Check this out: https://soundcloud.com/weekendreadspodcast/wr7-the-man-on-the-stairs-by-miranda-july

“All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are
forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.” –James Baldwin

Voice

As writers, you’ll be dealing with two different voices: 1) your creative voice and 2) your narrator’s voice. Your creative voice is automatic. It’s your particular set of experiences that you bring to everything that you write. It’s what you’re interested in writing about. It’s how you put a story together. It’s how you cut the lines of a poem in half. It’s you, the author.

Your narrator’s voice lives in the text. In the words of Roland Barthes, there is no author. Therefore, as soon as you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, your literature is not interested in your voice. Instead, it’s interested in the voice of its narrator. To be specific, a narrator’s voice considers three things:

1. Diction: What words does your narrator use? Is your narrator someone who overuses the present tense? Is your narrator someone who mixes different languages? How does your narrator order words? Is there an accent that you want to get across to your readers? If so, how do you make this accent apparent? (look at Zora Neale Hurston’s works and Diaz’ works for great examples of narrators with accents)

2. Rhythm: Does your narrator use short sentences? Long sentences? Is there a rhyme scheme or internal rhyme in your narrator’s voice? Does your narrator use mutisyllable words to slow down the pacing of the story? Does your narrator often distract readers from the actual story at hand through fast-paced monosyllabic details?

Notice the difference in pacing. How does this impact your understanding of Hamlet? Another great way to understand rhythm is through remakes of songs. George Micheal’s Faith vs. Limp Bizkit’s “Faith”

3. Perspective: How does your narrator see the world? What details does your narrator pay attention to? What kind of filter does your narrator use when presenting other characters?

Watch Gone, Girl or read Wonder for more insight on perspective.

Beyond diction, rhythm, and perspective, voice is also an attempt to give sound and words to that which may have been previously silenced. When reading through various short stories, poems, plays, ask yourself this question: Does this character feel silenced? If so, about what? Who is silencing this character?

In the HBO series Girls, we have a 25 year old, Hannah, who is constantly using her voice to depict female empowerment. Word Choice: A lot of “I” and “we” and “us,” Rhythm: long winded monologues, Perspective: A fellow student who doesn’t appreciate Hannah’s (main character) short story is a student who has domestic violence issues and therefore can not handle her story.

The question should be asked: What does her voice reveal about her? But more importantly what does it reveal about privilege associated with race? What does it reveal about her own identity? She is frequently saying:

Do any of the characters in what we read feel similarly? Are they allowed to be the voice of their generation? When feeling stifled, many characters can present a voice that sounds aggressive, angry, resentful. Go beyond the impression they want to give, and figure out the CAUSE. The cause is almost ALWAYS a more interesting component than mere judgment of a character as “bitter.”