Writing Voice

CAGE MATCH in 5...4...3...

Just kidding, I know there are a lot of people who think he sucks. I figured that was his least likely to be considered suckable book though.

 

I think this approach makes sense when the bad writing is something that isn't popular. But when it's something like 50 Shades, it seems like there was enough "wow", at least for some people, to override the rest.

I read the first Discworld and didn't feel the need to read more, so... yeah, #29 probably wouldn't work for me!

 

I agree - this is my point, really.

So when people criticize 50 Shades or Twilight or anything else as being flat out "bad", I don't really get it. Clearly these books conveyed some serious meaning, or at least emotion, to a hell of a lot of people.

 

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I've never met anyone (admittedly small sample) who read this and said they didn't enjoy it.

 

Post 61, dude.

 

Don't judge me.

Statement Revoked

 

I tried re-reading The Colour Of Magic a few years ago. Couldn't do it. I loved it when I was 13, now it just feels clumsy. But the later books went so far beyond the fantasy parody he was originally writing - they were funny and they were wise and reading them made me want to be a better person.

One of the things I like about having the Discworld collection on my shelf now is that as a writer, I can look at the early stuff he wrote, and then look at the later, and see how he developed and got better over the 30-odd years he was writing them.

Point is, the later ones might work for you. Not #29, that leans too much on earlier books. #31 is reasonably stand-alone.

 

Don't feel bad. I was going to suggest it as well! Perfect example of a book that does a lot of things we're advised not to, but still works.

 

Personally, I think @S A Lee is lying...

(Kidding...Kind of.)

 

I'd say Twilight did indeed appeal to the right emotions in the right group at the right time. Grammatically, it is atrocious (seriously, Google it) Meyer admits to doing no research whatsoever and it shows (early copies of Breaking Dawn put Brazil on the west coast of South America, when it's on the east coast, that's how bad it is) and then there's the moral debate (fans defended Edward like their lives depended on it) and as mentioned before, the common threads between Christian Grey and Robert Lee Yates is more than a little bit disturbing.

A former colleague even went as low as to ask if I was even straight because I found Christian Grey creepy and couldn't get into even a dissection of the book. In a deadpan tone, I said, 'I'm demisexual, in layman's terms, it means I don't get the initial 'he's hot!' reaction, I get the later one from when you're attracted to what's inside, and I find his insides rotten!'

@Spencer1990 Sadly, I wish I was sometimes...

 

Okay, I ordered the free sample of #31. We'll see....

ETA: Although I just checked my list at Goodreads and apparently I've also read a later book in the series, #33 (Going Postal). My comment was: Maybe I went into it with a bad attitude. I'll be more positive this time...

I suspected Terry Pratchett wasn't going to be for me, and I was right.

It wasn't a painful read or anything. I could appreciate the writing, and the humour. I just had absolutely zero emotional involvement in anything that happened, so... not a great book for me.​

Maybe I went into it with a bad attitude. I'll be more positive this time...

 

My experience with teachers was pitiful on this front, as they usually hate sci-fi and fantasy.
Seeing how everyone's urging me to find a more beta/s, I'll start actively looking for some. The thought had crossed my mind before, but I kind of brushed it off that it's not that important.

 

Do you know anybody else in your social circle who is writing? You can offer to beta read for them, in return for a swap. Are there any writers' groups near to where you live that you could join? Just look around and see what you come up with.

I found that when I let it be known that I was writing a novel, I had people asking if they could read it. To this date, I have never asked anybody to beta read. They have always offered. I think the trick is to let it be known that you're writing.

Don't make the big mistake I did, though. It took me 5 years to finish the first draft, and I gave the first draft to everybody who had been waiting to read it. So a huge majority of my friends and relatives got a shot at my worst effort! There are a few whom, I suspect, will NOT volunteer to read my second novel, when it's done!

Ration the betas a bit. You want to have a second and third tranche of readers, who will read your new and improved versions. So don't give the first draft out to everybody who wants it. Just a few at a time. Don't expect to give the 'improved' draft back to your original readers. They are not going to want to read it for the second time—or at least most of them won't. What you want are fresh eyes. New readers will let you know whether or not you've solved the problems the first readers caught.

 

For me, I tend to write for myself. I do that though because I tend to write 1000 words in one go and then I'll never return to that story (unfortunately). It's just an written expression of the "film" that is playing in my head and I sometimes indulge my want to write it out.

I don't tend to share what I write with anyone because I always worry that they'll tell me it's good or they really like it just because they want me to feel good about myself (a bit stupid to feel that way, but I do). I think I benefit from not sharing, to an extent, in the sense that I don't write then with the consideration of "what will X think when s/he reads this?" I write how I think with all my strange thoughts and interjections. For example, I love analysing the word structure and grammar in sentences. So if I write a sentence of my story and then find something interesting in it, then I'll point it out. It happened to me as I was writing this post actually - I wrote "for example, I love analysing..." and the spell-check is telling me that "analysing" is spelled incorrectly because it doesn't have a "z." So if I'd written that sentence in a story (with myself as the character), my next sentence would probably have been "Analysing with an "s," not an "z." American spelling really does irk me sometimes."

None of that probably makes any sense, but what I'm ultimately trying to convey, is that I think you should write for yourself. If you're writing for yourself, you are developing your own style and making your story / book unique.

 

Well, there is practically no writers group where I live; that was a part of the reason I became fluent in English at 14. I'll have to ask around friends and friends of friends. I get what you mean about the first draft, I used to make this mistake.

 

Style is extremely personal and that's really what we're talking about here. Even when you get feedback from people saying they hate it if you read it back and think that it reads really well to you then you need to trust yourself. If readers are saying that it's actively distracting them then you may want to ask them to point to specific passages that they really had problems with and ask them exactly what they mean by that.

It's also possible that they are hitting a slightly different problem that I often encounter in my first draft of a project and that's over-writing narration and letting myself go on a bit of a wander just to follow some fancy or to make a joke that I really loved but that doesn't serve the story specifically. This isn't really a style thing (as such) it's just a matter of cutting down the volume of words. One of the major problems with feedback is actually getting to the root of what criticism actually means; when someone says that this is distracting do they mean that it breaks the flow by talking about another subject; do they mean that it hurts the pacing by putting too many words between dialogue lines so the reader forgets what the first line was; or do they mean that a joke or narration takes away from the tone set up in the scene? Or there might be a completely different problem unrelated to the narrator; is your scene just boring and you are jazzing it up with a playful, active narration style to keep the scene alive. In that case yes the narration will be 'distracting' but not because it's bad, but because the scene isn't holding focus. All of these are different problems but readers will often just remember themselves falling out of the scene more than asking themselves why.

In general I would strongly suggest that you write for yourself first and foremost. If you think it's good and you think it works then you need to trust yourself on that. I definitely wouldn't suggest trying to change your style unless you have a really clear idea of what changes to make and how you are going to do it differently. I can certainly appreciate that being jokey and playing word games with yourself might come across as obnoxious to a reader; I get that all the time, spending three paragraphs to set up a really wonderful pun. For that stuff you may need to be a bit dispassionate and cut the jokes if they don't directly serve the scene and the tone, but I don't think that's the same as changing the style as such, it's just pulling out a line or two that, on reflection, you think doesn't quite fit what this passage does.

I can't put it strongly enough that you are your own audience. If it doesn't engage you to read it back then it won't engage anyone else either. Yes you need feedback and yes you need to be able to take a step back and make changes even to passages you love if it better serves the book overall, but you just won't write a good book if it doesn't engage you as a reader. That's important too. Often over active narration comes because it's fun to write. And why wouldn't it be? It's fun to write a clever, interesting, funny narrator. But the narration shouldn't be the focus of the book, the plot and characters should be. And when you come back and look at it critically you may see that while it was fun to write it's not as engaging to read.

You may also find that some change in narrative device might help you here. Writing first person books gives you a lot more scope to play with the narration because it's not some unseen all-knowing eye who's being clever, it's your character being clever and that's something that will potentially re-cast your narrative style in a way that is more directly engaging and keeps it's attachment to the action.

 

If you've already tried a later one the odds are rather lower. Going Postal isn't as good as Monstrous Regiment (#31) and isn't a patch on Night Watch, but there's not the kind of massive difference in style and quality between them as there is between the later ones and The Colour Of Magic. I just don't like seeing people ignore the rest of the series based on reading the early ones, since they become such different books.

ETA: How do people feel about Catch-22? That book was harrowing but I thought the writing was amazing.

 

Lots of great ideas in this post. I especially liked:

That's it, in a nutshell. All you've got to go on is the fact that something disturbed your reader. They may be able to articulate exactly what it is, or not. But the fact that they said they were bothered at all is grounds for investigation.

@LostThePlot 's remarks brought up another issue I'd like to mention as well. I'd say don't be too quick to hand unfinished work to betas. If you have questions about your style, you can certainly give them a chapter to look at, and feed back to you. (Our Workshop here in the forum is good for that kind of feedback.) But in general, FINISH your work before you start handing it around. Finish AND do a self edit as well.

Let it sit for a while after you've written 'the end,' then go back, do an edit ...then give it to a couple of betas. Don't exhaust your betas with half-finished, half-baked stuff. And keep in mind, the less you give them, the more they will focus on nitpickery issues like word choice, sentence structure, etc, and the less they will be able to focus on character development, story structure, plot holes, etc.

Make sure it's your best completed work you're handing out to people.

 

Everybody of a certain age read L'Etranger, but I can't remember too much about it, only the song lyrics...'standing on a beach with a gun in my hand, dum dee dum, dum dee dum, staring at the sand, killing an Arab.'

Catch22 - I have two copies, actually.

Of all the 1948 French writers, that Anais Nin's dirty book probably had the most impact, can't say why.

I struggle with Hitchhiker's Guide - that's a problem for me. And I read extracts of Watership Down to my wife at bedtimes. I stroke her hair and change her water. She's asleep by eleven.

 

I'll second Catch-22. I was going to suggest this one, but I have a feeling the humor is not for everyone.

 

I'd be good with Catch-22.

Damn, have we got one? @Tenderiser, @Laurin Kelly, you guys going to ruin this for us?

 

I haven't read Catch-22 so I can't voice anything there...

 

I think it's nice - brushing her hair.

What does she do afterwards? Does she exfoliate, does she scrub her feet? I'd read that - alone, not a narration.