It was a dark and stormy night
… the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Many of you may already be familiar with this famous opening line by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. It is so famous, in fact, and its florid style so recognized, that there’s even an annual contest where people compete to write an opening line in the same vein. Love it or hate it, there’s no denying that it’s immediately recognizable.
But you can recognize more than “this is a line by Bulwer-Lytton” when you read that opener. Because of the way it’s written, you’ve already made assumptions about what’s coming next: what style of story it is, where and when it’s set, and you may even have some ideas about genre. Compare it to these lines by Ernest Hemingway, as famous for his narrative brevity as Bulwer-Lytton is for entangled commas:
Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.
What about your voice? Are you as straightforward as Hemingway or as purple as Bulwer-Lytton? And what are you telling a reader about your story or essay before they even get to the plot? While voice isn’t necessarily something you choose consciously when you sit down to write, this month we’re asking you to do just that.
Ready?
September’s assignment is: tell your story using a different voice (Maximum wordcount: 1,000)
The whys and hows:
In order to tell your story in a different voice, of course, you’re going to have to do three things:
- Identify the narrative voice you’re already using.
- Figure out the characteristics of a different voice that you want to use.
- Edit your story to put it in the new voice.
What do we mean by voice, anyway? There’s a detailed article about it over at Literary Devices, but in short, voice is how you tell your story (as opposed to what your story is). It incorporates everything from vocabulary choice to sentence length. The voice you use can tell the reader something about your story and characters that isn’t necessarily stated outright: locale, time period, occupations, social norms, etc. When you have a tight wordcount, voice is your friend, because it will let you work all those details in without having to be explicit. And as an author, playing around with voice can illuminate aspects of your characters’ personalities that you didn’t even know were there.
Voice can also be a fundamental characteristic of genre. Think about the last Western you read, or the last mystery story, or the last fantasy story. While all of these genres have specific plot elements in them, they also often have a common voice or style of storytelling. Readers have expectations for stories based on voice, and while it’s not wrong to play with or subvert these expectations, you should do it consciously rather than clumsily or because you don’t know any better.
Let’s take a look at some examples before we dive into the mechanics of the assignment, so you can see what we’re talking about.
Do you see what I hear?
Here are three examples of the same paragraph, written in very different voices. Pay attention: there will be a quiz at the end!
I.
It was hardly unusual for her to be late; and indeed, when Anna Verril rapped at the door and made to enter I had already marked a quarter past the hour on my clock. I straightened my jacket regardless, and had ony just settled my lapels when she swept into the room as though she owned it, clad in a red dress and carrying a bejeweled reticule which might, on a woman older or younger, been ridiculous but which she wore with the same simple assurance that let her take the only chair in the room. It was somewhat shabby–the chair, not her dress–but she paid it as little mind as she had paid the closed door with its placard warning passersby that the occupant was not to be found within.
II.
I knew she was trouble even before she banged past the “out to lunch” sign on my door and slid into the room hips-first. It wasn’t the new-car red of her dress and lipstick, or the little purse she clutched in one hand, although it coulda been either of those things, since the purse was too small to hide a checkbook and the dress wasn’t hiding anything else. But what clinched it for me was the way she thumped herself down on the threadbare chair I keep in the corner, grinning like she owned the place. Which, I guessed, she might: the Verrils were an old family, and their roots ran deep. I tugged at my jacket again to settle my nerves.
III.
I thought about complaining that Anna was late, but I guessed I’d better not. Fifteen minutes past the hour or no, she had a look in her eye as bright as the red of her dress, and as sparkly as the clutch she gestured with like it was an extension of her personality. Women like her don’t pay attention to “out to lunch” signs, that look said, any more than to “caution” or “yield” ones. She came from money–I’d looked the Verrils up before she arrived–but she sat in the old chair in the corner comfortably enough when I gestured to it, and without argument. Still, I was glad I’d taken the few extra minutes to touch myself up, make sure the lapels of my jacket were straight and the buttons in the right holes for once.
Quiz time! Now that you’ve read the examples, try to answer these questions about each one:
- Where is this story set? What city, country, planet, etc?
- What time period is this story set in?
- How do you picture the room the narrator is in?
- What is Anna wearing? Describe it thoroughly to yourself. (Is the dress long or short? What shade of red is it? What kind of shoes or other accessories is she likely wearing?)
- What assumptions did you make about Anna’s personal appearance?
- What is the narrator wearing? Describe it thoroughly to yourself.
- What assumptions did you make about the narrator’s gender, race, and class?
- What assumptions did you make about the narrator’s occupation?
Change is good
Those paragraphs were completely different – or were they? In each, the narrator sits in a shabby office with a broken down client chair and a sign on the door, waiting for a rich woman in a red dress to arrive. The plot of these stories is exactly the same. That’s what we mean when we say voice isn’t about plot. It’s about the way the plot is described.
Let’s check in with our assignment again. What were those steps?
Identify the voice you’re using.
Take a minute to identify the voice your story is already in, and its characteristics.
- Are the sentences brief and direct, long and complex, or a mixture of the two?
- Is the word choice modern or archaic?
- Is the story told entirely in one language, or in a mixture of languages (real or fantastic)?
- Is the narrative voice associated with a particular class or location?
- Get technical: does your narration always say “anyone” instead of “anybody”? Is the midday meal called lunch, dinner, midmeal, or something else?
- Who is narrating? Is it one of the characters (sorry, essayists, but you’re a character) or a third-person narrator?
Change the voice!
Give your story a makeover by editing the old voice out, and putting the new one in.
- Pick a new voice. Here are some ideas for how to select a new voice:
- Pick a voice that is more closely associated with the genre you write in
- Pick a voice that is closely associated with a completely different genre
- Pick a voice that is associated with a different time period
- Pick a voice that says different things about the background of the narrator
- WARNING: Avoid racialized tropes and stereotypes when writing in the voice of someone who has a different background from yourself. If you don’t know if you’ve accidentally done this, consider a sensitivity reader, or at least a beta reader with some real experience. And pay them, even if it’s just trading edits or getting them a coffee: looking for words that hurt you and explaining that they hurt and what else the author should do is a pretty significant amount of emotional labor.
- Pick a voice that uses different sentence or paragraph structure than the one you usually write in.
- If your prose is usually lush and descriptive, try paring it down—or vice versa. Think about the adjectives you’ve chosen, and switch them out for a different style.
- Identify the major characteristics of the new voice. You may want to make a style guide for yourself.
- Edit your story to change all the places where the narrative voices differ into the new voice.
- Why do we keep saying “narrative voice?” Because your characters should still all have their own, distinct voices. You don’t have to change the way your characters talk (unless the story is in first person) to change the narrative voice. In fact, looking at your narrative voice should give you opportunities to examine each character’s personal voice as well, and make sure that each one is right for the character.
A few tips and tricks we learned on the way:
- Don’t confuse voice with point of view. Point of view is simply whose perspective the story is told from (first person, third person limited, third person omniscient, etc.); voice is *how* that perspective (and personality) is conveyed.
- You don’t have to change your characters’ voices unless they’re the narrator! If you need to change their voices and word choices to fit into your new telling, go ahead, but make sure they all still have distinct voices that tell you about their background.
- Sometimes it helps to work backwards. Use the questions from the examples as a starting point. Think about how you would answer them for your own story, then change the answers and pick a new voice based on those answers.
- Stuck on a new voice? Think about a favorite author, or any writer whose style stands out for you. Try writing your story or essay as they might write it.
- Don’t just write, read. Read a few stories told in the new voice so that you can internalize it before trying to make your changes. Then instead of having to come up with everything from scratch, you can ask yourself “how would this sound in the story I just read?” Any time you catch yourself sliding into your old, familiar voice, go re-read something in the new voice so that you’re not as close to your own word choices.
Need a second pair of eyes to see what you might have missed? Don’t be afraid to ask for help in the Coffeehouse!
Good luck! If you feel like it, you might want to add a little bit to the end of your story to answer these questions, so that your readers can give more helpful feedback:
- What new voice did you try to use?
- What change did you have the hardest time making?
- What, if anything, do you expect the reader to assume about your story from the new voice?
- What was the most interesting thing you learned about your story while writing the new voice?
- What weren’t you able to preserve from the original story in order to write in the new voice? Do you miss it, or did it turn out to be nonessential?
Loading InLinkz ...Hindsight!
In case you missed it, here's a look back (see what we did there?) at the exercises in our 2020 workshop.
January: Write a story or essay in 1,000 words
February: Write the same piece in 100 words
March: Retain just 25 adjectives and adverbs from your original 1,000 word story
April: Write your story or essay using only dialogue
May: Write your story or essay from a different point of view
June: Write your story or essay in 2,000 words
July: Write your story or essay out of chronological order
August: Record your story or essay and transcribe it
September: Write your story or essay using a different voice
October: Write a poem using your story or essay as inspiration
November: Write a version of your story set in an alternate universe.
December: Write the final version of your story or essay in 1000 words.
About the author:
Christine Hanolsy is a (primarily) science fiction and fantasy writer who simply cannot resist a love story. She joined the YeahWrite team in 2014 as the microstory editor and stepped into the role of Editor-In-Chief in 2020. Christine was a 2015 BlogHer Voices of the Year award recipient and Community Keynote speaker for her YeahWrite essay, “Rights and Privileges.” Her short fiction has been published in a number of anthologies and periodicals and her creative nonfiction at Dead Housekeeping and in the Timberline Review. Outside of YeahWrite, Christine’s past roles have included Russian language scholar, composer, interpreter, and general cat herder. Find her online at christinehanolsy.com.
About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
