Finding the correct voice for the story

Image by steve_a_johnson from Pixabay

It has been a busy month writing wise, seeing me start a fifth version of my new novel The Vote. The first version was a sci-fi dystopian version told from first person. V2 shifted perspective to third person, but still keeping it in the dystopian setting. As I wrote in a previous post I found I needed to start again having perhaps overwritten the outline (spoiler: it was an 18K word document). The third and fourth versions saw me bring the story back to modern day, first in 3rd person, then in first person but it still wasn't gelling.

And it was all down to not having found the right voice for the story yet. So let's talk about that a little.

First Person

This sounds like it would be easy to write. You're writing as the narrator with all their thoughts and beliefs, desires and dreams right there on the surface. I stepped out into the rain, savouring the sensation of the droplets as they fell from a dark sky filled with thunderclouds. This creates a very personal, intimate experience but the scope is very narrow - you're only looking through the eyes of this one character The reader (and the writer) therefore only knows what that person is thinking and feeling through the entire story.

Second Person

I've only ever read one novel written in second person and strangely enough it's one of my favourite books. My wife bought me a first edition for a past birthday - Bright Lights, Big City. The perspective is centred around the "you" pronoun. You step out into the rain, glancing briefly at the sky as if daring it to shout at you with thunder. This makes the reader feel like they are part of the story, that the writer was writing about them.

Third Person Limited

Often called "close third" allows the writer/reader to be inside one character, using the "he/she/they" pronouns. He stood in the rain, face turned to the clouds, eyes closed, feeling his face grow wet and hearing the thunder which rumbled with such intensity he could feel it in his bones. You can jump between characters, to explore elements of the story from other perspectives, each one moving the story forward.

Third Person Omniscient

Is just the same as above except the narrator knows more than the character, and sometimes lets little details slip. He stood in the rain, face turned to the clouds, eyes closed, feeling his face grow wet and hearing the thunder which rumbled with such intensity he could feel it in his bones. He didn't know the thunder he could hear was actually explosions as the attack had begun. This is basically the "god's-eye view" of the story.

So those are the different voices you can use when crafting a story, and I've been switching between 1st and 3rd person (with a couple of smatterings of omniscient) on this new book, not really feeling settled yet.

But I think I've found my peace with it now - no pun intended. 

The story is actually very large in scope - it affects the entire planet - but we are seeing it from a limited number of characters perspectives. For the dystopian version, the first person POV worked as it was an intimate look at marriage, relationships and the divisive nature of politics. That was the version that I outlined to death, going so far as chapter beats for all four books in the series.

I'm now writing the fifth version - and the one I'll be sticking with (I think) - which is 3rd person as it allows me to take a break from writing about one character and go explore with another. It was all going to be written from the POV of the main character, David, a writer who hides in the local library working on his novel when his wife thinks he's at work (he lost the job weeks ago). I had him meet a couple of characters and they are now breaking away, and the original plan was just keep following David home, but I really want to see what happens to the other two characters next, and I can't do that in 1st person.

This is why finding the correct voice for the story you are telling is important, and it can take many attempts, false starts and in my case over 70'000 words written, to realise just what is important and vital to the story and how you want it to be told.

And that's okay. It's all part of the fun of making shit up.

Allowing yourself to start again

Two or three months ago I started writing the overview and outline for my next novel. I'd had the idea for many years, even writing a few pages of it as a screenplay, but now after finishing and releasing the fourth Louise Miller crime novel, 'TIL IT BLEEDS, I wanted to write something other than gritty historical Yorkshire crime. Out of all my ideas, The Vote was the one that shouted the most to be heard.

So I started on an overview which quickly morphed from the original idea into something even larger in scope (and the original idea is quite a big one already). It changed from a modern setting into a near-future dystopian one, which in turn led me to creating an entire world-building bible complete with timeline, explanation of the new world system, technologies and more. So much more.

The knock on effect of this 12 page, 3000 word document was a much more detailed outline of the novel than I've ever done before. For the Louise Miller books, each one had a 1-3 page outline, with bullet points for each chapter; perhaps a sentence or two. This version of The Vote had 46 pages and over 18'000 words with each chapter being broken down into every story beat. I also did this for book 2 in what had now become a four book series. Even more, I had rough outlines for a further two more series all set within what I had now called The Codex Universe; 10 books altogether. Each with their own outlines.

I then started writing the first draft. If you've been checking in, you'll have seen the word count tracker rising steadily over the last month, getting up to 15'000 words - I've actually written a lot more than that, closer to 25'000. At first I was loving it, really enjoying getting the words down each day, aiming for 750 clean new words. Most times I got a lot more than that.

But pretty soon after starting, I found myself quite bored. I'd outlined the book so detailed that in my mind, I'd already written the whole thing. I felt there were no little avenues to go exploring, no secrets to unearth. It felt stale as well as slightly forced. Lucy had read some of it and thought it was really good but I just wasn't feeling it. I tried to get some inspiration by reading the last two original Hunger Games books as well as Station Eleven by Emily St. John, but that didn't work either.

So I stopped writing. I moved all the outlines, world bible and drafts to a new folder and saved it all away. Then I cracked open a new word document to write the original pitch for the story, which is:

THE VOTE: What if an alien vessel suddenly appeared over Long Eaton? What if all power, social structure and leadership failed? How would people react? What would be the fallout of such an arrival? And then, what if they demanded that the world give up half its population or face extinction and were given a 90 day countdown to decide by an electronic Vote. How would you decide? How would I?

I gave myself to the end of December to write the book, and have gone with a 1500 word a day target, allowing me time to write around my busy daily schedule, while at the same time ensuring I can get good, clean words down each day.

It's okay to start again, if not entirely from scratch, but back to the original idea. Sometimes you have to go several steps forward on a project only to have to scootch back a long ways to get it right. What I have written in the dystopian draft can be used in some way in the new draft. Certain names of characters and locations for instance will be re-used but tweaked slightly, or gone at from a different angle.

The main character, David Holt, is still a novelist. His wife is still Sarah and their two kids, Leo and Maya are still adorable. What I'm not doing is fully fleshing out the story this time. I know the beginning; I know the ending - that has never changed. I'm not going to bullet point the chapters just yet, but I have made a few notes for chapter 1.

This new draft already has 1000 words written and I feel a lot happier with them. That's not to say things may change again, but I'm hoping I'm on the right track this time.

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There was no blog post this week, but I did update the site, along with a few teasers for the new book I am writing.

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