Voice

Opening Lines

What do the following passages have in common and how’s it relevant to your writing?

Have a guess and then I’ll tell you.

I’ll give you a clue: It’s not just that they are effective openings. It’s not that they rock. And it’s not that they were picked from my own bookshelf.

All of these things are true but there’s something else that’s far more important.

Answers on a postcard.

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.” — JD Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun into my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends.” — Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“It wasn’t until we were halfway through France that we noticed Maretta wasn’t talking. She sat very still in the back of the van and watched us all with bright eyes.” — Esther Freud, Hideous Kinky

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” — Albert Camus, The Outsider

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing in particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail around a little and see the watery part of the world.” — Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’ There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Peter, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.” — Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“The lie detector was asleep when he heard the telephone ringing. At first he believed it was the clock ordering him to rise, but then he awakened completely and remembered his profession. The voice he heard was rusty, as if disguised. He could not distinguish what altered it: alcohol, drugs, anxiety or fear.” — Anais Nin, A Spy in the House of Love

“I had a job and Patti didn’t. I worked a few hours a night for the hospital. It was a nothing job. I did some work, signed the card for eight hours, went drinking with the nurses. After a while, Patti wanted a job. She said she needed a job for her self-respect. So she started selling multiple vitamins door to door.” — Raymond Carver, Vitamins

“It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead.” — Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Her first feeling, as she smelled the air, was one of intense and helpless gratitude. I’m alright, she thought with a gasp. Time — it’s starting again. She tried to blink away all the water in her eyes, but there was too much to deal with and she soon shut them tight.” — Martin Amis, Other People

“Some catastrophic situations invite clarity, explode in split moments: You smash your hand through a window-pane and then there is blood and shattered glass stained with red all over the place; you fall out a window and break some bones and scrape some skin. Stitches and casts and bandages and antiseptic solve and salve the wounds. But depression is not a sudden disaster.” — Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

The answer is voice

Everyone will have picked up on what makes these good beginnings but there’s something else underlying each piece that ties it all together.

A secret ingredient if you will.

There’s something that makes them great pieces of writing. Something that comes natural to all of you and that you can use in everything that you write.

It’s the thing that every reader craves, that pulls them in, that rocks their socks…

The answer is VOICE.

I know, it’s not hard to figure out, the clue was in the title.

I’ll now explain what Voice is and how you can use it.

Write it like you’d say it

Voice is what pulls you in and makes you want to keep reading.

It’s not something concrete, that you can always put your finger on, but it is what will rock your reader’s socks every time if you have it.

It’s also your newfound secret weapon for making it through writing sessions with maximum quality and word count.

There are two main voices in the novel — the voice of the protagonist and the voice of the narrator.

There’s also the implied narrator (the impression of the author that the reader gets from reading) but you don’t need to worry about that just yet — not if you want to get to the end of a writing session with your sanity intact.

It’s easiest to judge the effectiveness of Voice in first-person novels for obvious reasons.

If the author manages to pull it off, like a method-actor, and convince you that the voice is authentic then you’ll keep reading.

You can also use it just as effectively in other novels as was shown in the extracts that I posted here.

Voice is a big subject, and there’s loads that I could say about it, but I’d still be writing about it long after the cows came home.

So instead I’m going to give you a VERY SIMPLE technique to use.

A strong voice will keep you reading like nothing else. We love stories and we love to be told them.

Forget what you hear about “Show, don’t tell” (it’s good advice but often misunderstood and gets in the way of your natural storytelling ability) — when you were little did you ever say “Please SHOW me a story”?!

So, that’s what I want you to do. I want you to TELL the story. And I want you to tell it using the most powerful voice that you have — your own.

For first-person novels: Unless you already feel like you’re the main character and speak like them and in fact ARE them (in which case the men-in-white-coats are standing by), you’re going to have to wing it.

Instead of pretending to be the main character and trying to put on their voice parrot fashion, I want you to imagine that YOUR VOICE is the voice of the narrator.

For third-person novels etc: For the next few days, YOU are Charles Dickens.

Forget about trying to sound arty or interesting or literary, just tell the story in your own voice, in exactly the same way that you’d tell it to your friends.

Whatever type of novel you’re writing, put down what you’d say if you were telling this story to someone close to you.

Imagine you’re in a pub telling your best friend if that helps.

Stammer, swear, repeat yourself, get over-excited, repeat yourself — I’ve said that!

Any time you get stuck, or write yourself into a dead end, say, “No, that’s not what I meant at all” and carry on.

Tell it like it is. Just use exactly your voice, your words, your way.

What could be easier than telling the story exactly how you’d tell it? (don’t answer that, I can already hear you thinking of witty and sarcastic replies).

Just try it. Not only will it lead to some scarily good writing, it will also send your wordcount through the roof — which at this stage of the game is exactly what you need.

James Garside is an independent journalist, author, and travel writer. Join Chapter 23 for the inside track on all their creative projects and insights about life, work, and travel.