The Voice

On television, “The Voice” seeks to identify the next big singer in pop music.  The “auditions” proceed with the judges’ backs turned to the stage so that each singer’s physical appearance has no influence.  It’s all about the quality and sound of the voice.  In fiction, it’s all about the quality and sound of the voice, too.  Book reviews often comment on a writer’s voice — unique, fresh, original, new are some of the words used to describe it.  But, I mean really, what is “voice” in fiction?

It’s not style.  I think of style as the way a writer uses words, which words, and how a writer strings them together.  A nineteenth century writer’s style looks dense with words to us today until you consider that during that century, books offered entertainment for them and they had few sources of entertainment.  The novel represented their version of a soap opera, with many characters, situations, twists and turns, digressions and loops.  I sometimes think of J. R. R. Tolkien’s novels as the last nineteenth century novels even though he wrote them in the twentieth century.  Today, television and movies can influence writing style, breaking a story into scenes and creating an episodic or pointillistic effect.  Short attention spans and a plethora of entertainment options have also influenced contemporary writing style.  Every word has to count.  Minimal description.  No digressions, please.

So, if it’s not style, what is voice?  Is it one of those things you know when you read it but is otherwise elusive?  Or can it be defined?

When I think of voice, I think of first pages.  The first page of a novel must have the power to draw a reader into the story, especially readers who may only be curious and not particularly interested — think of someone browsing in a bookstore.  That power is voice.  Think of the last time you picked up a novel you knew nothing about, started reading, and hours later discovered that you’d lost track of time because of it.  That’s the power of voice.  Voice has confidence, energy, sound, rhythm and individuality that piques your interest.

Let’s take an example, the opening paragraph of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.  When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury.  His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh.  He couldn’t have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.”

What is it that pulls us into this paragraph?  Try reading it out loud.  What does it sound like?  To me, it sounds like an adult looking back on a childhood incident and how it affected someone close to her that she loves.  To her, his injury and how it healed is more important than the actual incident, and yet the mystery of the incident draws us in.  Her tone is one of sharing a confidence, something interesting about her family.  We can relate to that.  In the subsequent paragraphs, Lee delays any mention of the actual incident.  Instead, she goes on about how they argued about where it all began, i.e. what led up to the incident that injured Jem.  She unfolds the story in the way someone might tell a story at a family reunion, sitting in the kitchen late at night, telling someone, finally, how Jem broke his arm when he was thirteen.

Style contributes to voice.  However, you can have a piece of writing that is grammatically correct, with active verbs and colorful language, but a dead voice.  So, voice is not only about the writing, but also the speaking.  By that I mean, how people speak in different situations, especially when they are telling stories.  The voice needs to fit the story, the point of view, and behind that suitability stands a sense of confidence, a resonance of life and energy that comes from the writer.  I think of it as the connection the writer has with the writing, that connection breathing life into it.

A good resource for writing that devotes two chapters to voice is Peter Elbow’s Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process.  I’ve dragged out my copy recently because I’m thinking of applying “voice” to a series of essays I have in mind.  One of the things I’ve learned about writing fiction that I also apply to my nonfiction is reading the piece out loud.  It helps immeasurably to hear what the prose sounds like and that’s about voice.

Mind Your Character’s Manners

We live in a time in which civility is eroding and courtesy for others gets pushed into the past by cell phones and other electronics.  I’ve been thinking lately about how people treat each other not only over big things but also the small, mundane things.  How will they treat each other in the future?  Will courtesy still exist?  Or will it be an “every person for him/herself and the rest of America doesn’t matter” kind of future?

What about Europe in the future?  My experience of living in Europe showed me how Europeans value courtesy as a sign of basic respect for others.  I suspect that in 2011, that has changed, as it’s changed in America.  I began to think about how my characters in Perceval’s Secret and the other novels in the series treat each other.  Where have they learned how to behave in public and with others?  Whether a character behaves with good manners or not can reveal his character, his background, and give a glimpse of his values.

The America I envision in 2048-50 for the Perceval novels has an elite, wealthy class that also includes those in political power, and the workers who support and serve the rich but have little influence or voice.  The American Dream has disappeared, although it’s still given lip service by the wealthy to encourage the workers to dream and work hard for them.  The European Union has strengthened, in contrast, and become the bastion of democracy and democratic values.  Russia has descended into an autocracy.  China has emerged as the world’s new superpower and the leader of a coalition of Asian countries.  America still wields economic influence but not political.  The global market continues to be a fragile construction, subject to fluctuations often tied to America playing fast and loose with securities and investments.

When I think of Europeans in this future, I think of people who value individuality as well as community, and who would also value civil discourse and behavior.  They value people over money.  Courtesy would influence their behavior toward others, and the American Elite would interpret it as either a weakness of living in the past or a facade hiding ulterior motives.  The American Elite value money over people.

Evan Quinn, as a worker, has grown up within a community of artists and other workers.  His parents valued freedom, democracy and the original Constitution, and saw money as a necessary evil. They would have taught Evan to value people over money.  I see Evan as being a polite person who treats others with courtesy and respect.  But he’s quite familiar with the American Elite, their demanding ways, their view of workers as being inferior, and their efforts to hide their dependence on them.  They demand to be treated with deference and respect but do not return it when dealing with workers.

Evan’s European experience ends up affirming his upbringing as a courteous person.  Because of his American experience, though, he will make assumptions about discourteous people and people in authority.  I think he responds to them with a mixture of fear and anger.  To him, being rude equals disrespectful treatment.

How a character behaves in public and how he treats others in both public and private reveals much about his beliefs, values and background.  It also reveals much about the society in which he lives, or used to live.  Watch your characters’ manners.  Courtesy can be an important aspect of human behavior…..

Ah, the Writing Life!

This morning, as I thought about what I would write here today, I was washing my face and marveling how the expensive soap had dried out my skin but the cheap moisturizing soap keeps it soft and supple so I don’t need to use expensive moisturizer also made and sold by the expensive soap’s company, and suddenly my mind changed channels to a writing problem I’d been mulling over for weeks.  It’s in Perceval’s Secret, chapter 21 and I’m almost there with the revision work.

The problem concerned Evan Quinn’s reaction to the scene before.  I realized that I’d originally written his reaction more like I would have reacted, not him.  Wow.  With that thought, the solution rushed into my mind.  Evan would not spend one second on introspection, on remembering the past, but storm out of the building, a maelstrom of rage.

This solution changed how the next scene played out but in an extraordinarily powerful way — even more powerful than how I’d originally conceived the two scenes.

After I finished washing my face and dressing, I wrote notes about the solution and subsequent changes that I’ll need to make when I work on that chapter for the novel revision.

Creativity and inspiration happen anywhere, often when you’re doing something else and thinking about something totally unrelated.  Be open to it and it will happen…..

 

Property and Ownership Rights

You own a house and the ground it sits on.  You built this house from the foundation up yourself, using your own design, and besides the price you paid for the land, building permits and the building materials, you’ve also sunk a lot of your hard-earned cash into finishing it,  landscaping the property and putting your own creative identity on it.  As the owner, you can choose who you let in the front door, who you invite for dinner, and who you’d allow to stay in the guest room for an extended visit.

You decide that rather than live in it yourself, you want to rent the house out.  You run an ad, show it to one family after another until one decides they want to live there.  You present them with a lease that specifies all the terms and conditions of their residency in your house and how much it will cost them to live there.  But they inform you that they shouldn’t have to pay anything to live there because the house is there, available, and they want it.  It’s not their problem that the utilities need to be paid, the loans you took out need to be repaid, or the taxes need to be paid.

I have built stories from the foundation up with a lot of time and hard work.  The law says that as an original work of my creation, I own it.  I own all the property rights connected to it.  I have also spent money to build those stories for materials like printer ink and paper, internet usage, power usage, photocopy charges, and postage charges to submit them to publications for people to read and to recoup my expenses or earn a living.

The editors understand that if they want to publish the stories, they are buying the license to publish them in their magazines, i.e. first serial rights.  If I collect the stories into a book and a publisher wants to publish it, the publisher would buy North American or English language rights — or the license — to publish it.  As part of the license agreement, they pay me for the use of my stories, my intellectual property.  As owner of this intellectual property, I decide how it is used by what rights I sell.  According to law, my intellectual property cannot be used without the user purchasing a license to use it.

Intellectual property includes novels, short stories, nonfiction works, collections, plays, screenplays, movies, musicals, opera, classical music, pop music, songs, poetry, drawings, paintings, photography and sculpture.  It covers all the product of creative expression.  The law that covers intellectual property is copyright law.  Each country has its domestic copyright law and the Berne Convention covers international intellectual property law.

Ownership for the life of the creator isn’t difficult to understand.  Where things start to become murky for people is after the creator/owner dies.  U. S. law specifies that the copyright is in effect for a certain period after the creator/owner dies, when his or her heirs can renew the copyright for another specific period.  Right now, I think the periods are each 70 years.  After that, the work loses its copyright protection and goes into the public domain, which means anyone can use it without having to buy a license.

Why am I writing about this?  I think copyright is a good thing and protects a creator’s right of ownership for the intellectual property the creator has created.  The owner has the right to benefit from what he or she has created.  What about the creator’s heirs?  I don’t feel as strongly about that because the heirs were not the people who created the intellectual property.  They benefit from however the owner has benefited, if the owner passes it on as inheritance.  I think the way the law stands now is just fine.

So, internet users who use photos, artwork, music and/or any other intellectual property covered by copyright without paying for the right (licensing) to use it are breaking the law.  This is the reason downloading music for free from file-sharing websites is illegal, the reason we have online music stores like iTunes.

Is it a pain to buy a license to use intellectual property?  Not really.  With the internet, it’s fairly easy to find the copyright owner.  Then it’s a matter of negotiating the price, duration and any other terms and conditions for the license.  If you don’t have the money, you won’t be able to buy the license.

An entire segment of the population depends on earning money from intellectual property licenses in order to live, just like other people depend on their paychecks.  So before copying something from a website to use on a blog or in an e-mail, be sure to check to see if you can use it without the copyright holder’s permission or a license…..