Multiple novel voices

Posted on April 22, 2010 by James Ashman

Each novel should have its own voice.

What is a voice? To put it simply, style. Compare these three passages from three different books, all written by me.

First, a for-fun book:
Kenji felt a twinge of pride arising in the pit of his stomach. Age twelve, second year of middle school, seventh grade. Dressed in a white shirt and dark pants, the school’s uniform. In his mind, he was vastly more mature than his sixth grade self, and it was time for him to take the first step in embracing his maturity. For years, this particular act had not occurred to be of any importance. But a seventh grade boy had to be conscious of his looks. And so, he un-tucked his shirt and embraced age twelve.

Second, a casual book written in a serious setting:
Alquin held his glass faithfully, never sipping too much, never getting a refill. He’d walk around for a moment, catch the eye of an important person, walk over, and then talk with them for a bit. It was all general, all part of the formality of the situation. On one side of the great room sat the host, one of the great admirals of the empire. He sat in a massive chair adorned with silver and jade. Its unmoving majesty matched the solid presence that the admiral projected.

And third, a very out-there, no rules, do what I want kind of project:
B felt pangs of confusion at seeing the false face every morning, grinning from ear to ear and still looking perfect. How it was even possible to have such a ridiculously large smile and yet still look gorgeous was a paradox B wasn’t willing to dive into. She has circled that black hole before, and decided that it was actually for the best, as the living this girl made more than made up for the slight possibility that her smile may one day create a singularity that engulfs the world.

As I read each of them, I know that they are something written by me. But would an outsider? Maybe, but the voice of each book is different, even if each is from the same author.

When writing the first one, I feel like playing. It should be playful, fast-paced, and fun to both write and read. If a thought comes, it goes in right away. It’s almost like impulse writing.

The second was with the thought of pretentiousness. The entire work feels a little high-brow, but it isn’t. I wrote it with the intention of it being somewhat boring. I’m not sure I did a good job on that point, since I can read it without sleeping, but the overall work has this voice that jumps in pitch from action to boredom to serious. But it’s always the same voice. It’s never like the playful voice of the first. Because the second book was written with the thought of “serious”, which is the irony of the matter. Just to clarify, I wrote it as a parody of serious at first.

And the third was the toughest to pick a passage from. The third is filled with narration about the world and people in it, and the main character’s observations. It’s a sci-fi, somewhat cyberpunk work. And its voice is both hard yet easy to write in. It is over-the-top. Every bit of it is. It’s inspiried by the cyberpunk of William Gibson, Stephenson, and all the rest from that genre. It seems more laid back, and that’s about the closest I can describe the feeling it takes to write it.

Overall, what has been the point of this? Well, when working on several different novels of separate genres or styles, the voice has to change. Something like The Great Gatsby couldn’t be written with the voice of The Scarlett Letter, and vice versa. It just wouldn’t work. My way is to associate a feeling and a mindset with each one. “Serious” gets its own style. “Happy” makes its debut everywhere, but isn’t a dominant trait. “Casual” comes close to the style I blog in, since that is essentially freeform. Anything written when that word is the dominant feeling has a very earthy, easy feel to it. Then there is tech-driven, poetic, romantic, etc. Once you associate a novel with a feeling or style that you can identify, it is a simple matter to work on multiple works at once. You aren’t changing your style, your just writing with the appropriate feeling for this particular work.
And of course, someone who is a single-genre writer can ignore this. Pigeonholing doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It lets your readers know exactly what they are getting ahead of time. That’s extremely important, and something to be discussed later.

805 words that could have been used in three novels.

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Revise, revise, revise; the self-publisher’s constancy

Posted on April 21, 2010 by James Ashman

As I edit and revise Dangerous Rainbows, I noticed a couple of odd mistakes that weren’t picked up by MS Word. Love it or hate it, MS Word is extremely good for doing the final revisions to a book. I have the spelling, grammar, and style checking custom set to some very strict guidelines, but every so often it gives questionable results.

Or so I thought. And I spoke and wrote too soon. It caught the mistake on my main computer. It was a separate computer with different settings that didn’t catch the mistake.

So, always do a line by line edit if you’re self-publishing. Several times. There should be one done once the book is finished. Then take a break, and then get the formatting of the book ready. Once it’s formatted and ready for printing, that’s when I usually do the first “final draft” edit. Several errors are usually caught and fixed. Once that’s done, skim over it to make sure the formatting is still correct, and then use a standard spell-checker. Let it check grammar and style as well. Granted, it will peg dialog all over the place, but just keep ignoring those. Sometimes something small, like an extra period or other error will appear in the narration you would have never caught or thought to fix before.

It’s not done. That’s where I stumbled and just decided to print off a proof copy and read a physical book, marking it with marker and sticky notes for edits that still need to be done. I did that for The Lupine Prince and went through four copies like that. The cost was still minimal, but its not something I’m going to do again. After Dangerous Rainbows, that is. Three proof copies. But the third should be fine. I’m only up to the second and am now taking my own advice. To continue: Re-edit the document, line by line, in MS word. Twice over at least, if there are no errors found the second time. Then comes the light reading. Read the book itself just like a book, not like an editor. It’s surprising how many errors you can find when you’re not looking for them. If none are found even after the line edit and the casual read, print off a proof! And then read it when it arrives. Same thing, line by line editing. This isn’t a casual read, this is a strict one. It has to be perfect. I wouldn’t trust it to be perfect the first time, so read it twice if so. Yes, that will take a lot of time. Spending every moment reading a book you’ve probably read ten times already, at least 4 of those times being “final” versions, is a pain.

But if your book is good, it should still be fine to read. And that’s the best thing I’ve discovered. Of course, the author is biased toward their own work. But we all get sick of even our favorite things. Being able to stand your own work, time and time again, through the pain of errors and revision, means something. It means you’ve written something you would actually read. Congratulations. Now make sure you revise it, again. That’s the one constant part of doing everything yourself.

554 words that I could have used in a novel.

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There is no war

Posted on April 19, 2010 by James Ashman

I keep hearing about ebook wars. Or kindle versus iPad wars, specifically. Why can’t we all just work together? Kindle is.

Kindle is no longer a physical device. It’s a platform. It’s Amazon’s gateway to ebooks. Much like iTunes is a gateway to music, or the App store to… apps.

Read this. Amazon created the problem of a proprietry reading device. Apple has done exactly the same thing, a propriety computer. Amazon has stuck with one point: selling books. The kindle was just a way of getting more people to read, more people to buy books. Sure, the hardware is nice, but after manufacturing costs, it really isn’t as good as getting someone to buy a massive amount of books. The device helped them buy more. Apple gets a similar benefit, but they came to that benefit in a separate way. They created a device first, and then got people to buy apps. Both methods work, as long as your creating an addition to an already-existing and desired product.

But then Amazon did something smart. They created apps. They created apps for multiple appliances. And they created a program for PCs. And they created a program for Macs. They are everywhere. If you want to read an ebook on any device, you can, unless you purchased a non-amazon compatible reader that was created in opposition to the Kindle’s proprietary format. Yes, the Sony reader is nice. But how many places can you read the books you buy on it? And how many places can you buy the books in Apple’s ibooks? And how many places can you read the books you bought on Amazon. Only the latter is everywhere.

There isn’t a war. Because the minute everyone wanted to war, Amazon infiltrated. That was smart. Love them or hate them. they’ve done the most “open” thing by being able to be read everywhere.

Aren’t PDFs Adobe’s creation? Isn’t that format the most popular, widespread, easiest to create (pdfcreator is amazing, I use it daily at work, no joke), and useful formats around? It sure beats .txt, even though that can work everywhere.

There is no war. It’s all marketing. Yes, I wish everything I bought on Amazon worked everywhere, even on a separate ereader. But it looks like anything other than that will support it. That’s great. Even if it is propriety. Bravo.

402 words I could have used to write a novel.

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The Absolute Beauty of Pandora Radio

Posted on April 17, 2010 by James Ashman

I listen to Pandora constantly. At work, it is a saving grace. But, for some reason, I’ve run across people who prefer other services that only play “the music I tell it to play.”

They are entitled to their opinion. But after turning to Pandora, I cannot endorse anything else. It’s simply too good. Let me give an example.

I rarely buy music. iTunes is something I interact with daily, but I’ve never actually bought anything off it. Record stores? Never. The majority of my music always came from the radio, and sometimes hearing live performances. But I’ve bought one CD from a record store 6 years ago. Now, jumping to a different point in the story…

On Pandora I have a radio station mix of two groups I enjoy, Flogging Molly and The Decemberists. As Pandora plays, I tell it which songs it plays I especially like. After a week of using that radio station mix, I was surprised to hear a song I hadn’t heard in a while. I enjoyed it, but forgot exactly who it was. When I checked the screen, I was shocked. It was Modest Mouse. It was from the CD I had bought 6 years ago in a record store. The only one I’ve bought, ever, in my entire life. Pandora had figured out I liked their music, before I ever told it.

That, my friends, is the brilliance of Pandora. Humans really are logical creatures, whether we want to admit it or not. Pandora is far from perfect, but it’s a machine that knows from a logical interpretation, what you like.

In addition, the number of new artists that I’ve discovered and absolutely love through them is boundless. It’s made me actually consider buying another CD, although now there are too many I’d want to ever be practical. Pandora pays the music industry a fee for each listener, each song they play. I cost Pandora money. I’m not much of a consumer, so the ads they play to make a semblance of profit don’t really affect me. But this model of music discovery is so incredible, that Pandora should really be the ones paid to play the record companies’ music. They’ve made me reconsider. That’s something the music industry has never been able to do on its own.

392 words that should have been devoted to a novel.

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Discovering original thoughts aren’t original

Posted on April 16, 2010 by James Ashman

Nicole Humphrey wonders how many plots exist. I agree that it’s dependent on various circumstances, but it seems strange to think that there is a limited number.

It may be the case that there is only a limited number of plots. Humans are rather logical, even if that isn’t constant. But instead of debating this, I’d rather point to a personal experience.

When writing The Lupine Prince, I was avoiding outside influences. The stuff I normally read and watch is foreign, and those works had the largest influence. Since none of them have an American equivalent, as far as I know (which could eventually be wrong), I wrote something different. But I wrote it just typical enough, in my opinion, to be familiar.

My original flash of inspiration was chapter 3. I saw it, and from it sprung the rest of the book. The central scene, the entire starting point of the entire Together with Silver series, is seeing Va’il sucked into a whirlpool in a lake. That was the inspiration.

After I published it, I was watching a Chinese drama, translated of course. And in that drama, it had an extremely similar scene. Including the underground cave, the number of people involved, etc. Now, I know a whirlpool isn’t exactly unique. I know my ideas weren’t very unique as a whole. My book is about the story, whether or not the individual elements are original don’t matter for a writer. But to see an extremely similar scene in something I had never heard of, and had never even been outside its country of origin, was an eye-opener. It proves something.

I do acknowledge this isn’t the greatest example. Sure, someone could point out a story where some element has never been repeated. That isn’t my point. I consume media just like everyone else. I’m human like everyone else. And together, we show that we can think of the same ideas at different times without ever meeting each other.

Being unique is rather difficult when there are 6 billion people. Really, that number is taken for granted. Its an enormous, almost astronomical number, that we don’t even consider since it’s matter of fact. But as writers, there is something good in that. Not all of those 6 billion are looking to publish a book or write anything. Not all will have the same expression, the same flow of ideas. The same way a plot expands.

The key is to realize that our ideas may seem to be original when we are the only ones thinking of them, but to be properly accepted they need to be expressed well. That’s the great thing about being human. We don’t just consume the best and then stop consuming. If we like thrillers, we read thrillers of all kind. Like romance? Read romance of all kinds. There aren’t bests. There are ones we like and those we don’t. As readers, we need to constantly be reading new material. As writers, we have a responsibility to provide material. The plot doesn’t have to be new. In fact, it is best if it’s well-worn. It just needs to be done well, in our voice. 112 Plots? Maybe. But 112 plots used by 1 writer is still an infinite, unending number of possibilities.

549 words I could have used to write a novel.

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