Guest Blog: "Invisible Voice?" by Maria Forest
Invisible Writing by
William Tapply chronicled his discovery
that good writing is not about fancy vocabulary words, which only call attention
to the author; but conveys information clearly and concisely (with or without
adverbs). The punch-line of the article is: The author's father had written
thousands of articles for an outdoor magazine and "People thought of [his]
father as an expert outdoorsman … nobody seemed to consider him an expert
writer.
When I read it in the 1994
Writer's Digest, I thought "Well, cool. Now I have a name for how I like to
write." (I didn't know what style was back then, or the fact I even had one.) Up
to that point I had taken great pains to make sure my characters had distinct
voices, that the exposition (or narrator's voice) was the POV character's voice, and authorial intrusion was eradicated.
And then the plot twisted.
The word went out: Agents and editors were looking for authors with a "strong
voice". After years of searching, a friend finally gave me an explanation I
could wrap my head around: "It's the author putting him/herself on the page so
that it's like the author is reading aloud to the reader."
Well, that's not invisible
writing.
Indeed it was not. I met a
woman in a local writing organization who, after years of writing lots and doing
everything an aspiring author needs to, finally got an agent and sold to a
couple publishing houses. Yes, a couple pub houses: multi-book, multi-series
contracts. She's a talented lady. But I can't read her books. I tried, but just
couldn't. Don't get me wrong. The story premise was interesting, and the woman
herself is very nice. But I didn't want her voice and quirks and mannerisms in
my head while I'm reading. She had a strong voice, which kept me from escaping
into the story.
As the epub phenomenon
loosens the grip that agents and editors have on writers and authors, I'm once
again free to indulge my invisible voice. But I do have to find my own
audience....
- - -
Maria Forest
lives happily in North Carolina with her husband and two kids (who
sometimes pretend to have or be cats, dogs, or birds). She writes urban fantasy,
sci-fi, and Christian fiction. Visit her blog.
5 comments:
This is really interesting- the first time I've read a real definition of "the strong voice." Good to know- would love more articles on this and the invisible voice! Thanks for posting.
This is interesting. I like to see some examples of both a strong and an invisible voice side-by-side. A good topic for WMO or potlucks.
Great blog post today. I already subscribed to Maria's blog. I enjoyed this read about strong voices and hadn't thought about it this way. Writing really is an art we must learn to do well. Thanks Maria. Thanks Rick for posting this. Holly Michael
Thank you for your comments! I'm glad each of you got something out of it. Voice, Style, and Invisible Writing are confusing concepts; mashing them all together into "Invisible Voice" can be like reading tea leaves through applesauce. I'm putting together some examples for you!!
Hi! I posted a follow-up article on Invisible Voice (with examples) on my blog http://mariaforest.wordpress.com/. Enjoy!!
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