Hearing Voices

Dave White wrote a post last week about voice. I recently had an interesting experience with voice and thought I’d share.

I completed the first draft of a new story, a story I was hoping would be a departure for me stylistically. Most of my stories tend to be full of dialog, with enough action to keep them bopping along from scene to scene. In this story, I wanted the reader to be a bit more distant from the characters. So I thought I’d tell much of it through narrative, with richer descriptions and less dialog.

I couldn’t do it. Either it was a failure of the imagination or I just don’t have the skill (yet) to depart from my normal way of telling a story. I still like the story, and it came out mostly the way I wanted it to, but the voice is not as I intended.

Then, this past weeked, I read a novel calle The Polish Officer by Alan Furst. THIS was the style I was going for. Detached, almost clinical, never getting too close. Among other things I realized that to use this style you have to share the characters’ thoughts with the reader, something I don’t like doing, and if it’s a story of any length, you will probably need to use multiple viewpoints. Both of these techniques are more difficult that the typical single viewpoint words-and-action style that I use, but Furst carried them off withou apparent effort.

So now I have a little inspiration to use for my second draft, and a little better understanding. It was just serendipity that I picked up that book when I needed it.