items (this is a practical--and witty--how-to book and is used by writer Ann Paul in her children's writing classes), help provide a viseral as well as intellectual grip of these slithery concepts. Full disclosure moment: I am acknowledged and quoted in this book and I read/lightly edited it in manuscript form.

Thank goodness for Julius. I should have at least mentioned that in Nancy Lamb's book she talks about voice as related to each book, no matter whether the narrator is in first, second or third person, not as the voice of the author. It's each book that has a voice.

It's obvious from this discussion that voice isn't an easy thing to pin
down, and that writers and others may experience it in varying ways. So I don't think a definitive answer is what we are seeking, but something that will illuminate and enrich our reading and writing, and, yes, our teaching. Voice may mean different things to even the same person at different times.

Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 21:00:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Frances Moffitt Granatino"

I can't top Resa's eloquence when it comes to a discussion of voice, or all the content-laden posts that have followed.

What I can do is point to books that, in my opinion, have voice. I can't articulate succinctly why they do, but I'll give it a try:

- Joan Abelove's Go and Come Back. To me, the quintessential voice of the author, mixed in with the voices of the protagonists. And I'll betcha Joan would tell you she just wrote it straight out, not even thinking about the voices that emerged.

- Jackie Woodson, any book. Her books sing. She's an example of someone whose voice just emerges. It's there. It's a combination of poetry and lyricism, much like Karen Hesse's work.

- Donna Jo Napoli. Her voice shines through when she reinvents old fairy tales and myths and legends. The pages shimmer with her fire.

I think there are two camps here: those authors whose voices come through, no matter what the subject matter, and those authors who find their voices through the characters they create. Sounds like a win-win, either way, as long as it resonates with the reader.

Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 10:35:50 -0400
From: "Zena Harvley-Felder"

Just some reflections on voice.

The conversation about voice is an intriguing one for me, because my daughter is a writer, in college studying English and creative writing. She has had “voice” since she was three years old. When I read her poetry and stories, now, I am struck by the power of her voice, and I’ve tried to define for myself just what voice is. One of her professors said that her writing has a lyric quality that cannot be taught. (I’m not sure about whether or not we can in some sense teach voice. It seems to be a function of a sense of self.)

She is just as able to write in the voice of a character as she is able to write in her own voice. And when she writes in either mode, she is fully there; the voice is real; there is no deception. Her experiences nurture her imagination and become story told in her distinctive voice. Others might have the same experience – say a semester spent living and studying in London – but the difference is that her experiences become story. Wasn’t it Henry James who used a spider web metaphor to convey his personal creative process – bits and pieces, a glance here, a tone there, etc. – captured in the web and woven into story with his distinctive voice? So, of course, it has to be a function of personality. And I agree that it is also the way the writer uses words to paint experience.

I think voice reflects captured experience, physical, visual, aural, oral. Voice is the way one sees and listens and makes connections. Voice is that quality in writing that invites the reader in, captures the reader, makes the reader want/need to listen to the story that is written on paper. Voice allows the reader to share the writer’s captured experience and makes it possible for the reader to respond to the story. And yet it is still so elusive . . .

From: "Deborah Hopkinson"

I've also found this conversation about voice intriguing, although I certainly don't understand voice, couldn't teach it, and have no idea how it operates in my own writing. But I thought Zena's comment about her daughter having a distinctive voice from the time she was a young child very interesting. I would say the same thing about my teenaged daughter, both in the way she has always written and also in her voice on stage from the time she was ten years old.

I've recently written a nonfiction book that weaves in selections from the memoirs of five immigrants on the Lower East Side at the turn of the last century. One of the aspects that fascinated me most during the research was how unique each person's experience, voice, and _expression was. I guess for me voice is related to that personality, that uniqueness that shines through, creating an intimate, sometimes intense experience. I think in fiction that is partly what I respond to, although of course it doesn't have to be first person -- Jane Austen comes to mind.

It's been fascinating following all the different opinions on voice. Just goes to show that voice is a slippery critter, hard to pin down but easy to recognize when it's running around your front room.

Like Patrice, I'm not that big on analysis, but I found that my own voice evolved as I became more willing to take risks and listen to my "inner voice" instead of wondering how others would think about whatever I was writing. I second whoever it was (Walter?) that said you can't teach it but you can develop it. The most we can do is show signposts to the beginning writer, then let them plunge into the forest on their own to find voice.

For me, voice is the sound the words make in your head when you read the story. If the words are musical, that writer has a voice.

Patrice (and all),

I should have said "the speaker's personality," which works equally well for fiction and nonfiction. One's "voice" in writing can be a
construction. In fact, I'm rather skeptical of the idea of "sincerity" in writing, as that claim supposes that the other elements of the
task--textual transmission, audience, language, etc.--are unchanging.

I still find Eleanor Cameron's discussions about voice quite valuable; they are dispersed throughout these books (my Ur-texts for the teaching of children's literature):

Cameron, Eleanor. The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children's Books. Boston: Little, Brown, 1962.

Intrigued by the discussion of "voice" last week, I asked my sixth graders (11-year-olds) what they thought might be meant by the author's "voice." We've been reading a series of short stories and short excerpts from fiction and non-fiction that describe school experiences. The selections range widely and my students were unanimous that each author had a distinctive voice they would recognize. They could also tell me whose voice they preferred -- and who they would like to talk to -- and these were quite individual decisions. The things they thought made up an author's voice included the vocabulary and phrasing, the topics and interests (what I might have called a stance or a point of view), the use of detail and imagery, and where the selection stood on the range between realism and imagination. We have not yet read multiple selections by a single author or non-fiction and fiction by the same person (though we will) but I thought they had quite a good handle on a difficult concept.