In My Voice

I figured I’d like to read the work of more authors I’ve heard of, and met, whose work I’m unfa­mil­i­ar with. So I picked up some books from the lib­rary. I am struck, not for the first time, by the way so many Fantasy writers feel a need to adopt a “Fantasy” voice. You know what I mean: very form­al, flowery some­times, unnat­ur­al speech. I was told once, after an audi­tion, that I had a “phony Shakespeare voice.” The words stung, but they were true. I had been very nervous, and obvi­ous less com­fort­able with the piece, and the lan­guage, that I needed to be for the audi­tion. There’s a lot of Fantasy writ­ing that reminds me of that. In fact there are sev­er­al authors i just don’t read any­more because of that Voice. Some­times it works (in which case you could say that it isn’t a “phony” Fantasy voice!). But some­times it comes across as a mask to hide what is oth­er­wise weak writing.

In the one I’m read­ing right now (which I had no trouble set­ting down in order to pick up my com­puter) I have encountered no few­er than three phrases (with­in the pro­logue and first chapter) which made me say, “What does that even mean??” Lovely that it sounds very nice, but if it does­n’t mean any­thing, then why does the author do it??

In my second year at SiWC a bunch of us Fantasy writers sat down togeth­er to share our work. I traded with a young fel­low who clearly did­n’t think much of my writ­ing style. His was very flowery and poet­ic­al-sound­ing, and I told him so. He replied, dis­dain­fully, “That’s the way I think the prose should be.”

Well.

I sup­pose he’s nev­er going to be a fan of mine.

I felt a great deal of relief when I picked up Neil Gaiman’s Nev­er­where. It was the first time I read a Fantasy nov­el that had a more mod­ern, more nat­ur­al voice. The mes­sage to me was that Yes, I can write using a voice that works for me, and works for the story. I do NOT need to adopt a phony style just to fit in with the norm. I’ve been told that my writ­ing voice is very strong. That is a good thing. Oth­ers may not care for my voice, but it cer­tainly works for me, and for my story.