Every fiction writer has to find a particular ‘voice’ for his or her story. There may be several ‘voices’ in the book (most often carried in the dialogue) but there is usually one prevailing voice that carries the narrative.
(An exception that proves the rule: I have just written a short story that alternates between two prevailing voices, but that is fairly unusual.)
More often than not, the ‘voice’ comes from the central character or protagonist of the story. That is especially true (or especially noticeable) if the novel is written in the first person; usually narrated by the central character. Not only do we understand the story is to be told by that character, but is also to be seen through their eyes. (Which can make it awkward when it comes to key scenes where they may not be around, or if it strains credulity that they are around – read Wuthering Heights for some particularly awkward examples.)
But a story that is written in the third person will also usually have a prevailing voice, either one of the characters or a consistent ‘authorial’ voice.
I give myself a challenge with the material I write, because I like to experiment with different genres and different ways of telling stories. So my ‘writer’s voice’ is always changing.
I want to illustrate this by extracts from three very different books of mine. Including the extracts could make this post excessively long, so I have used a show/hide button for each one. If you would like to read or even glance at the extract just click the button and it will appear - click again to hide it. Or you can skip altogether if you prefer.
These stories are written from the point of view of a junior school boy growing up in a northern mining town in the late 1950s. Here's a further ‘voice’ complication: the stories actually come from the narrative voice of a grown man remembering his childhood emotions and experiences. As I'm writing this post on November 5th I have chosen an appropriately seasonal extract.
Extract from Uncle Barney’s Box
My least favourite firework of all time was the Golden Rain. The most frustrating was the Catherine Wheel. The best was what we called the Jumpy Jack.
The Golden Rain was just a tiny tube you stuck in the ground. When you put a match to it all that happened was a feeble shower of sparks would come out about six inches high. You kept expecting it to do summat else, but it never did. This shower just went on and on then fizzled out.
When we were buying fireworks we’d never pick Golden Rain or Silver Fountain which was the same thing only with different colour sparks. But they’d always be in those two and sixpenny boxes you could get that were already made up.
We’d never buy them. Apart from the measly fireworks inside they generally had pictures on the box of posh-looking kids with school caps and ties looking all rosy-cheeked and having a jolly good time. They must have been easy pleased. Some of the boxes even said ‘No bangers’ like it was a recommendation. Why would you buy a box of fireworks with no bangers?
We always got ours from Rodway’s or Moore’s where they were loose and you could pick what you wanted. Anyway we hardly ever had as much as half a dollar at one time so we bought just a few pennies’ worth here and there to keep under the bed ready for Bonfire Night. Except for bangers of course, which we set off whenever we could.
We loved rockets, Roman Candles, Aerial Bombs and Jumpy Jacks. We always bought a couple of Catherine Wheels hoping at least one would work properly when we pinned it to the clothes prop, lit it and gave it a turn to start it off. There was nowt better than a Catherine Wheel whizzing round with the colours changing and the sparks whooshing out the tail, but mostly they either hung there without spinning while the sparks fizzed onto the ground or they dropped off the clothes prop altogether and burned out in the weeds.
Jumpy Jacks, though, were fantastic. They were stubby and squiggly. You lit the fuse at one end and every few seconds the fizzer would bang and jump all over the place. You never knew where it was going so you could never really get out of the way of it. The best fireworks are the ones that scare you and the ones where you don’t know what’s going to happen next. That’s why Jumpy Jacks were great.
The best Bonfire Night we ever had was when Uncle Barney from Yorkshire won the pools. It wasn’t a fortune, not like that Viv Nicholson woman a couple of years later who said she was going to spend, spend, spend and finished up in the Sunday papers. I suppose his win was less than a hundred pounds but we didn’t know a thing about it until this huge parcel arrived.
As far as I can remember we’d never had a parcel through the post before, not even Mam and Dad. Never a parcel and never a telegram. And this one’s not even addressed to them, it’s addressed to me and Malcolm and our little sister Jeannie.
We rip the paper off like it’s Christmas and find a big cardboard box underneath with ‘Fairy Snow’ and the words ‘whiteness plus mildness’ half covered over with brown tape. Mal cuts through the tape with his pocket knife and opens up the box.
There’s a note from Uncle Barney but we hardly notice it. We’re busy drooling over the best stash of fireworks we’ve ever set our eyes on. Spangled Star Bombs, Traffic Lights, Spaceships, Mount Vesuvius, Screamers, Jack in the Box… There are bigger rockets and Roman Candles than we could ever afford, a Triangle Wheel and a Mine of Serpents you’d need two hands to carry. Plenty of bangers and Jumpy Jacks. But no Golden Rains. Uncle Barney knew how to buy fireworks.
Here are some points to note about the 'voice' I use for this extract: it is written in the first person (the same voice is used for all the stories in this collection}; the past tense is used for what we might term 'the set-up' and switches to present tense for describing the action, which should provide more immediacy for the reader; the vocabulary generally avoids dialect terms, except for the use of the odd word, phrase, filler or shortened form (that say ‘North East’ and ‘child’) to colour the ‘voice’ in the narrative as well as the dialogue; all these complexities of voice are designed to work naturally on the audience's inner ear even in silent reading. On this last point, I do a lot of public readings of my work, and this helps to assure me that the 'voice' is coming through, as do the read-alouds I sometimes offer to myself as part of the writing process.
BOOK TWO: MR STEPHENSON’S REGRET
(finished, but not yet published)
This is a historical novel about the railway pioneers George and Robert Stephenson. It is written in the past tense and in the third person, but the prevailing ‘voice’ throughout the novel is Robert (very occasionally and in specific circumstances the 'voice' shifts, along with the point of view, to one of the other characters). A challenge I gave myself in this book, in trying to provide a sense of the times, was to use only vocabulary that was available at the time, though I have tried not to be faux-Georgian or faux-Victorian.
Briefly the context of this extract is: Robert Stephenson, George’s son, is only 19 here. He is in London, shortly before he leaves to go to South America (early 1820s). He has met a fairly well-off and well-educated but decidedly rakish chap called Travis, who is about to introduce him to the delights of an opium den run by a Mr Chung. (It’s a historical fact that Robert smoked opium for most of his adulthood.)
Extract from Mr Stephenson’s Regret
Travis turned off the street through a narrow arch, and Robert, after only a moment’s hesitation, followed him into near-darkness.
‘Take care with these steps,’ Travis warned, which was as well because they were very uneven and treacherous.
At the bottom of the steps a single guttering candle, jammed into a crevice, dimly revealed a doorway screened only by thick matting, which was kept there by heavy stones laid across the low roof. Travis pushed through, calling, ‘Customers, Chung.’
Robert, too, ducked under the rug, to have his nostrils assaulted by a powerful sweet and sickly smell. It was as if some sort of sugary mixture had been burnt on the stove. This idea was reinforced by the fug of smoke or fumes within, through which a stunted figure was emerging - not Mr Chung as this was a female, a child not more than ten years old, who carried a candle to guide them into the room, relieving each man first of a shilling.
When Robert’s eyes adjusted to the interior he saw an assortment of low divans and mattresses littering the floor, with the spaces between them covered in faded oriental rugs. A man was lying on a mattress next to the wall, apparently asleep, with what looked like a wooden flute fallen across his chest. At first Robert thought the sleeper was the only occupant, then he noticed another man reclining in a hammock slung under the blackened ceiling in the far corner.
The girl moved to a mean fireplace on the other side of the room and knelt to resume the task that had been interrupted by the arrival of the latest visitors, stirring a pot that simmered on the hot coals. Robert was wondering where Mr Chung could be, when he appeared suddenly before them, presumably from some recess at the back, bowing his head towards his finger-tips in the servile manner that orientals often adopted in the presence of white men. He was every inch (though not many of these) the archetypal Chinese peasant, from his soft skull cap to his straw shoes.
‘New man for you here, Chung,’ said Travis. ‘Give him your best pipe.’
The Chinaman nodded vigorously and scurried back to his alcove to search among his smoking tools for his finest offering, though Robert was very doubtful of what he was finally given: a long yellow bamboo that did indeed look like a flute except for the cup of dark baked clay that fitted into a spigot hole at the end. It was ancient, stained with the draw and spittle of many years’ smoking. Travis laughed at Robert’s involuntary grimace.
‘Believe me, friend, there’s more satisfaction to be had in a ripe, well-saturated instrument, seasoned over the years by the best opium, than any virgin pipe, however elegantly carved.’
Chung, meanwhile, had taken possession of two little gallipots, filled by the servant girl from the sediment at the bottom of her cooking pot. This stuff, which looked like thin treacle, was the source of the burnt sugar smell, mixed with the aroma of laudanum. Chung used an iron bodkin, dipping the tip of it into the gallipot then holding it to the flame of an oil lamp until it almost hardened. He repeated the process several times until he had gathered a globule about the size of lead shot, which he dropped into the bowl of Robert’s pipe. Travis demonstrated how to light the pipe from the lamp flame, and the young man was ready for his initiation into opium-smoking.
He perched on one of the low divans, too restrained to lie down, so that his knees stuck out awkwardly either side of the long pipe. There was no mouthpiece; the stem was sheared off, leaving a hole to suck at, which Robert did tentatively at first, then harder so the black smoke rose too quick up the stem, making him cough horribly.
‘Don’t waste it,’ said Travis, who was stretched out on a mattress next to his feet with his own pipe.
Robert tried to be more economical with his breathing, sucking then expelling the smoke gently through his nostrils. The pipe gurgled. Robert could feel the veins in his forehead thickening, and his face taking on a warm glow. Gradually the sensation of warmth entered his brain, lulling him into a reverie that had no images but pleasant patterns swirling around him. He felt at one with this sensation, and remote from it, a spectator and a participant. By intervals the patterns quickened in a way that captivated him. He began to discern shapes he could only describe to himself as exotic; shapes with no edges, undulations merely. He was drawn into a weightless journey that ended when the patterns opened into a place of perfect serenity. Robert let the pipe fall and relaxed full length on the couch, giving himself up to the tranquillity that underlaid exquisite sleep.
Here are some points to note about the 'voice' I use for this extract: the writing is in the third person, but the reader experiences the scene through the mind and eyes of Robert; past tense is used throughout, but here it might be described as active past tense as the action seems to unfold more or less in real time (no historical summary in this extract); in contrast to the first extract, here we have sentence structure which is much more formal and standardised, even in dialogue; the long, flowing descriptive sentences near the end of the extract are there to aid the sense of Robert's dreaminess.
Another contrast in style, this is my newly-published novel, a contemporary thriller set in an unnamed city in the North East of England. It is written in the first person and mostly in the present tense. The 'voice’ of 11:59 is the central protagonist, Marc Niven, an educated Northerner who is a late night phone-in host on a local commercial radio station.
My challenge in this book was to find a style and language that not only fitted the character, but was appropriate for a story that reaches at times into the city’s underworld. Elsewhere in the novel there are some fairly graphic sex scenes, there are some pretty nasty characters, and (without being gratuitous) the language and attitudes had to fit. (Perhaps appropriately this posting is written in the month that sees the 50th anniversary of the landmark trial of Penguin Books for publishing the allegedly obscene Lady Chatterley's Lover, but relax, there is nothing shocking in the extracts I've chosen.
I am going to provide two extracts from 11:59. First, the opening couple of pages, set in the studio just before midnight. The ‘inciting incident’ occurs here; watch out for it. We also begin to get the measure of the type of character Marc is, or at least we think we do.
Extract I from 11:59: The Opening Scene
Ambient noise on the talkback line, then Marni’s words come through.
“IRN’s standing by.”
I smile at her through the glass and she presses slender fingers briefly to her throat, acknowledging the catch in her voice. Still getting used to the speaking parts. I wink and glance at the studio clock as I ride forward on the fader to the mike.
“Exactly ninety seconds to midnight and the news. Less than two minutes to dig yourself out of a hole, guys. And women too, of course…” grinning at Marni. “We’re not the only ones who forget. Quick as we can, let’s see how many more relationships we can rescue before we all turn into pumpkins.”
I fade in a driving music bed for urgency and look up at the first name flashing on the screen. “Graham on line 3, do you have a message of undying love for your partner?”
There’s the usual startled pause before a hesitant Scots voice says, “Aye, I have, Marc, yes. I’d like to say Happy Valentine to Chris, please.”
“Chris. Is that a man or a woman?”
Marni looks quizzically through the glass at me and I shrug, mouthing ‘Whaa?’ as Graham answers. “Oh, she’s a woman, aye. Christine. My girlfriend - fiancée actually. Christine Proud.”
“And is she proud of you, Graham?”
“She will be now, I reckon, with speaking on the radio.”
“Well, Graham, be sure to come back on when we’ve a little more time to chat. Thanks for your call, and give my best to your lovely lady Chris. We have another lovely lady on line 1.”
“Is that me?”
“I don’t know, is it?”
Line 1 squeaks to someone next to her. “Ee, I’m not sure if I’m on or not.”
I shake my head and look across to share the wind-up with Marni but she’s turned away at her keyboard, logging names and numbers as more green lights flash at her elbow, demanding attention. Marc and Marni, it’s a perfect fit. My eyes stay on the sheen of her blonde hair as I talk to line 1.
“How many Valentine cards did you get today?”
“Who, me? None. Is that Marc Niven?”
My eyes flick back to the screen. “Is that Emma?”
“It is, yeah. I’m a first-time caller, Marc.”
“And who’s that with you, Emma?”
Giggles. “Oh, it’s just my friend Julie.”
“And who’s the friend you’d like to give a message to?”
“Well, he’s not really a friend. Not yet anyway. Just a lad I know from work.”
“What’s his name?”
“Daniel. Dan.”
“And where do the two of you work?”
“Tescos in Long Valley.”
“Oh, I was in there the other day.”
Trying to picture Emma at the checkout. Dan stacking shelves probably.
“You know, they had a whole aisle stuffed with Valentine cards. Hey, Daniel from Tesco in Long Valley, where’s Emma’s card?”
More giggles from line 1. Marni looks round and smiles, peeling her headset off, strands of hair still clinging to it.
“What do you want to say to Daniel, Emma?”
“Well, just to let him know I like him an’ that, and if he wants to go for a drink or whatever he only has to ask.”
“There you are, Dan, you only have to ask, cos Emma’s gagging for it. Can we fit a couple more in before we go to the news? Let’s talk to Hassan on line 2.”
Marni’s making cup-tilting signals at me as I’m doing the cross-fade. I nod back.
“Who do you want to give your heart to, Hassan?”
His voice is steady and serious. We get all types. What possesses these folk to call up radio stations when they should be tucked up in bed? Or while they’re in bed.
“I should like to send all my love to Amina. Amina Begum Khan.”
Marni leans over the desk to draw big letters with her finger on the glass. T followed by a C. She draws her C the wrong way round from my point of view. Then she straightens up and poses with her palms out, questioning. Cute.
“Amina, is it? Nice name. Wife or girlfriend?”
I trump Marni’s mime with one of my own, standing to make the little teapot shape, gay as I can make it. Marni cups her chin in her hands and does a stage school pout, then turns to leave the ops room. Our little bout of theatrics has left a vestige of a wiggle on her bum, sexier still as she’s unaware of it.
I’m watching Marni out of the room, still standing as I cross-fade to line 4 and lean into the mike again.
“Excellent, thanks for calling. Now we’ve just got time to squeeze in…” peek at the screen “…Jed. Who’s the last lucky lady tonight?”
Silence.
“Jed?” and ‘Shit’ nearly out loud when I glance down to see my hand resting on the wrong fader.
Here are some points to note about the 'voice' I use for this extract: we are firmly in the mind of central character Marc, first person present tense; the vocabulary is casual, informal, a tiny bit of technical language to establish the radio studio context and his familiarity with it, some DJ-speak; incomplete sentences; very importantly, lots of internal monologue - we live a lot in Marc's head in this novel, and it's not always an attractive place to be - emphasing his egoism, his sexual preoccupations, underlying sexism, slight coarseness. Did you get the 'inciting incident’? Have I managed to make it credible that Marc missed it while he is distracted with Marni? We later find that his former studio assistant Sam was his former partner, who has left him for a reason left unexplained until much later.
Here is some brief context to the second extract from 11:59: as a consequence of his failure to react to what Hassan says, and because he subsequently tries to cover it up, Marc is suspended, and the story gets into the local paper. Totally disillusioned, he seeks solace in drink in a city centre dive of a pub called The George. In this extract we should recognise he is getting steadily drunker – the language also deteriorates.
Extract 2 from 11:59: Marc gets drunk in The George
There are two things about pubs like this that save at least a few of them from being swept away by city centre yuppification or laid waste under the weekend stampede of teenage bingers. The first is that occasionally - working almost incognito, camouflaged by the surface grime and general dilapidation – there will be a landlord who actually cares about the quality and taste of the beer a whole lot more than he does about the marketing, or the customers, or the housekeeping. The second is that they can just about survive by accommodating misanthropes and misfits, low maintenance loners who compensate for not buying generous rounds for friends they don’t have by staying the course, drinking steadily and repeatedly at the same three-legged table from early doors till the bell tolls. Tonight The George and Marc Niven are made for each other.
With the horse-racing long since finished the TV channel has been switched, not to Sky Sports News or MTV as in most other places, but to ITV 1, where it plays with the sound turned off over the heads of the drinkers, its tawdry images clashing with the dinge below. I watch the screen only when the adverts come on, struck by the mute sexiness of Andrex toilet paper cascading down some stairs, a girl’s finger on the capstan of a roulette wheel, a dolphin in blue water. Otherwise there’s plenty to divert me from sluicing down my Black Sheep too urgently as the night wears on - there’s fluff to gather from the bench seat I’m sitting on, drips to soak up with a beer mat after I’ve separated the layers of card to make the mat more absorbent, brand names to mull over on the coasters and behind the bar, a maze of soldering to follow with my eyes from one end of the imitation stained glass feature to the other, then back again. I can even watch the levels going down in other glasses; that’s a good guide when you’re drinking on your own, like having company.
Three or four refills in (maybe five, who’s counting? anyway, I’m kind of on holiday), when a group to my left have supped up and gone, I shuffle along to where two benches meet, and sit in the angle between, resting a shoulder blade on the back of each bench. It’s a secure place, and it gives me a director’s view of the pub. I may have inadvertently said “Action!” out loud as that thought occurred. Someone standing with his back to me turns and looks, as if he’s just seen a flash bulb go off, then says something to his wife, or girlfriend, or mistress, who looks over at me too, just for a second. His floozy, maybe, that’s what they’d call them in the 1950s when this pub had its heyday. She looks the type.
Once I’ve drained my glass in this new position I have a difficult dilemma. A fairly sizeable group has just wandered in from some event next door and The George is enjoying (putting up with) one of its rare busy half-hours. There are a few people standing now, in twos and threes, since there’s not enough space for them to sit together. I don’t want to give up this hard-won seat, but it’s time to go back to the bar, and I also need a pee.
I’ve been a bit foolish to empty my glass, because whether I leave it on the table or take it with me to the bar, whichever, it could be interpreted as quitting, and one of those groups might take over my table and this whole section of bench, whereas (I say this word carefully to myself, developing my argument like a logician) whereas if I’d left just the right amount of beer in the glass I could have kept my claim staked while I got another. Too late for that now. I’ll just have to take a chance, leaving my coat on the seat sufficiently spread out, like a German towel, and hope they take the hint.
I leave my empty glass on the table as an extra deterrent and walk very deliberately to the bar, to give everybody the right signal, but then I sneak off to the Gents before I order, not wanting to take my drink with me to the toilet or to leave it on the bar where it might get spiked or spat in, you never know.
It’s a cramped bog, and there’s already somebody at one of the two urinal bowls. I try the lav door but that’s locked, so I have no option but to stand uncomfortably close to this tallish bloke to pee. As I pull it out he turns his head just like John Cleese in that ancient ‘I look down at him’ sketch. He’s quite shameless about it. I have a sudden urge to get back at him for this by pissing on his shoes. I’ve started to swivel when he suddenly zips up and steps away, leaving me to spill a splash of piss on the floor as if it was an accident instead of a protest. He gives me a look of contempt on his way out, but it’s him that doesn’t wash his hands.
After I’ve negotiated my return to the bar and ordered, and I’m turning to get my bearings for taking my fresh drink back to my seat, I see the worst has happened. Two couples that had been standing facing each other nearest my table have taken it over, one bloke squeezed between the two women in my director’s place and the other one perched on a stool the other side. As I come up holding my beer I see that my coat is lying folded across another empty stool next to them.
“Saved this seat for you, pal,” stool bloke says, like he’s doing me a favour.
“No thanks, I’ll just stand. Going in a minute,” I say, nearly spilling my full pint as I reach over to grab my coat and hang it on my free arm. One consolation is that the wanker from the Gents is not with them. They do seem to be looking at me funny, though. At last the uglier one of the women says, “We were just talking about you, actually. You’re that man from the radio, aren’t you? The one what does the phone-ins.”
Not any more, I’m thinking, but not out loud, or was it? Then I’m wondering whether they know me cos they know me or cos they’ve seen my picture in tonight’s paper. Was it just tonight? It seems longer ago than that. Longer ago and farther away.
“Is it you, then?” says squeezed-between-two-women bloke.
“I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together,” I say, cleverly.
“Eh?”
“I am the walrus.”
Pretty woman gives a little smile. Which one does she belong to? The smile was definitely for me, either way. I sit down on the stool and push my glass onto the crowded table, slopping the beer a little.
“Marc Niven,” I say, to her only.
“That’s the name,” ugly sister pipes up. “I said it was Marc summat. You were in the paper today, weren’t you?”
“Was I? Dunno. Never bother. Regular currants.” My brain said occurrence but my voice definitely said currants, I heard it. I take a gobful of beer and roll it around with my tongue to get my mouth working properly.
“Drowning your sorrows. You got sacked, didn’t you?” says the guy sitting in my place, who looks like a sleaze ball.
Slight burp as I swallow to answer, nothing they would notice. “No such thing. They made a cock-up. I told them, sort it out, not coming back till you do. Position to do it, see. Man of my…” What am I talking to him for? I turn back to smiling girl. “You listen?”
“Sorry?” Leans forward a touch. She has this cute way of raising her eyebrows.
“You listen my show?”
Sleaze ball sneaks his arm behind her, his fingers fiddling with her hair. I can tell she’s embarrassed about him interfering with her like that cos she’s blushing, but she keeps her attention on me.
“I’m not really a radio sort of person,” she says. “What sort of music do you play?”
“What sort of music do you like?” She really is a looker, close up.
“Oh, I don’t know, all sorts really. Charts stuff.”
“Tell you what, tell you what, have you got a pen? Anybody, pen?” I lift up my glass to bring the coaster out from underneath, taking another mouthful while the beer’s handy.
“Christ, he’s going to give you his autograph now,” says sleaze ball, grabbing pretty girl’s shoulder and pulling her towards him. Prick. Stool guy gives me a biro he finds in his jacket pocket and I hand it across the table with the beer mat.
“Just write your name down on there, and any song you’d like. Pick a song, any song. I’ll play it for you, my show. Don’t normally do requests, but for you. Happily.”
“Thought you didn’t have a show,” says the other one, put out cos she hasn’t been given the chance.
“Soon. Next time,” I tell my one. “’Fact, put your number down and I’ll phone you when it’s coming on. Personally.”
“Fuck off,” says sleaze ball.
“I don’t think I can write on this,” says pretty girl, holding just the corner of the beer mat with her finger tips. “It’s a tad wet.” The others laugh at her, which hardly seems fair.
“No worries, no worries,” I say. “’Nother one here.”
I scrabble among the cluster of drinks on the tables, feeling for a dry mat. That stupid prick opposite must have had his glass too near the edge. It gets just the slightest nudge from my knuckles and it topples off the table, dowsing his crotch with lager. He jumps up, yelling, and makes the whole thing worse by kicking his leg against the table, sending more glasses flying. Now everybody’s up, backing away from the mess. It’s like somebody’s just vomited in the middle of a crowd. The rest of the pub turn round to stare at us.
“You rat-arsed fucker,” yells sleaze ball, trying to put the blame on me as a pissed-off barman emerges from behind the counter with a mop. In the background I can see John Cleese whispering some poison to one of his gay crowd of gawkers. I’ve had my fill of the lot of them, so I pick my coat out of the puddle under the table and leave.
The main challenge here was to put across a sense of Marc’s drunknness, not only in his direct speech, but increasingly as the scene unfolds in his descriptions, and his perceptions of what is happening – at the same time, I am tipping the wink to the reader that Marc’s interpretation is (I hope comically) at odds with reality.
It has been my intention, with the help of these extracts from three very different products of my wandering muse, to try and make some sense of what I mean 'the writer's voice'. Let me know if I have succeeded in any degree.
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