Deborah Cooke: Author

As many of you knew, our last excerpt yesterday was written by Anne Rice. The sensuous prose and the description of New Orleans usually leads people to the right answer. It’s from her book Exit to Eden, which was published under the pseudonym Anne Rampling. The book is a wonderful erotic romance.

III. Finding Your Own Voice

Here’s where I get to do my Merlin bit. My first clue for you is another exercise.

First a little preamble. If you think about music, different artists do cover versions of individual songs. The lyrics are the same. The tune is the same. But the sound of the resulting song can be very different. The cover version that a musician or singer or band does of any given song will be in that musician’s style, which is very similar to an author’s voice. The cover version will sound like that band or artist, even though the song itself could be something far from that artist’s usual material.

Exercise C is an attempt to come at that in terms of writing. It’s a take-home assignment. Ideally, you will do this in your critique group, or even in your land chapter. Each of you will write the same scene. Put a word cap on it, maybe 1000 words, and choose a story idea. My favourite assignment – since we are romance writers! – is that you write a first kiss. So, in our example, Mike is sweet on his younger sister’s best friend Josie, except it would be kind of like hitting on his sister to ask her out. And they’re friends. He doesn’t want to mess that up. Josie, on the other hand, has been crazy for Mike since she was five years old. No other guy holds a candle to him. Each of you will write their first kiss.

Then, you’ll print out enough copies to everyone in your crit group to have one. Leave off your names and any identifying marks. Format them all in standard ms format, double spaced in Courier 12 point. You each take your bundle, read the scenes, and try to determine who wrote which one. The point is not to guess, but to base your decision on a specific element of voice as shown in the passage.

Here are a couple of extra questions you can think about, ones that will be easier as you will know the author:

6. What is the worldview or attitude of the author?

7. What, if anything, is distinctive about the voice in this work? Does it consistently sound the same, or are there bits and pieces that don’t seem to match?

8. Does the tone of the excerpt echo the way the author expresses herself (or himself) verbally?

There’s some interesting stuff here. First of all, we reveal ourselves in our voices. Not just where we’re from but a whole lot more than that. Because you will personally know the authors in question, you’ll likely be able to make some matches based on “inside information”.

Secondly, we might not trust our voices. Critique groups and contest results can have a tendency to soften an author’s voice and round the corners, to make the resulting work sound more bland. Authors who are trying to hold back on their voices – or who are afraid to let loose – will write passages that are choppy. The voice will be strong and clear in one sentence, then obliterated in the next. A run of safe metaphors and adjectives will suddenly interrupted by a radical (and much more interesting) comparison. This is different from using voice for emphasis as it’s unconsciously done. Generally, the strong voice will pop up in the wrong places, drawing attention to passages that are less important.

Finally, there’s that last question about the written passage sounding like the author’s verbal expression. Now, spoken voice and written voice are not the same, but there are certainly links between them. If there’s a huge difference between the author’s verbal expression and his or her written one, it’s possible that the author in question is holding her or his voice in check.

Here’s one last excerpt, followed by one last Merlin-esque hint about voice:

“The surgery hurt far more than he’d expected.

But then, how could he have prepared for an experience so new? He’d known nothing of pain.

Until the first cut.

A line of fire ripped across his back and he screamed. It was the first audible sound he’d ever made.

Feathers were falling, surrounding him with a curtain of drifting white. It took him a moment to realize that they were his own feathers. They had lost their familiar luminescence. They looked alien.

He was becoming alien himself. The idea horrified him, until the surgeon sealed the wound. Heat seared across his back, following the line of the incision. Wetness spilled onto his cheeks and he tasted the salt of his tears.

Another first.

His bellow made the floor vibrate. The smell of burned flesh was new, as well, and sickening.

He reminded himself that he had volunteered.”

Now, here’s an interesting thing – of all the excerpts, this was the easiest one for me to read aloud. Why would that be?

Exactly. I wrote it. Passages in your voice will be easier for you to read out loud. You will instinctively know the rhythm of these passages, and where the pauses are. Whenever you are uncertain about a passage and the strength of your voice in it, just read it aloud.

There’s a second thing to note about this passage – my voice is used here for emphasis, just as voice was used in the Anne Rice and Alice Hoffman excerpts. This scene is a very strong expression of my voice. It’s the hook of the book. It’s the first paragraph of the first page of a first book in a new trilogy, and a world that is vastly different from my previous work. Because that scene is so very critical, both in setting the tone of the work and in orienting the reader, it shows the strongest expression of my voice. Use your voice to emphasize the most important elements of your plot.

That excerpt is from my book Fallen, published under the name Claire Delacroix. It’s the first book in my trilogy called “The Prometheus Project”, which is an urban fantasy romance series set in a very gritty post-nuclear pre-Apocalyptic future, and which features fallen angel heroes. The first book starts with the first hero sacrificing his wings.

Last but not least, let’s talk about Exercise D. It’s also a take-home assignment, but it’s one you get to do it alone. It’s very Merlin-y. You might even want to close your eyes for this one.

Think about the book you’re working on. There is a sentence or a paragraph or even a whole scene that you love dearly in that manuscript. You may love it more than your own children. You love it because it’s perfect. It says exactly what you wanted to say, clearly, concisely and distinctively. It’s the bit that you would die to see cut from the book. How many of you know the sentence that I mean? How many of you can write it out verbatim, right here and right now?

Congratulations. You’ve just caught a glimpse of your Grail.

Chances are very good that you love this bit because it’s in your voice. It’s you. It’s yours. No one else could have written it just so. It resonates for you, and makes a little tingle somewhere deep inside of you. It probably stands out because it’s the only bit in your manuscript that’s clearly in your voice.

So, you have a couple of things you need to do with that bit.

1/ figure out what is distinctive about it. What makes it clearly yours? That’s the million dollar question. Once you figure that out, then you’ll have a good idea what your voice sounds like and what elements comprise it. Your chances then of glimpsing it again, even of evoking it deliberately, will be much better.

2/ assess its position in the work. Is your voice being used for emphasis? Is it part of a critical plot development, or is it just buried in a shopping list? If it’s in a list, chances are good that it will get cut by an editor because it’s drawing attention to what isn’t important. Take it out yourself, because it’s less painful that way.

I hope this has helped, to give you a glimpse of your own voice or at least a few hints as to where to start looking for it. The bonus with the quest that you’re embarking upon is that, unlike the knights hunting the Grail, every one of us can capture the prize. All of you can find your voice, if you’re persistent and seek it diligently enough.

Good luck with your quest!