A Confusion of Voice

If the complaints I hear from writers are any indication, the only thing harder for them to get their heads around than show vs. tell is the concept of an author’s “voice.”

Voice is that unmistakable tone in a piece of written work that is unique to its author. No one who’s read Hemingway, for example, is ever likely to confuse him with anyone else. The gentle irony of Jane Austen’s novels is also readily identifiable. And this unique tone runs consistently through all their work.

I recently turned down a submission, citing the usual reason why I do that-—it’s not what I need. There will likely be a mild rant about that subject at a later time. I did respond to something that author had written me about changing a major element in the manuscript, thinking doing so would make it more marketable. I said it had nothing to do with my decision.

This writer replied with a comment about my not liking her writer’s voice. I’m still not clear where that came from, since I said nothing about it anywhere in the exchange. It did, however, remind me of moments in the past when a writer under contract has loudly protested requested changes in punctuation or vocabulary or sentence structure on the grounds I was “ruining their voice.”

Another writer cried foul when I insisted her attempts to be clever by using wordplay that made no sense was going to destroy the book because that was what her readers expected. Again, I was going to ruin her “voice.”

Both of these instances are cases of writers using mechanical means to achieve what they mistakenly believe to be their unique voice. Neither has anything to do with voice. They are style matters.

Voice isn’t something you can manufacture. it’s a reflection of who you are as a writer. Dean Koontz and Stephen King both write in the same genre, yet given an anonymous excerpt from both men to read you would immediately know the two pieces weren’t written by the same person. That’s voice.

Writing an entire novel using simple sentences isn’t voice. It’s a style choice (and a bad one—-your reader will be asleep by the end of page two). Clever wordplay is just that—-clever wordplay, not voice, and if your reader doesn’t “get it,” you’ve wasted your time. Refusing to use semi-colons has nothing to do with voice (and usually everything to do with the writer not knowing when to use them).

A beginning writer rarely has the experience and expertise to have found his or her voice. A writer who’s switching from nonfiction to fiction may have a voice but may also need to determine if the one they have is going to work in their new field. One of the most common problems I see with journalists and technical writers who assay fiction is that they can’t get out of “tell” mode.

Hemingway brought the terse, spare journalistic style into his fiction and for him it works. However, he did so because it suited his personality—-it gave expression to his unique voice. However, the style is not his voice. Hemingway was not the only one to use it, and yet no one confuses the novels and stories by those others with Papa’s.

A good editor almost intuits the voice of a writer, and will do everything in his or her power to ensure it survives whatever stylistic changes are need to make a work as accessible to the reader as possible. A good editor also knows doing so rarely involves comma placement or repetitive sentence structure or whether or not there are dialogue tags.

Style is a tool. Voice is the vital part of a writer that sets him or her apart from every other writer. The first you learn, just as a pianist learns scales, and knowing the mechanics of the writing trade is as necessary as knowing which key matches which note on the sheet music.

But no matter how much you practice, you’ll never be Mozart. And aping Hemingway’s style will never give you Hemingway’s voice. Nor do you want it to. It’s up to you to discover the unique way of utilizing the tools of the writers that, combined with the intangible something that sets you apart from every other writer, creates writing that belongs to you and no one else.

Can you say "stupid," boys and girls?

If you’re looking for entertainment, try a week dealing with manuscript submissions. The sheer arrogance of some would-be-published is amazing—and usually in inverse proportion to the quality of their work.

Sound harsh? Stay with me.

Zumaya Publications is closed to subs until next summer. Our quotas for ’06 and ’07 have been filled since January, and ’08 will be done shortly. It’s bad manners to expect someone to sign a contract now with no expectation that their book will see daylight until 2009.

There are two exceptions, however. One is for a project already on the ’08 schedule—an anthology of short stories on the theme of King Arthur. The other is a standing call for collections of true ghost stories like our recently published Gray Zone Wanderers. Submissions for the first are to go directly to the editor in Oz. For the second, I set up a special email address, since the one I usually use for submissions is now on an auto-responder.

Within minutes of my activating the special address, I received a query for a fantasy novel.

Most publishers would simply have deleted the query. I chose to respond with some facts, in what I suspected was a vain hope the sender had half a professional bone in their body. I pointed out that “closed” meant closed--as in “not accepting new queries or manuscripts except as noted.” I also said that using an email address that is clearly designated as being for a particular kind of submission as a bypass isn’t likely to endear the sender to the publisher.

Having had similar experiences in the past, I confess I expected a snarky response, and I wasn’t disappointed. I was chided for my “unpleasant” attitude and advised to “grow up.”

Now, remember, this is from someone who wants me to invest my time, energy and money in publishing their manuscript. Does the phrase “cold day in hell” come to mind? Did for me. I expect it would for any publisher--and we have long memories. We may even make a list and check it twice.

There appears to be a new breed of writer who believes that small and mid-sized presses are so desperate for material to publish there’s no need to observe their submission guidelines. That said publishers should be so grateful said writer has condescended to consider allowing them to publish their manuscript they’ll forgive a complete lack of professionalism.

Wrong.

Rant: Who needs to get "real?"

Real publishers.

While sitting at the Zumaya table in the dealer’s room at ArmadilloCon last month, I discussed with one of the “visiting authors” why he should try to persuade his publisher, Ace, to offer his books as ebooks. For some reason, he seemed determined to turn it into a discussion of why ebook publishers aren’t “real publishers.” Suffice it to say that while some of his points were legitimate, others were based on outdated and incorrect information.

However, I have before and since encountered discussions of what constitutes a “real publisher.” It led me to collect criteria from on high as to how that appellation,” the bestowing of which title on a company that publishes books is the key to authors’ entry into the hallowed halls of various genre organizations, is determined. Here’s what I’ve found.

Real publishers carefully screen submissions, selecting only the best. They carefully edit and re-edit and copyedit and proofread. They provide professionally designed covers, layout and formatting. They pay royalties on sales and assist authors with promotion and marketing. They don't accept payment from the author for any portion of this process.

So far, so good. However, there are a couple of other things that are almost always included in the list of what identifies a “real publisher” that strike me as being just a little arbitrary.

1. Real publishers pay advances.

An advance is more properly “an advance against royalties.” The publisher pays the author whose book it wishes to publish a sum of money. The total of that sum must be paid back via the author’s royalties before said author begins making any more money. Average advance for a new writer who isn’t somebody famous these days runs $2,000-$5,000. However, some small presses pay equally small advances, anywhere from $25 up to $1,000. Why? In some cases, just so they can say they did.

One explanation for why a publisher should pay an advance is that it indicates their belief in the work in question, that it will do well on the market. Thus, it’s explained, it is a sign of the publisher’s faith in the writer’s talent.

If I offer someone a contract, that’s sufficient sign of my faith in their talent—not to mention their ability to sell copies. A small press that only does 20-30 books a year, unless they’re just starting out, doesn’t have the resources to spend publishing books that aren’t going to sell. So, why is it better that we pay the writer X dollars up front than to pay them royalties on their sales from the moment the book is published?

Another reason given is that the advance allows the writer the freedom to work on the next book (or offset expenses if the book was purchased based on a proposal) without having to fret about finances. Come again? The last I heard, you needed $30,000 a year to live decently if you’re single—and half again that much to make ends meet if you’re a family. Explain how my paying somebody $500 (or $5,000, for that matter) is going to do much more than give them bragging rights for having gotten an advance—and us the ability to say we gave one?

2. Real publishers register the copyright for their authors.

First, you don’t need to register copyright. The creator of a work is covered by copyright the moment they type it into their computer. Yes, if somebody steals it and you want to collect damages, the copyright needs to be registered. This costs $30 and a copy of the manuscript.

If you were an author, which would you rather your publisher spend that $30—registering your copyright or paying for some promotion or marketing? Such issues don’t concern the big publishers (on which more shortly) because they have budgets for both. Smaller publishers have to make decisions on where their money is better applied. How, then, does their choice to spend on marketing and promotion rather than registering copyright make them “unreal?”

I said we’d talk about the big publishers. Am I the only one that notices these two “criteria” pretty much narrow the field of what constitutes a “real publisher” down to the Six Sisters and those companies who copy their business model because it’s the accepted one? For example, in its membership requirements, the Science Fiction Writers of America not only specifies that to be accepted a writer has to have received an advance but goes farther and dictates that advance has to be $5000 or more.

Ask yourself how many small and mid-sized publishers are paying that kind of money. Not a whole bunch, I’d wager.

And be it noted that more often than not the ones who are insisting these last two “criteria” are valid are those associated with one of the big publishers. Who publish an average of 200 new writers a year—and that’s across the entire company. Six times 200 is 1,200 new writers making it to print annually.

Meantime, there are something like 70,000 independent presses of various sizes. If each of them only published one book by one new writer a year…

If there is logic here, I’m missing it. If you have lots of operating funds, you can afford to offer little amenities—like registering copyright. But does that make what you do any more “real” than what publishing is all about, which is making good books and selling them?

Some will argue that if you can’t afford to provide the appropriate services you shouldn’t be in the business. Is that it? Is it all about money? Does not having lots of it mean one shouldn’t make the effort to see that talented people with good stories have the opportunity to find people who want to read them? Should spending $900 a year to register copyrights for our authors weigh more heavily in determining Zumaya’s validity as a “real publisher” than the time and effort we put in to helping them find those people? Or nurturing a newcomer who needs just a bit more support--something I've been told over and over the ones claiming the authority to decide who's "real" no longer have the time to do?

It strikes me that these two alleged criteria are just another sign of how hidebound the existing publishing industry has become. What's sad is that writers buy into this nonsense without taking the time to really analyze whether it makes any sense or not. Of course, it would be great to get an advance. I'd love to get one myself. But I'd rather be published.

The only real criteria for determining a "real publisher," other than the ones I listed in the beginning, should be the quality of what they publish. Not how closely they ape the operations of one of the Six Sisters. Not how much money they pay when the author signs a contract. Not whether they offer this service or other that's only peripherally related to their primary function of getting a book in print.

If a publisher consistently produces books of excellent quality and content, that should be all that matters.

Wait a minute—I think...yes, it's a hyphen!

I suspect the reason we all have problems figuring out where and when to use hyphens is because we use them so rarely. Their main use, of course, was to help typesetters keep the lines on a printed page nice a tidy by allowing them to put part of a word on one line and the rest on the next. As word processing programs matured, some of them took over the onerous chore of hyphenation. That would be lovely if it worked. It doesn’t. So, if you’re going to use the utility, be sure to go through when the task is done and check everything against the dictionary.

Then there are those adjectives. Is it level-headed or levelheaded? Do we go one on one or one-on-one? There’s no easy answer for this except “look it up.” The dictionary that comes with Word will often object to combining words that every other dictionary in the universe approves. If you’re working for yourself, pick one. If you’re working for a publisher, ask if they have a house style preference.

When should you use a hyphen with an adjective modified by an adverb? Is it well known or well-known?

As with many questions of punctuation in English, it comes down to whether the absence of the hyphen will confuse the reader. In the sentence “John was a first-class pilot,” for example, you need the hyphen because without it the meaning could be that John was the first in his class to become a pilot.

One thing I can tell you for certain. Never use a hyphen to combine an –ly adverb and a past participle used as an adjective: highly motivated, not highly-motivated.

Em-dashes and en-dashes are typographical characters--what word processors call “special characters.” They have very specific uses. However, the one that causes the most confusion is when to use an em-dash and when to use an ellipsis (. . .). This most often arises in dialogue.

If a sentence is interrupted, the proper punctuation is an em-dash. That applies whether the speaker is interrupted by someone else or cuts himself off. The latter can be a toughie--you’ll need to pay very close attention. The interruption has to be just that, not the character’s train of thought chugging off into speculation. The usual occurrences are when the character’s internal monologue is interrupted by some external event. In a manuscript, two hyphens are used to indicate an em-dash:


“But you said--”
“Never mind what I said. Do it now.”


In fiction, you also use an em-dash where in nonfiction you'd use a colon--to set off a clause or a list of elements that provides additional information about the main clause or explains it.

If, however, the sentence just trails off, or if the speaker is leaving an opening for a response, you use an ellipsis.


“I’d like to go, but…”


You also use an ellipsis to indicate hesitation:


“I know…I mean, I thought…Are you sure?”


Also use ellipses when showing one end of a telephone conversation:


“Hello?…No, Tom isn’t here…I don’t know…Well, if it’s that important leave your number and I’ll have him call you.”


The en-dash is rarely used in fiction, except to indicate stuttering:


“I–I don’t think you…should do that.”


Some places will use an ellipsis in that situation—again, either establish your own consistent style or find out if there’s a house style preference.

This is by no means definitive. Deciding how to use special characters requires having access to style manuals, which any aspiring editor or writer considering self-publishing needs to have. Whatever you do, don’t guess, because if you guess wrong you’re going to irritate the person who has to fix everything.

Singular problems with plurals

Okay, listen up--there will be a quiz later.

The English language contains words stolen from all over the world, reflecting the history of the language and the countries upon whom it was forced. Among these are words of Latin and Greek origin.

I'm willing to accept that the deplorable state of education means schools both in the US and abroad are turning out graduates with appalling levels of ignorance. However, that doesn't excuse aspiring writers who desire to have a future as professionals. And if I have to see or hear someone say that "television is a media..." I may get violent.

Medium used as a noun is singular. Television is a communications medium. Media is the plural form: television, newspapers and magazines are all news media.

Then we have criteria, another word people persist in using incorrectly. "Being a writer is a criteria for membership."

No, being a member is a criterion for membership--singular.

You cannot have a bacteria. You may have a bacterium, and when it starts propagating itself then you will have bacteria but not a moment before.

Do surgeons perform surgery without instruments? Do gardeners tend the lawn without tools? Then why is it people will decide they're going to be writers but can't manage to acquire those basic tools of the profession: a dictionary, a thesaurus, a stylebook and a book on common usage errors?

I recently took part in a discussion on the editing, or lack thereof, that is apparent in far too many published books. There was a time when the established industry was comfortable sneering at the burgeoning independent ebook industry for its lack of editorial quality. They no longer have any room to talk.

Yet there is still a segment of the wannabe-a-writer contingent that seems to think they don't have to clean up their work, that some helpful editor somewhere will tend to their errors of grammar, punctuation and usage once they get that manuscript sold. It apparently doesn't register that no editor is going to look past the first three errors to find the gold buried therein.

What's particularly problematic is that some of these people are skilled and experienced experts in other fields. Is it possible they expect the acquiring editor to do what their secretary has done all these years--make them look good?

Ain't happening, people. No matter how great a writer you are, how fantastic your book is, if it looks like forty pages of bad grammar it won't get through my door. Not just because it suggests a lack of skill in the basic tools of the writing trade but because it suggests that I'm so desperate for something to publish I'll do anything to lay hands on it.

I'm not. And I won't.

Comma Here: Part One

(NOTE: The following was originally published in the monthly newsletter of SPAWN, the Small Publishers, Artists, and Writers Network.)

You wouldn’t think so much turmoil could be caused by such a little thing—a mere squiggle. Yet the furor that can arise over commas makes that squiggle seem like the most powerful punctuation mark in the universe.

The Chicago Manual of Style devotes 15 pages to the many uses for the comma in its 14th Edition, so we aren’t going to be doing a comprehensive tutorial here. Instead, we’ll address a couple of issues that have come up recently and see if we can’t clarify them. If anyone has specific questions I’ll be happy to address them.

To begin, I’m going to discuss a subject that has arisen in the last few years, fostered, I gather, by academic linguists with too much time on their hands. According to this theory, the comma when used in prose should be thought of the same way it is in music and poetry--as a “pause.” So, it is said, one should punctuate one’s sentences according to the way they’re supposed to sound rather than simply follow a lot of arbitrary rules.

This has led to some writers demanding that commas be left out because they “interrupt the flow of the language.” And they can be extremely belligerent about it. However, taken to excess this can amount to micromanaging the reader, something they tend to resent. An analogy would be the writer who wants to italicize all the words he or she thinks should be stressed instead of letting that stress flow naturally in the reader’s mind.

It’s true that some of the rules governing comma use are flexible. It’s also true that those of us who have always been sticklers for correct punctuation can feel very uncomfortable not using that comma before “too” when it’s used as “also” or to set off interjections at the beginning of a sentence (Suddenly, John heard a scream.) However, as long as omitting that squiggle doesn’t confuse the reader, there’s no harm in allowing the author his/her way. Be prepared to fight, though, if you’re the editor, because the writer doesn’t always see the problem. And if you’re the writer, keep in mind that just because you understand it doesn’t mean everyone else will.

Another issue that arises more often these days as publishing crosses international boundaries is the differences between UK style and US.

In US style, the comma, like other punctuation, goes inside the quotation marks in quotes or dialogue:

“I can’t see the forest,” she whined.

In UK style, the comma--and all other punctuation--goes on the outside:

‘I can’t smell the cookies’, he complained. (Yes, our friends over the pond also reverse quotation mark usage.)

If you’re writing for a UK-based audience, you can save the editor trouble by following the UK rules, and it really isn’t that difficult. Use the Find/Replace function in your word-processor. Search for [,” ] (Don’t forget to include the space after the quotation mark) and replace it with [’. ]. Do the same for other punctuation marks while you’re at it. You’ll still need to go through and fix a few spots but that will take care of most of them.

One of the best online resources for basic questions of style can be found at Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/. Another comprehensive resource is offered by Capital Community College in Hartford, CT: http://cctc2.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm

However, there’s no substitute for having a good, comprehensive style reference. I use both the Chicago Manual and the less pricey Merriam-Webster Manual for Writers and Editors. Although both are geared more toward nonfiction, they at least give you the rules, which you can then play with for fiction so long as the prose communicates with the reader. There is also the Plain & Simple series of style books, which are available on Amazon and in the major bookstores--I’ve gotten tons of use out of my copy of the one on commas, if only to win arguments.

Once Upon a Time: Show vs. Tell

Anyone with aspirations of becoming a writer has heard the cardinal rule of fiction: show, don’t tell. Based on manuscripts I receive, even from some previously published writers in nonfiction, there is a good deal of misunderstanding about what that means.

But it’s obvious, you say. It means you should write active scenes, in which people are doing things, not “recite” the story as if you were sitting around a campfire. And, as far as that goes, that’s correct. What some people are missing, however, is that “show, don’t tell” isn’t a narrative issue but rather one of point of view.

In order to properly show your story, you must be in the active character’s point of view. This means getting to know those characters well, the method for which will be a good topic for the future. For now, suffice it to say that if you aren’t fully engaged with your POV character no matter how much action you put in your narrative it will be telling, not showing.

Let me give an example of an opening paragraph:


John drove down the narrow street looking for the house. He had been sure he would recognize it, even after all this time, but he hadn’t expected the old neighborhood would have become a candidate for suburban renewal, the old Craftsman houses collectors items for Baby Boomers nostalgic for childhoods they may not even have had. Now, as dusk settled, he wondered why he was even here. He had traveled two thousand miles, spent more than he should on airline tickets and car rental, and he still didn’t know why he was here.


What’s wrong with that, you ask? Nothing, on the surface. Let’s try again:


As he strained to read the numbers on the houses in the gathering dusk, John told himself he was a fool for coming here. What did he hope to gain? And what had made him think he would find the old place just as it was when he’d left it?


The difference between the first paragraph and the second is two-fold.

First, the second paragraph has what the first lacks—a hook to grab the browsing reader’s attention and make them read on. Who is John? Why is he here?

Second—and I grant you it’s a subtlety beginners are likely to miss—is that the second paragraph is totally in John’s point of view. It’s showing. In the first paragraph, we’re being told what John is doing and what he’s thinking.

Let’s go on to that second paragraph. Should we explain what John is doing?

No.


Streetlights came on, and he realized the house numbers were painted on the curb, just faded enough he hadn’t seen them in the near-dark. There it was, 346 Carleton Street, a small house on a narrow street that had once looked like all the small houses around it. Even now, fancied up by some nostalgic Baby Boomer looking for a childhood they’d probably never actually had, there was nothing to show why he had dropped half his savings account on plane tickets and car rental and traveled two thousand miles to see it.


How is this description of backstory different from the first paragraph?

It doesn’t use tags like “he wondered.” If you’re writing securely in your character’s point of view, you don’t need to tell us he or she “thought” or “wondered” or “he saw.” That’s a given—we’re in his or her head. The moment you use one of those qualifiers you’re telling us what he or she is thinking or seeing.

For another thing, it’s in the character’s voice instead of the author’s. It’s John who “dropped half his savings” instead of the author telling us he had “spent more than he should.”

Learning how to let your characters speak and act for themselves in one of the hardest things for a beginning writer simply because the dividing line between showing and telling is so narrow. You need to train yourself to recognize the difference. Watching out for those telltales—the “he wondereds” and the “she noticeds” will help; but the true trick is to close the distance between you as writer and the characters you create to tell your story. You need to know them well enough that living inside their heads becomes as natural as being inside your own. They have to be living, breathing human beings (or aliens, as the case may be).

One often suggested trick if you’re having trouble with this is to write your first draft in first-person. That forces you to identify with your POV character, to think with his/her mind and to act with his/her body. Try it—and watch how often you discover yourself writing “I wondered.” Then stop.