Lost My Voice
My writer's voice, that is. I have no idea what I sound like. How did it happen? I think ... because I don't write often enough. Voice is more important than story or plot. It's not the plot or the story or the locations or characters that bring readers back. It's the voice. They become addicted to the sound of your voice. It becomes like that of an old friend. And they want to hear it again.
And it helps you, too. You become confident of your storytelling abilities when you find your voice. You develop a sense that you're talking to a good friend. Stephen King calls this good friend "Constant Reader." It's the person you pretend you're telling a story to when you write. I'm important, he says, to develop a constant reader and to keep that person's image in mind all the time. That's where the sense of intimacy comes in. The intimacy that draws in your reader and keeps him or her turning the pages, page after page. That's how you generate a page-turner.
The May/June issue of Writer's Digest has this article: Writing Advice from Stephen King & Jerry Jenkins. In it, King says that readers "just want a good story, and I think they come to crave your voice even more than the story itself. It’s like having a visit with an old friend."
So to recover my voice, I have to make friends again with my constant reader. I've lost contact with him or her somehow.
Who, I wonder, am I writing to right now? Don't know, but it's to someone. Myself, I suppose. there's certainly a sense of one-to-one. No sense of distance.
If I thought more about my constant reader than about word count or plot or rejection or any of the one and thousand things I often do think about, then my writing would be further along.
Stephen King's Tricks:
1. Develop a constant reader and keep this person in mind at all times. This mimics the old radio broadcaster's trick. When you're behind the mic, pretend you're speaking to one person, someone you know and like, someone with whom you like to shoot the breeze. That brings warmth to your voice, a natural warmth and friendliness and sense of ease. Great broadcasters do it very well.
2. Remember that you're telling a story. Adults are just overgrown kids looking for a bedtime story. Stop thinking you're a novelist. Start thinking about telling a story. Telling a tall tale. (For King, the taller, the better!)
3. The story's in the details.
4. Write about what you care about.
5. Always believe it could happen. Or did happen. So many times you get the feeling that the author himself didn't believe his own story. So the story doesn't feel grounded. Doesn't feel anchored. There are no details 'cause the author doesn't see them; and he doesn't see them because he hasn't immersed himself in the story's world, and he hasn't immersed himself because the story isn't real to him, and if it's not real to him, then how can it be real to the reader?
6. Put interesting characters into interesting situations and see what happens. Interesting characters? But how do you create them? Sometimes they come to you, yes, but suppose they don't? I've heard one author say that she always starts out with real people, people she knows. She uses their real names, too, when writing that first or second or even third draft. Later, when she's got a cohesive, coherent story, she does a general replace, changing the names of the guilty and innocent alike.
7. One of the most interesting things to write about: good versus evil. It's something everybody can relate to. Everybody's facing some version of the struggle and everybody's looking for strategies and inspiration and advice on how to win it.
Okay, so now back to writing. Trying to amuse myself. Talking to a best friend. Writing about good and evil. Trying to do all this stuff. My writing to-do list online.
And it helps you, too. You become confident of your storytelling abilities when you find your voice. You develop a sense that you're talking to a good friend. Stephen King calls this good friend "Constant Reader." It's the person you pretend you're telling a story to when you write. I'm important, he says, to develop a constant reader and to keep that person's image in mind all the time. That's where the sense of intimacy comes in. The intimacy that draws in your reader and keeps him or her turning the pages, page after page. That's how you generate a page-turner.
The May/June issue of Writer's Digest has this article: Writing Advice from Stephen King & Jerry Jenkins. In it, King says that readers "just want a good story, and I think they come to crave your voice even more than the story itself. It’s like having a visit with an old friend."
So to recover my voice, I have to make friends again with my constant reader. I've lost contact with him or her somehow.
Who, I wonder, am I writing to right now? Don't know, but it's to someone. Myself, I suppose. there's certainly a sense of one-to-one. No sense of distance.
If I thought more about my constant reader than about word count or plot or rejection or any of the one and thousand things I often do think about, then my writing would be further along.
Stephen King's Tricks:
1. Develop a constant reader and keep this person in mind at all times. This mimics the old radio broadcaster's trick. When you're behind the mic, pretend you're speaking to one person, someone you know and like, someone with whom you like to shoot the breeze. That brings warmth to your voice, a natural warmth and friendliness and sense of ease. Great broadcasters do it very well.
2. Remember that you're telling a story. Adults are just overgrown kids looking for a bedtime story. Stop thinking you're a novelist. Start thinking about telling a story. Telling a tall tale. (For King, the taller, the better!)
3. The story's in the details.
4. Write about what you care about.
5. Always believe it could happen. Or did happen. So many times you get the feeling that the author himself didn't believe his own story. So the story doesn't feel grounded. Doesn't feel anchored. There are no details 'cause the author doesn't see them; and he doesn't see them because he hasn't immersed himself in the story's world, and he hasn't immersed himself because the story isn't real to him, and if it's not real to him, then how can it be real to the reader?
6. Put interesting characters into interesting situations and see what happens. Interesting characters? But how do you create them? Sometimes they come to you, yes, but suppose they don't? I've heard one author say that she always starts out with real people, people she knows. She uses their real names, too, when writing that first or second or even third draft. Later, when she's got a cohesive, coherent story, she does a general replace, changing the names of the guilty and innocent alike.
7. One of the most interesting things to write about: good versus evil. It's something everybody can relate to. Everybody's facing some version of the struggle and everybody's looking for strategies and inspiration and advice on how to win it.
Okay, so now back to writing. Trying to amuse myself. Talking to a best friend. Writing about good and evil. Trying to do all this stuff. My writing to-do list online.
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