Voice suggestions?

I'm going to be doing a course on Voice in fiction writing.
Let's talk a bit about "voice".

1. What does it mean to you?
2. What would you say are the elements of voice in fiction? (that is... like sentences, word choice, attitude, distance, viewpoint, whatever).
3. Have you read manuscripts and book and stories that didn't have much voice? What was the effect? (Examples from big bestsellers who won't be harmed by our using it as example.:)
4. How would you characterize your voice-- three adjectives maybe? (Ex. Spare, stark, precise./ Lush, over-the-top, poetic./ Subversive, ironic, clever.)
5. Do you work on your voice as you draft, or do you go with what comes naturally?
6. Can you "revise in" your voice, or do you stay with what your voice comes out as in your first draft?
7.  Have you written passages or scenes where you thought you didn't have a voice?
8. Now let's say I want to ask people to characterize their voice using some kind of metaphor or analogy, like "if your voice was a food, what would it be?" "Is there a song or musician who sounds like your voice?"
9. Any great thoughts about voice I can steal (with attribution)?

This is really hard to teach-- it's kind of vague, and yet deeply individual.

Alicia

Sentences: Why a clause? Why a comma? Rules bend for meaning construction

I was writing along for one of the "real jobs" (that is, the ones that pay), and in a response to a submission, wrote a sentence structured like this, "As I said earlier, I grew up near Richmond, and recognized many of the monuments portrayed in the photographs."

Now we all know the rule. To distinguish between the two independent clauses in a compound sentence, we use a comma plus a conjunction (, and). But there aren't two independent clauses. There's a dependent clause: As I said earlier, appropriately followed by a comma. (No, I won't argue the alternative or go into the very few exceptions here. I read too many student papers where there's no distinction between the introductory element and the main clause. Trust me. The reader needs it, and it was only the AP's need to save ink for newspapers that made this at all arguable. If you have read a thousand student sentences like this where there are no commas to distinguish sentence elements you would agree that a comma is usually necessary in complex sentences.) 
There's a main clause, with the sentence subject and predicate:  I grew up near Richmond

And there is a second predicate with a direct object:  recognized many of the monuments portrayed in the photographs.

The need for the conjunction is clear as we're linking two predicates, and the second predicate (recognized) with the sentence subject (I). But the comma before the "and"-- what's that about? Why did I immediately put that in? Ordinarily I wouldn't. Ordinarily, with one subject and two predicate sentences, I would just use the conjunction. So why did I use the comma? (I could, of course, just have made a mistake, but I don't usually make that kind of mistake -- years of editorial work have trained me in punctuating, though it didn't beat the dash-addiction out of me.) When I do something like that, I go back and try to figure out why I did it. I trust my instinct, but question it too. (Hey! I just did it again-- comma before the conjunction before a second predicate! Why? I think because the second is a contradiction of the first, so I signify that with the comma-- "... here comes something different.")

Anyway, back to the original sentence. (And the point of this is to say that the rules are important because they're based on the logic of sentencing, and when you understand the logic, you can tell when this particular sentence needs a non-rule treatment because it's doing something that is outside that logic.)

The kicker here isn't actually the subject (I) or the double-predicate. It's that introductory element (As I said  earlier).  What exactly did I say earlier?

What I said earlier in the letter was (in response to the setting of the book) that I had grown up near Richmond. I was trying to establish commonality and also present the reality that I was perhaps more able to appreciate an aspect of the book (the photos) than another reader. 

But... what I didn't say earlier was this:
  recognized many of the monuments portrayed in the photographs.
That's new. I said "main clause with predicate 1" before, but not "trailing phrase with predicate 2" before. 

Without the comma, I would be saying that I'd said all that before, and the reader would be looking back to the first paragraph and wondering what had happened to the mention of the recognition.  

The comma says, "What's before me is separate in some meaningful way from what's after me." I don't have to necessarily specify what the difference in meaning is, but the comma is a recognition of that so that the reader doesn't have to wonder. We can trust the reader to sense if not completely consciously understand that there is a distinction between this:
As I said earlier, I grew up near Richmond and recognized many of the monuments portrayed in the photographs. (That is, I said all of this earlier.)
and this:
As I said earlier, I grew up near Richmond, and recognized many of the monuments portrayed in the photographs. (I said only the Richmond part earlier.)

Now I could also have done it the standard compound (two clause) way:
As I said earlier, I grew up near Richmond, and I recognized many of the monuments portrayed in the photographs. (That is, the trailing phrase is now a clause with its own subject.)

That would have been just fine, except three I's in one sentence might seem repetitive, not to mention egotistical. So precision of meaning gave way to reverse-vanity, I guess.

Point is, as usual-- Know the rule. Understand the underlying logic. Intuit exceptions. Second-guess your intuition. Make a conscious ruling. 
Do all that, and I'll even shut up about exceptions to the rule about commas and intro elements... but you have to add, "Explain your rationale" for that one. :)

Punctuation is part of the construction of meaning in a sentence and paragraph.

Alicia


 

House style

Theresa, at some point, we should discuss house style and how it might affect an author's edit.

(House style is how a particular publishing house decides various editing issues, like in "the fall of 1999," is "fall" capped or not. Often, as with our house, these rulings are captured in a stylebook, which is available to editors and authors. Complicated editing issues are not usually dealt with in the stylebook, but it's very useful with those discretionary decisions in capitalization and punctuation.)

One thought I have-- the house style is not something a submitting writer needs to worry about. You won't even usually have access to the stylebook. So if you're faced with one of those trivial but knotty questions, like how many if any periods should go in "Ph. D.", check the Chicago Manual or go with your own inclination. It won't make any difference in acquisition decisions.

Once your ms is acquired, the house style becomes more important. And if you can get a hold of the stylebook, it's very helpful if you run through the ms again and make the changes needed to conform to the style. However, the stylebook is really more for editors, first, for quick answers to those pesky little questions, and second, to provide an excuse when an author is sure that deleting that space in Ph.D. will mess up her style. "Hey, that's the house style. Sorry."

Alicia

Sentence fragments

I have no problem with sentence fragments. No problem at all. :)

What I have a problem with is fragments that serve no purpose. Here's an example:
The editor was always bitching. About all sorts of things.

Now from a very accomplished writer-- you know, the type of writer whose voice just hums with authority, who can be counted on to experiment with prose and syntax and KNOW when it works and fix it when it doesn't-- I might think, "Oh! This very accomplished author wants me to read that differently than if it were one complete sentence!" And then I'll read it -that- way, and (rather like with enjambment in poetry) get both the broken up meaning and the complete meaning. So I'll read a great deal of exasperation there, even weariness. The editor was ALWAYS bitching. And then, I'll imagine a sigh, and the speaker/character/narrator wearily going on and starting to list all the many things the editor bitched about.

(This "reading"will be more likely if there is a series of fragments, a list of the bitch-topics, btw:
The editor was always bitching. About all sorts of things. About sentence fragments. About "everyone" as a singular noun. About dangling modifiers. Especially about dangling modifiers.)

If the author is trying replicate the staccato quality of some narrator's speech patterns, hey, I can go for that! I'm nothing if not avant-garde. :) But I won't believe that's what is happening if the rest of the manuscript is written in serviceable, not inspired, prose.

There's nothing wrong with serviceable prose, of course. It serves its purpose and doesn't get in the way of the story, but anything outre (there's an accent mark there, but I don't know how to do it in html and I'm too hungry to go look it up!) in serviceable prose is likely to be interpreted as a mistake, not as an experiment. And, well, that's because it usually IS a mistake.

So if you can identify a sentence fragment in your own passage and explain (as I just did about the bitchy editor) how the reader will "hear" it, why it adds to the reader's experience, and why it's worth violating sentence rules, okay! I'll be right there with you, egging you on. "Your narrator is a teenaged girl! So why not put in a 'duh' or two there, just to make the narrative sound more like her?"

(I tell my students that if they use a sentence fragment, they have to put an asterisk there and then at the end of the paper, explain WHY they made that a fragment and why it works better than a complete sentence would. If you think that's evil, keep in mind that when I started teaching 20 years ago, we were told to fail immediately any paper with a sentence fragment. That was unofficial policy. See how much nicer I am now?)

But more often, what I see are sentence fragments that serve no purpose, that the author doesn't recognize as sentence fragments, that add nothing to the experience of reading (except annoyance). Those are the ones I quickly edit, usually by linking them right to the previous sentence, or replacing "which" with "this," or something else the author could just as easily have done himself.

Here are a few examples, culled (and modified) from submissions and student papers.

John was about to leave. Although he wanted to stay.

I already knew the truth. The truth being that she didn't love me anymore.

She pulled off her jacket. Her cardigan too. (This actually might work, if the rest of the narration seemed conversationally adroit. So... why would that work?)

Gas prices were rising through the roof. The stock market falling.

Joella wasn't easily shocked now. By swearing. (See, if the fragment was "By anything," I'd think that it was meant to be emphatic, and thus purposeful.)

Too many people had already emigrated. Because of the potato famine.

She decided to go to dinner. With the group of skateboarders.

He turned the ignition on. Which started right up.

So how about some examples in comments? Most of the above, I'd just edit to connect the sentences. But see, there are two examples that made me speculate. Under what circumstances would you use a sentence fragment, and how would you explain it? Can you give an example? Or would you never use one if you could help it?

(Let me say that I don't consider dialogue as needing a justification for non-standard English, as long as the dialogue works. But even in dialogue, fifteen sentence fragments in a row will sound a bit... jagged. Theresa, please ignore ellipsis. Or if you can't, here's my justification. I wanted it clear that I was hesitating, searching for an adjective, and that perhaps I'd discarded a more nasty one.)

Something to remember: Many of your readers are likely to be sophisticated readers, who read more than just the words to get the meaning. They're reading the rhythm, the structure of sentences, the punctuation, the word choice, the ratio of black ink (or pixels) to white paper (or screen). They're even reading the shape of words. All this can add to the meaning of the passage. They will love it when you exploit their greater meaning-making ability to good purpose. But their greater sensitivity means that they will be put off by signifiers that are NOT to a purpose, because they will react with a meaning-making that turns out to be unfulfilled-- meaning interruptus! (Tell me you know what I mean!)

And how do you know if you are at the level where you can play with those sensitive readers, or if you should stick with serviceable and correct prose?

Alicia

The Eyes Have It!

Well, as long as we're on the subject of body parts-- let's elevate a bit and talk about eyes.

That Vision Thing
I lament the loss of equating eyes with vision, that is, eyes being able to do things like "rake her face" and "drop the floor" and "roam restlessly around the room," but alas, our readers have a marked tendency to picture this literally and either laugh or say "ewww!" I diagnose too many horror movies at an impressionable age. Or maybe we just live in a too-literal age. Nonetheless, we can't avoid it-- we're not getting across what we want to get across.

Fortunately, there's an easy fix for these detachable eye problems-- "gaze". Try substituting "gaze" every time eyes do something rather too independently or metaphorically:


His gaze raked her face.
Her gaze dropped to the floor.
His gaze roamed restlessly across the room.

It's inoffensive and gets the meaning across without too much laughter.

Actual Eyes
Now eyes actually can twinkle and sparkle and gleam. Those are all okay, because they aren't metaphorical-- they actually refer not to the vision of the eye-owner, but to the actual physical appearance of the eyes themselves.

Eye Synonyms
One more thing-- "eyes" is about the only safe word for those physical spheres on either side of your nose. We all have them, and I can just about guarantee our readers NEVER think of those body parts as "orbs" or even "limpid pools of soulfulness" or "peepers". They think of them as "eyes". So:

His eyes were blue.
Her eyes welled up with tears.
He gazed into her emerald-green eyes and thought he saw his destiny.

Just remember:
Eyes as vision = gaze
Eyes as actual body parts = eyes.


This isn't a hard-and-fast rule, of course. Hardly anything is. But how much creativity do you want to waste on this oft-used term? Convey your meaning efficiently and use your beautiful prose on the dark trees against the white snow: Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

Oh, sorry. Shakespeare said that first. :)

Alicia