What does “voice” refer to in literature? It is an author’s habit, their fingerprint, a recognizable “sound” in the way they communicate their stories.
When we speak aloud, we habitually use certain words and phrase our thoughts a particular way. The physiology of our throats is unique to us. While we may sound very similar to other members of our family, pitch monitoring software will show that our speaking voice is distinctive to us.
For some of us, the moment we say “hello,” our friends and family know it’s us on the other end of the telephone, even without caller ID.
The same is true for our writing.
Our voice is comprised of the way we construct paragraphs, the words we choose, and the narrative mode and time/tense we prefer to write in.
Our content is shaped by our deeply held beliefs and attitudes. Those values change and evolve over time. Content includes the themes we instinctively write into our work and the ideals we subconsciously hold dear. Those elements shape a story’s character and plot arcs and represent who we were at the time we wrote it.
Our voice or style is the visual sound of our words as they appear on the page.
Let’s take another look at Gillian Flynn’s novel, Gone Girl.
Flynn’s style of prose is rapid-fire, almost stream-of-consciousness, and yet it is controlled and deliberate. She is creative in how she uses the literary device of narrative mode. Primarily, Gone Girl is written in the first person present tense. But sometimes Flynn breaks the fourth wall by flowing into the second person present tense and speaking directly to us, the reader.
This seamless manipulation of narrative tense reveals Flynn’s thought process.
One criticism you might hear about her style is that, at times, her characters all sound alike. Only the chapter title and subjects covered in that section let you know which person is speaking, Nick or Amy. That means we are hearing the author’s own voice in the role of the characters.
When Flynn slips into the second person mode and speaks directly to the reader, she forces us to consider the ideas she is presenting, involving us in the story.
That flowing from mode to mode is a literary device she is good at, and speaking as an editor, it is neither good nor bad. Whether it works depends on an author’s skill.
Your enjoyment of that kind of narrative depends on your personal taste. Flynn’s style of writing is unique, but her exploration of dark, unlikeable characters makes this a difficult novel for some readers.
A writer’s personal ethics and taste and the kernel of “what if” shape how they approach the subject matter and the themes of their work. Their knowledge of craft is demonstrated in the construction of sentences, paragraphs, and scenes. Skill in the craft shapes the overall arc of a story.
courtesy Office 360 graphics
The words we gravitate to and reuse and how we unconsciously punctuate our sentences combine to form our voice, our style.
This personal sound evolves as we develop more skills and knowledge of writing craft.
My own style has changed dramatically since my first novel. When I began writing seriously, I was in the habit of using italicized thoughts and characters talking to themselves to express what was happening inside them. I often employed compound sentences that, when I look back on them now, were too long.
Using italics for thoughts is an accepted practice and is not wrong. When used sparingly, italicized thoughts and internal dialogue have their place. However, thoughts can be used as a means for dumping information, which then becomes a wall of italicized words.
In the last few years, I’ve evolved in my writing habits. I am increasingly drawn to writing shorter sentences, but I vary sentence length to avoid choppiness.
When conveying my character’s internal dialogue, I use the various forms of free indirect speech to show who my characters think they are and how they see their world. So, in that regard, my author voice has changed.
We write for ourselves first. Then, we revise and edit for the enjoyment of other readers.
We do not iron the life out of our work, because that spark of joy that was instilled the moment we laid down those words must still shine through. It takes thought and the ability to recognize and cast aside prose that doesn’t say what we want it to, yet still have it sound like our writing and not someone else’s.
Be consistent with punctuation, whether you are right or wrong. If you “hate the Oxford comma” or some other widely accepted rule of grammar, you must be consistent when you avoid its use.
Inconsistency in a manuscript is not a voice or style.
It’s a mess.
Ernest Hemmingway rarely used commas. However, he was consistent in how he composed his sentences, and his work was original and readable.
“I was learning something from the painting of Cézanne that made writing simple true sentences far from enough to make the stories have the dimensions that I was trying to put in them. I was learning very much from him but I was not articulate enough to explain it to anyone. Besides it was a secret.”
~~Ernest Hemmingway, A Movable Feast
Some authors’ voices really stand out, and their writing skills are up to the task of conveying what they intend their words to say. Their stories find an important place in our hearts.
They are the writers that agents are desperately seeking.
In my previous post, we talked about narrative point of view. POV is the perspective, the personal or impersonal “lens” through which we communicate our stories. It is the mode we choose for conveying a particular story.
When I begin my second draft, those weak verb forms function as traffic signals. They were a form of mental shorthand that helped me write the story before I lost my train of thought. But in the rewrite, weak verbs are code words that tell me what the scene should be rewritten to show.
The way we habitually phrase sentences, how we construct paragraphs, the words we choose, and the narrative mode and time we prefer to write in is our voice. It includes the themes we instinctively write into our work and the ideals we subconsciously hold dear.
If we move to a different window, the view changes. Some views are better than others.
Books like 
Last week, I mentioned head–hopping, a disconcerting literary no-no that occurs when an author switches point-of-view characters within a single scene. I’ve noticed it happens more frequently in third-person omniscient narratives because it’s a mode in which the thoughts of every character are open to the reader.
I find that when I can’t get a handle on a particular character’s personality, I open a new document and have them tell me their story in the first person.
Artist: Claude Monet (1840–1926)
But how do we recognize when a moment of action has true dramatic potential? We try to inject action and emotion into our scenes, but some dramatic events don’t advance the story.
Recognizing where the real drama begins is tricky. Let’s have a look at the novel 
I admire the audacity of having Michell, a protagonist who considers his professional reputation as his most prized possession, commit such a catastrophic action as stealing those original letters. It proves there is potential for drama in the least likely places.
I’m not a Romance writer, but I do write about relationships. Readers expecting a standard romance would be disappointed in my work which is solidly fantasy. The people in my tales fall in love, and while they don’t always have a happily ever after, most do. The other aspect that would disappoint a Romance reader is the shortage of smut.
In his book 
When a beta reader tells me the relationship seems forced, I go back to the basics and make an outline of how that relationship should progress from page one through each chapter. I make a detailed note of what their status should be at the end. This gives me jumping-off points so that I don’t suffer from brain freeze when trying to show the scenes.
I think our characters have to be a little clueless about Romance, even if they are older. They need to doubt, need to worry. They need to fear they don’t have a chance, either to complete their quest or to find love.
But the scenes themselves are pictures within the larger picture of the story arc. Think of the story arc as a blank wall. We place the scenes on that blank wall in the order we want them, but without transition scenes, these moments in time appear random, as if they don’t go together.
Our bookend scenes are not empty words. They should reveal something and push us toward something unknown. They lay the groundwork for what comes next.
One of my favorite authors sometimes has chapters of only five or six hundred words, keeping each character thread separate and flowing well. A hard scene break with a new chapter is my preferred way to end a nice, satisfying fade-to-black.
The second draft is where the real work begins. I set the first draft aside for several weeks and then go back to it. I look at my outline to make sure the events fall in the proper order. At that point, I can see how to write the transitions to ensure each scene flows naturally into the next.
In a novel or story, each scene occurs within the framework of the environment.
The Dragonriders of Pern series is considered science fiction because McCaffrey made clear at the outset that the star (Rukbat) and its planetary system had been colonized two millennia before, and the protagonists were their descendants.
The scenes we are looking at today have two distinct environments to frame them. In both settings, the surroundings do the dramatic heavy lifting. This chapter is filled with emotion, high stakes, and rising dread for the sure and inevitable tragedy that we hope will be averted.
Sallah enters the shuttle just as the airlock door closes, catching and crushing her heel. She manages to pull it out so that she isn’t trapped, but she is severely injured.
This is an incredibly emotional scene: we are caught up in her determination to seize this only chance, using her last breaths to get the information about the thread spores to the scientists on the ground.
So, let’s take a look at theme, the thread that binds emotions and points of no return together. It’s time to take another look at how 
Saunders gives us the character of Ray Abnesti, a scientist developing pharmaceuticals and using convicted felons as guinea pigs as part of the justice system. The wider world has forgotten about those whose crimes deserve punishment, whose fate goes unknown and unlamented.
Then there is the theme of compassion. Abnesti explores love vs. lust for his own amusement. The different drugs Jeff is given prove that both are illusionary and fleeting. Yet Saunders implies that the truth of love is compassion. Jeff’s final action shows us that he is a man of compassion.
A common theme in science fiction is the use of drugs to alter people’s behavior and control them emotionally. That theme is explored in detail here, ostensibly as a means to do away with prisons and reform prisoners. But really, these experiments are for Abnesti, a psychopath, to exercise his passion for the perverse and inhumane and for him to have power over the helpless.
This short story was as powerful as any novel I’ve ever read, proving that a good story stays with the reader long after the final words have been read, no matter the length. His questions resonate, asking us to think about our true motives.
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 
