Musing on Voice

LUCY BURDETTE: A couple of weeks ago during the launch of A POISONOUS PALATE, I was invited by our beloved poison lady, Luci Zahray, to appear on a Zoom call with her book group. (She’s the one who advises all of us writers on how to kill off our characters.) It was a lovely visit with some very dedicated mystery readers. Luci herself might be the most dedicated of all. She told me that in advance of this Zoom meeting, she’d re-read – or re-listened to– my golf lovers mysteries, the advice column mysteries, and also some of the Key West mysteries. (Wonderful music to a writer’s ears!) She said that she would have recognized the Key West books as coming from me, even if she didn’t know that the name Lucy Burdette was also Roberta Isleib. She thought Hayley’s voice was very similar to that of Cassie  in the golf mysteries. (She found the advice column narrator sounded different.) She understood that the narrators in those series would sound different according to how much experience I had as a writer. But this recognition was not about experience. It was voice, my writing voice. We’ve all been writing for quite a while and have written either long series, or many different standalones. I wondered if you’d ever had anyone comment on the change or lack of change in your voice, and how much you’ve noticed it?

HALLIE EPHRON: When I was researching my mystery writing book, I asked a lot of editors what were they looking for in a manuscript. And the number one answer: A COMPELLING VOICE. When I asked what that looked like, the answer I was most likely to get back was, “I know it when I see it.”

I’m constantly aware of voice in my writing – the voice of the narrator. Every word you choose, the structure of the sentences, every choice you make contributes. When I wrote a forensic neuropsychologist narrator, he needed to sound different from a professional organizer or 90-year-old woman narrator.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: And attitude. Not just words, but attitude. And confidence. And that the character has a sense of their place in the world. For better or worse. When I wrote the very first draft of my very first book, the main character was neurotic and worried. I was told to rewrite the WHOLE STORY with exactly the same plot, but make the character smart and confident. I did, and that book sold. I think of this all the time.

LUCY: Fascinating, but…My question is slightly different: what about YOUR voices? Do you think readers can pick up any one of your books from any decade, and say, oh, that’s a Hank book or a Hallie book?

HANK: Oh, definitely. I think. Actually, funnily, I write a lot via dictation, so it comes out as sort of casually natural. Hallie’s voice is more elegant than mine, I think, and mine is more staccato but sprinkled with run-on sentences. I have absolutely had people tell me they could recognize my books, and often they use the word “optimistic.”

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I believe every writer has a distinct voice, and it can be maddening for people trying to break into the business because it sounds so woo-woo and nebulous. Here’s how I break it down:

Your auctorial voice is like a fingerprint. It consists of the style and type of vocabulary you feel most comfortable with, the way you do or don’t address details, the sentence lengths your prefer, the type of punctuation you use and - here’s the woo -woo - how you interpret a story through your own life/ experiences/ interests. Your voice is shaped by what you’ve read, how you’ve spoken, and what you’ve paid attention to throughout your whole lifetime.

And, yes, editors and readers “know it when they see it.” Think of it - you could give the exact same short story situation to every one of the Reds, and each of us would still write a distinctively different story, and I bet readers could easily guess who penned what without any names attached.

HANK: That would be REALLY fun, Julia. We should try it.

DEBS: Or we could write the same story, but it would sound and feel completely different!

JENN McKINLAY: I like Julia’s analogy of the fingerprint. It’s so true. Every author has a unique and distinct voice. I can tell which Red wrote an email to our group without looking at the name because their author voice is quintessentially them–the way they talk, think, perceive things, relay information, and in my case it’s when I feel compelled to crack a joke because that’s how I cope with virtually everything. I don’t think author voices change over time so much as they become more refined.

RHYS BOWEN: Both of my current mystery series are all about voice. I started writing in the first person in both series and the main character just took over. I sort of put down as they dictated and knew exactly who Molly and Georgie are. Their voices are quite distinct from each other. Also the voice in my stand alone novels is different again, although I think you can tell a Rhys Bowen novel.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Lucy, the day I did Luci Zahray's book group, it was a hundred degrees and the library air conditioning had gone out! Bless their hearts, most of the lovely ladies came anyway. True book lovers!

I don't think I can top Julia's explanation of "voice." And I don't think voice can be taught--it has to grow out of who the writer is and how their brain works. Because I write in third person multiple viewpoint, I don't tie mine to particular characters. When we do our "what we're writing" snippets, Hank always says, "I would know that was Debs' writing anywhere!" (But she said it more elegantly than that!)

Red readers: How do you define voice? Do you think you can identify an author’s voice without a name attached?