why oh why do I follow metafandom?
Nothing gets my goat more these days than the ridiculous hypocrisy in articles linked in metafandom every day. I mean, really. From children playing at being righteous victims, or worse, playing at being "educated crusaders for justice" to people who just plain think they're a lot smarter than they actually are.
The reason for this post is I just clicked on one article about a writer's voice in fiction. I did this because the extract beneath the link said something extremely curious: that a writer's voice is not, and should never be something that is imposed upon a story.
Uh, what?
Of course you should impose voice upon writing! What else is it for? It's true that every writer has a certain set of natural tendencies and inclinations that add up to a certain voice, yes, but that's not where it ends. A good writer should be a chameleon, able to change and adapt his or her use of words, structure, and punctuation to suit a certain story and the way it needs to be told. You don't always NEED to change your natural voice to tell a story, but quite often you really do.
It really all comes down to a bad American Idol analogy: some writers are like Kelly Clarkson, who, in her own element, singing a very specific style of music, can be brilliant. Would I hand Kelly Clarkson a Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston cover? Or even Aretha Franklin? Of course I would! But those singers all sing in roughly the same style that Kelly Clarkson does: lots and lots of chest voice and belting, only really alternating to head voice when the volume needs to go down.
Would I have ever handed Kelly Clarkson something like Mad World, though, like Adam Lambert covered during the most recent season? Hell no. She'd never pull it off. Lambert understood that the basic function of a good pop star, like a writer, is to be a chameleon, to disappear into whatever show he or she is trying to put on, to put on a costume, try on a character, and tell a completely different story from a completely different point of view. And he'd find a way to make Aretha Franklin work even for him.
The real source of the misunderstanding is this: when writing a story, the narrator is not, is never the writer. Never. It doesn't matter if it's third person unlimited, third person limited, or third person omniscient. There's always, at the very least, if not an actual person involved in the action, an invisible character floating around in the sky, watching the whole story go by. The voice you choose to write in is that character's. If I can read your story and think to myself, "Wow, boy do I love the voice Joe Smith writes in!" as I go from page to page, you're probably doing it wrong.
The reason I didn't just comment and start an argument there? SHE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT DASHES ARE FOR. OH MY GOD. She kept going on about how that's part of her "voice" that she uses a ton of them all the time, but the uses them where she should be using commas or ending the sentence, or in place of semicolons. Em dashes have one specific purpose: to insert an unrelated, parenthetical, or otherwise interrupting thought mid-sentence. The difference between using parentheses and dashes is this: parentheses downplay their significance or influence on the rest of the writing, and dashes call a lot of attention to it. LEARN GRAMMAR BEFORE YOU WRITE ESSAYS CRITIQUING OTHER PEOPLE. I'm unconfrontational.
The reason for this post is I just clicked on one article about a writer's voice in fiction. I did this because the extract beneath the link said something extremely curious: that a writer's voice is not, and should never be something that is imposed upon a story.
Uh, what?
Of course you should impose voice upon writing! What else is it for? It's true that every writer has a certain set of natural tendencies and inclinations that add up to a certain voice, yes, but that's not where it ends. A good writer should be a chameleon, able to change and adapt his or her use of words, structure, and punctuation to suit a certain story and the way it needs to be told. You don't always NEED to change your natural voice to tell a story, but quite often you really do.
It really all comes down to a bad American Idol analogy: some writers are like Kelly Clarkson, who, in her own element, singing a very specific style of music, can be brilliant. Would I hand Kelly Clarkson a Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston cover? Or even Aretha Franklin? Of course I would! But those singers all sing in roughly the same style that Kelly Clarkson does: lots and lots of chest voice and belting, only really alternating to head voice when the volume needs to go down.
Would I have ever handed Kelly Clarkson something like Mad World, though, like Adam Lambert covered during the most recent season? Hell no. She'd never pull it off. Lambert understood that the basic function of a good pop star, like a writer, is to be a chameleon, to disappear into whatever show he or she is trying to put on, to put on a costume, try on a character, and tell a completely different story from a completely different point of view. And he'd find a way to make Aretha Franklin work even for him.
The real source of the misunderstanding is this: when writing a story, the narrator is not, is never the writer. Never. It doesn't matter if it's third person unlimited, third person limited, or third person omniscient. There's always, at the very least, if not an actual person involved in the action, an invisible character floating around in the sky, watching the whole story go by. The voice you choose to write in is that character's. If I can read your story and think to myself, "Wow, boy do I love the voice Joe Smith writes in!" as I go from page to page, you're probably doing it wrong.
The reason I didn't just comment and start an argument there? SHE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT DASHES ARE FOR. OH MY GOD. She kept going on about how that's part of her "voice" that she uses a ton of them all the time, but the uses them where she should be using commas or ending the sentence, or in place of semicolons. Em dashes have one specific purpose: to insert an unrelated, parenthetical, or otherwise interrupting thought mid-sentence. The difference between using parentheses and dashes is this: parentheses downplay their significance or influence on the rest of the writing, and dashes call a lot of attention to it. LEARN GRAMMAR BEFORE YOU WRITE ESSAYS CRITIQUING OTHER PEOPLE. I'm unconfrontational.