How does written voice shape editorial decisions?
Editing phrasing for audience
The Short Story
Voice is shorthand for an author’s written personality. In analytical terms, I’d describe it as the sum and confluence of several aspects of phrasing. Sometimes referred to as the author’s “style,” voice is significant because it’s the way he or she connects to readers.
The Real(ist) Story
Not much angrifies an author like getting a manuscript back from an editor only to discover that it doesn’t “sound” or “feel” like the author anymore. That’s especially true if the person is an established writer or a professional speaker of some sort.
As an editor, you may not care for the voice in a piece of writing. Then again, you may not be one of the author’s intended readers. Consider that the world of words would be a boring place, indeed, if every author were to write the same way. Editors best serve readers and writers by honing an author’s voice on its own terms.
I can’t stress sufficiently the importance of taking special care with those professional speakers. True, some expressions and rhetorical patterns that are effective in speech don’t translate well to writing. Repetition and humor often miss the mark without editorial adaptation for the page. Speech is also more forgiving of loose grammar than writing is. No matter how ornery an author gets about you tightening up syntax or insisting, “I do not think it means what you think it means,”1 he or she won’t thank you when reviewers start complaining about the unprofessional, poorly edited style. Sometimes you may have to save authors from themselves in these respects.
But choose your battles. Compromise, where you can stomach it, to preserve the distinctiveness of the author’s written personality. Though an author’s written voice should rarely be identical to his or her spoken voice, it should be a recognizable translation.
Here are some of the main (and heavily overlapping) aspects of written voice:
Diction. The writer’s vocabulary and patterns in word choice, including word length and the relative frequency of certain parts of speech.
Structure. Tendencies in syntax (word order), sentence type, sentence length, number and arrangement of syllables, verb tense, and punctuation, all of which contribute to the sense of flow and pace.
Devices. Reliance on literary techniques and flourishes like visual imagery and the repetition of sounds (i.e., alliteration, assonance, and end rhyme).
Tone and mood are distinct from written voice, being more situational, but it’s fair to consider patterns in the use of tone and mood as part of voice.
Keep in mind that an author’s voice may differ from piece to piece, especially in fiction or across genres. A person may communicate a bit differently in different contexts; readers get that. But no matter what theories flit about the lit crit world, most readers reckon situational differences in voice are variations on one human being’s way of writing.2 A reasonable degree of consistency is in order.
Story Time
Take, for example, these selections from three of my Vaporous Realms stories:
Snippet 1
Year 1. The king of the heaven-realm had vanquished the Mother of Serpents; his scions had scattered her minions. Now the Wright brought the first-folk into being upon the earthly realm. The man Ghrem and his wife, Lae, dwelt in a verdant sanctuary high in the Fangs of Livyat. There, at the foot of the heaven-bridge, they minded the creatures, the flowers and trees, and one another.3
Snippet 2
Egwae rose and smoothed her pleated tunic. She returned her focus to the verdant wall and the fiery haze of pale yellow light enveloping it. Wall and shield together obstructed all but the midday glare of the winter sky above. Those subtly curved barriers stretched nearly the length of the vale, from eastern heights to precipitous western descent.4
Snippet 3
Silver-tinged clouds fell across the low-hanging half-moon in smoky tufts, like unspun wool feeding her father’s wheel. Already the late-summer air gathered thick about her. It would be another muggy day; the quietly stirring horses knew it, lethargic despite their humans’ palpable tension. Between cinching her bedroll and lashing it to the saddlebag she used as a pillow, Zshurii picked out Cactus’s familiar silhouette from their horse-line, nearer the perimeter.5
These snippets vary in their point-of-view character and the narrative distance employed. Yet, they also have common features that point to my written voice across particular stories or genres.
The lengthy sentences and words6 contribute to a measured, unhurried storytelling pace that’s my default outside of action sequences. Look at all those polysyllabic monsters: sanctuary, vanquished, enveloping, precipitous, obstructed, lethargic, palpable. I’m not using big words to show off, and in truth, I’m leery of being misunderstood that way. I simply prefer my phrasing to be precise and memorable, and I read a lot of old historical fiction and fantasy early in life.
Other words and phrases, like verdant, fiery haze, and feeding her father’s wheel, are indicative of my imagery-heavy narrative voice. Some of these examples I’ve mentioned—and others, like minded the creatures, upon, earthly realm, and folk—are also somewhat archaic, meant to lend a poetic or bardic glow. The grammar and punctuation tend to be precise, with few fragments and little bending of comma rules.
You may have noticed that a lot of these observations generally hold true with my nonfiction writing, too. My nonfiction voice may feature less imagery. But the tendency toward longwinded and unusual phrasing, leavened with archaisms and regionalisms (including reckon and leery), and the occasional spurt of alliteration or rhyme, persists. Even if my writing here is more “folks” than “folk,” it’s all a bit folksy.
Godspeed and happy rewriting!
Article: Phrasing for audience
Princess Bride, y’all. Or, for a more formal citation:
Reiner, Rob, dir. The Princess Bride. 20th Century Fox, 1987.
The amount of alliteration, assonance, and end rhyme in this sentence is ridiculous. Not intentional, but I’m leaving it as an example of literary devices in action.
Heywood, M. B. “Year 1.” Annals of the Vaporous Realms.
Heywood, M. B. “Watchers.”
Heywood, M. B. Daughters of the Rising Sun.
Note that I chose two-syllable lengthy just now, over single-syllable long.