On Voice

As I mentioned in my last post, I had what felt like an epiphany about voice while reading Nephele Tempest's blog entry on how to make a manuscript unputdownable.

I think I know voice as a reader, in that I-know-it-when-I-see-it sort of way, but haven't had a whole lot of a sense of how to create it as a writer. Once thing I've worked on that I think has made me better at it was writing in deeper third person, but I think there's more to having a really good voice than just that.

Here's the realization I came to as I read her entry: I've been approaching voice--and I think most novice writers do this--as an issue of craft, by which I mean nuts and bolts word choice and stuff like that. Style. And beyond a certain point, it's not. It is, I think, an issue of characterization. I'm thinking if your voice is not distinctive, it's because your protagonist is not. Looking back on my writing, I'm suddenly struck by the realization that I have a tendency to make my protagonists somewhat vanilla, and to have a side character that totally steals the show--or at least every scene she or he is in. (My interesting supporting characters tend to be girls more often than boys for some reason.)

I think I've been approaching my protagonists with an unverbalized sense that they're interesting simply by virtue of the fact that they're at the center of the stories. With just a little more thought on how to make them stand out, together with the lessons I've already learned on things such as deeper third, I think I could do a much better job.

My own self-important rant on what is Good in art

I'm cross-posting this from a comment I posted on Nathan Bransford's blog because it's long, and because he gets like three hundred comments for every entry, and I didn't want something I'd spent time composing to get lost in the crowd.

Bransford's post was occasioned by Stephen King's comments in USA Weekend denigrating Stephanie Meyer. Bransford's question: Who decides what is "good," anyway?

I think the problem that comes up every time this issue is raised with respect to art is that we claim to be arguing about one thing, but we are actually arguing about another. We're not really arguing about what is "good." We're arguing about what is "better."

If your work of art moves someone, touches someone's soul, it is good. That's it.

Just one, I say. Who can set a minimum threshold, and say that X people have to agree that your work is good? The novel Ordinary People saved my life, I believe. If every other person who'd read that book hated it, would that make it not meaningful? Is there some Platonic Ideal Book somewhere that books are measured against, making them good or bad independent of the effect they create in a reader?

I don't think so. I think art exists only to act on the observer*. Therefore, the only meaningful measure of quality is whether or not a work succeeded in touching an observer, and it's not about discrete criteria, nor is it a numbers game.

So:

Stephen King: Good. Obviously.

Stephanie Meyer: Good.

James Joyce: Good.

Judith Guest: Good.

René Magritte: Good.

Jackson Pollock: Good.

*gulp* Terry Goodkind: Good.

Their works have resonated; their works have been powerful for someone. How can I possibly say that what resonates with me is meaningful but what resonates with you is not? Well that's exactly what we say when we say that Stephanie Meyer is no good.

The problem, I think, is that some people think something is just plain wrong if we equate Meyer's accomplishment with Herman Melville's. So we look for some way to say her art is less good than his. Or less good than Updike's. Or less good than King's. We look for flaws to point out as evidence of this. But it's all bogus, because grammar, characterization, prosody, plotting, etc. are all just means to an end: the effect on the observer. And now we come back to the fact that one observer isn't worth more than another.

All we can make are personal pronouncements. And we can certainly give reasons why we individually feel as we do, but when we try to use those as some sort of objective evidence for the universal truth of our personal pronouncements, we're missing the point. We're either saying that these criteria are more meaningful than the cumulative effect a work has, or we're saying that the effect a work has on some other observer isn't worth as much as the effect it has on me.

I'd say that Stephen King is a better writer than James Joyce. Of course, what I really mean is that King's works have moved me, entertained me, and been meaningful for me, whereas the single work of Joyce's that I read failed to affect me on all three fronts. Does that mean King is really better? No, it means King was more effective in moving me. It would be the height of arrogance for someone else to suggest that moving or impressing some famous literary critic is a more meaningful accomplishment than moving me is, but there's an awful lot of arrogance in the world.

* Of course, the artist is an observer too.