Narrative Voice, Part I

The emphasis of seminars, blogs, teachers of writing, and workshops today is often on plot and character. Narration—narrative voice—which is one of the most important factors in creating an attractive, compelling text, whether a short story, poem, or longer work like a novel or novella— is often underemphasized. Yet voice is vitally important. In this blog I want to list several reasons why it is important and why writers need to give it more attention than it generally gets these days.

 The narrator of a story is a character. This is obvious in first person stories. We recognize that the language of a first-person narrator helps readers understand the character’s psychological disposition, attitudes, and morality. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” begins, “True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?” The short, terse sentences create an impression of the character's nervous, jumpy, hyperactive disposition. The last part shows he is deranged, thinking he can hear every noise on earth and even things in heaven and hell. Poe’s masterful writing sets up the character in one paragraph so we know he is insane and erratic from the very beginning of the story. Poe does it by means of narrative voice.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” uses first person, but what about third person narrative? It is here that the technique of narrative becomes more subtle and perhaps requires more attention than with first-person narration. The author is creating a character in this type of discourse, but not a character who participates in the action of the story.

 And yet in third-person stories the narrator is 

a character none the less. The narrator of a third-

person story is, in fact, the first figure the reader encounters. The voice, the one telling the story, even if from a perspective outside of it, is also the character to whom the reader is most exposed. As such, it is vital that the persona, the one telling the tale, is as carefully drawn as any other character in a work of literature.

The narrator in any work of fiction is not the author. Charles Dickens wrote Bleak House, but the voice that tells the story is not his voice even if he himself assumed it was. Even in autobiographies or memoirs, writers create a character. As I write these words, I am creating a character of myself! It is impossible not to do this. We create ourselves from the same imaginative facility by which we make up fictional characters. We are always creating characters when we write, even if we are writing factual prose or confessional poetry.

A common interpretation of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” is that Frost is talking about his decision to become a poet but he moves the experience further and applies it to all decision-making. Wrong! Robert Frost may have been writing about his decision to become a poet; this might have been what inspired the poem; but he was not writing about himself. He was creating a character based on his experience. Between an author and his or her voice, there is always distance.

A great deal of a writer will go into narrative voice—experience, memory, attitude, politics, morality—everything that defines what a person is. And yet, the voice is none the less a projection. I would even go so far as to say it is impossible for me to write as “me.” In order to state anything, I must project a character of myself, and it is the character who speaks, not me.

When any author writes, even in third person, he or she is not speaking with his or her voice. The writer is creating a voice. This voice is a character who actively participates in the story. Even if readers might not consciously recognize as much, it is none the less true and a reader does understand this, even if at the subconscious or subliminal level.

More on this. A great deal can be said about narrative voice. We will explore the topic in a couple more blogs.

I've experimented with narrative voice in my full-length novel, The Sorceress of the Northern Seas. Each segment of the story told about the Sorceress Lybecca is from a different narrator—some of the sections are told in first person, some in third. Pick up a copy.

Check out my Writer's Page. Strange Brew, The Gallery, The Prophetess. All marvelous reads. Some new titles will be coming soon.

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