Although I feel very comfortable with my writing voice during the act of putting pixels to.. er.. pixels I guess, I have often wondered how other people perceive it. I am just as paranoid as the next writer it seems. I have for a long time had the sneaking suspicion that my writing style is… not boring as such, but lacks a certain dynamism. There are very few jokes aside from the dry observational variety, and I sometimes feel I present situations rather plainly. That is as best as I can put it, although you will have the opportunity to judge for yourselves eventually of course (a whole new can of paranoid worms there).

Now, I don’t mean this to be in any way detrimental to Carl Sagan’s writing, which as I mentioned, I am thoroughly enjoying. But I found some relief in knowing that if anything his style of writing was “dryer” than mine. Again, I don’t mean to be critical, and perhaps “dry” is the wrong word to begin with. This is not a situation where I think, “well, his writing is worse than mine, and he got published”. It’s more a case of, “his writing is perhaps plainer, more dry than mine, but it is still interesting to read”. Very much so in fact.

Interesting does not sound like much of a compliment, I’ll grant you, and it perhaps represents a kind of minimum requirement of a text for most people. However, being interesting is very important to me when it comes to the creative endeavors of others. A piece of music does not have to be emotive, or have clever lyrics, or even be pleasant to the ear, for example. But it must be interesting; it must have something about it that keeps me listening. The same goes for visual art or written text.

So, to find another author who exhibits some of the traits that I worry about in my own style, and that I still find interesting to read, and want to read more of, is a great source of reassurance. I guess the lesson is to trust your own style. I often will read something and really love the voice of the author. Something in me tells me I could never write like that. And, of course, that will be true for a great many authors I read. But, perhaps the aim of writing like an admired author is something of a red herring anyway. After all, your aim should never be to write like them, but to write like yourself. That is what your “voice” is all about.

I think you should be less concerned with what other people think of your writing, and be more worried about what you think of it. Do you like it when you write it, and later, when you read it back? Worrying about other people will come later, of course, and at some point you may lose the objectivity that tells you what you’ve written is great (after going through the fifth draft of a chapter, for example), but remember, it’s your voice, and if you find it interesting, chances are someone else will.

Who here is confident about their writing voice, and why? What gave you that confidence?

‘Shouldn’t you be writing the script instead?’

Fool!

True. But actually this week has been productive because of one thing. I’ve found my voice. Now voice is the most important thing for a writer. Sure you can write the best medical drama ever, but if you know nothing about hospitals (unless you can get one to collaborate with) this will be an ugly mess. Of course as the writer of the original book it was quite easy to tap into the voice, however, the problem was how to present it. Now the problem with the book is that it is mostly a first person narrative. Though there is lots of character interaction, most of this is interrupted by inner thoughts. How do I approach that? Well, I had a number of options.

1. The Voice Over.
2. The Talk to the Camera.
3. Ignore it Altogether.
4. A mixture of 1 and 2.

I tried writing the first chapter (which you can read here… (link) cheap plug) first using Option 3. I tried to break it down into a normal scene. Go from A-B. But it didn’t work. And the reason was that by doing this I lost a lot of the dialogue that could not realistically be spoken, and I also lost a lot of the character. This way would also have a drastic knock-on effect on the rest of the book as it is almost 60-70% inner monologue.

Ok, how about Option 2.) ?

Well, the problem is twofold.

Firstly, the comparison with High Fidelity and others is too great in this mode.
Secondly, as these thoughts happen so frequently the talk to the camera would either have to be restricted and once again lose some of the character or be so frequent as to be distracting.

A mixture of 1 and 2 was a thought, but maybe a little odd to figure out which bits would be which.

Which leaves me with Option 1.

Voice over seems the best route. In fact, it’s perfect as reading the book back, I found an over exaggerated element to the book. Something which would be greatly improved by voice over and also flash cuts (Quick cuts from the real world to the imaginary and back). So that was decided. The voiceover would introduce the scene or ‘day’, comment on the background thoughts of Michael and the rest of the action would just play out around them.

Once you make any decision like this it’s best to stick to it. Sure you can change your mind, but when you’re fifty pages in and you decide it’s not right all you have is fifty pages of wasted time. As soon as I decided on that I had to stick to it. Those fans of Bladerunner, ignore that thought as obviously voice over/non-voice over is possibly the biggest debate that science fiction fans have. But late on Thursday I sat down, 33 Steps at hand and started writing. And then

BAM    BAM    BAM    BAM

Four scenes were done? Four sections of my 33 steps were done! 12% of my film was done!

If I kept that pace up on a weekly basis, I’d be done in nine weeks. It was incredible, as soon as I had found my voice it just flowed from me, sweeping up the book in itself and transferring it.

It should be noted now that the chance of anyone completing a perfect script in less than three months is absurd. So I will assure you blog ten will probably be documenting my failure to keep up this pace or will be:

Rewrite Rewrite Rewrite… actually, it may just be that anyway.

Well, we shall see…