How To Date - How to Write a Book | 3. VOICE (Part 1)

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

In this third episode of How to Write a Book, Elizabeth Day’s new podclass series, hosts Sara Collins, Sharmaine Lovegrove and Nelle Andrew discuss finding your voice. What constitutes an authorial voice? And how does it differ from a narrative voice, or a character’s voice? Do they require vulnerability to cultivate? And how can they come together, like a perfectly pitched  symphony? Our expert podclass provides answers to all of this, as well as how to make your voice stand out; and even where to find it. Together, Sara, Sharmaine and Nelle are your on-hand writing community giving you the push you need to get started on that novel, memoir, or piece of non fiction you've always dreamed of writing. Books and authors discussed in these episodes include: •  The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins •  Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez •  Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn •  Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov •  The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe •  Vanity Fair, William Thackeray •  Bronte sisters •  Jane Fallon We also talk about: Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Tony Morrison, Marian Keyes, Jojo Moyes, John le Carré, Emily Henry, Jane Fallon, Dorothy Koomson, Beth O’Leary, Kit de Waal, Grace Paley and the Brontes. Executive produced by Elizabeth Day for Daylight Productions and Carly Maile for Sony Music Entertainment. Produced by Imogen Serwotka. Please do get in touch with us, your writing community, with thoughts, feedback and more at: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Hello and welcome back to how to write a book. It's Elizabeth Day here, author, podcaster, an executive producer of this 12-week pod class, which takes you by the hand and guides you right through from developing an idea to getting your final manuscript ready for publication. And how to write a book is also the place to come, if like, me, you're a passionate reader and want to find out more about what happens behind the scenes of the literary world. Every week, you'll get an exclusive insight into how and why our most

celebrated writers wrote the books they did and what it really means to create unforgettable stories. Because we all have a story in us. But how do we get it out there? To help you through the process, I've brought together a crack team. Leading agent Nell Andrew, best-selling author Sarah Collins and powerhouse publisher Charmaine Lovegrove, three amazing women who are also really good friends. So yes, we might be teaching you a new skill set, but you'll also get a seat at our friendship table. We hope very much you'll stay for the conversation and the laughs along the way. So now, without further ado, let me hand over to Sarah, Nell and Charmaine.

We're just going to start kick off by talking about literary voices that most inspire you. And I think it's impossible to choose. But I do like what Margaret Atwood said about her own voice. She described it in like a vignette. And she talks about her voice as a hot house plant with loads of like lush green foliage. And she talks about having to feed it and nourish it and take care of it. And then watching how people respond to it and how people say you've grown into your voice. And I love that vignette, even though it's not entirely kind of autobiographical, because it is that

notion of your voice is an external thing, like an extra muscle you're having to kind of cultivate that only you can do. And I think voices basically my kryptonite about books. It's what will just grab me, sink me, and keep me. I mean, voices. I love voice. For me, voices like absolutely at the core of everything that makes us human. And it is completely why I come to storytelling to hear different voices and to have different experiences. It's hard to say like favorites, but obviously James Baldwin, Tony Morrison, obviously. I too have trouble. I think if you're a big reader, you can't pick one. Someone said it's like being asked to pick a favorite child. But two people that always rise to the top of that pile for me, always, always, always.

You've both mentioned them are Margaret Atwood and Tony Morrison. And one of the things that I think is so distinctive about them is that their authorial voice matches almost exactly the way they are or were in real life. So I've listened to and watched so many interviews of Tony Morrison in particular just because she is one of my absolute heroes. And if you have as well, then you'll know what I mean when you say the way she talks is inimitable. It's purely her. There's a kind of booming cadence to it. There's a music. There is an authority. There's a flexibility and malleability. There's a cleverness. And I hear it in her novels as well. And it is so difficult. I think part of her genius and Margaret Atwood does it as well and where voice really works for me is if you have transported something of your inner self, the thing that is animating you. So the thing that animated Tony Morrison and her gorgeous, well-lived life found its way into her books. The thing that made her work so powerful and so unique is that it truly reflected the way she lived, which was built on this absolute refusal to accept the world's view of her as a marginalized person.

And so she recognized her point of view and her character's points of view as central and as worthy of being treated that way. And that's what I think gave her work that really inimitable quality of authority and self-worth and confidence and belonging and power, even when she was writing about things. like self-hatred or characters in incredibly difficult circumstances? It's a really difficult, difficult thing to aim for, and it involves a lot of trial and error. I'm convinced it didn't on her part because it seems as if it sort of came from her fully formed in the bluest eye, but you are kind of aiming for that. Now, I might not be as erudite and genius as Tony Morrison, but I'm aiming for whatever it is that animates me to find its way into my characters and on the page. And for me, that's when you feel like voice is working. I do also want

to say something about genre just before we move on, because the idea that voice isn't important in genre novels really irritates me. For example, rom-coms, I love rom-coms. I will know instantly whether I'm reading a Marian Keys or a Jojo-Moy's two exceptional examples of great co-act. Spie thrillers, I just, and I'm going to confess, because I think I'm such a bibliophile. it's going to kind of dent my rep, but I just read my first John Le Carre. Oh my God. Distinctive as hell. Sorry, I didn't mean to judge you.

You can tell a Le Carre from an Ian Fleming, the most genre driven of all psychological thrillers. I could go on and on and on. This idea that only literary novelists aspire to voice just isn't true. Any book to connect with an audience has got to be not just saying something, but saying it in a way that people really want to be there for the ride, that they're engaged not just by what they're being told, but the way they're being told it. It's really interesting the idea that genre doesn't have voice or it's not seen as important because I would say it's even more important because I'm listening to and reading a lot more books that are rom-coms or

crime books or I'm reading in like totally different genres that I wouldn't publish. And what's been really fascinating in this space is to recognize. that the voices of each genre are so distinctive, so distinctive, and I would say that they're even more important and less experimental. So in literary, you can have from sort of poetry prose narratives to kind of really straight, like literary stories, to really experimental, like a Rinnecena, Okojean, Nudy Brank, for example, or like Stoner as an example of like a really, you know, a quiet, undulating novel. But then in the genres, it's like, if you're not hitting that voice and tone in the way in which the readers are accustomed to, then it's just not going

to cut through. And you have to do that whilst being entirely original and while sticking to the tropes and they really know them so well and it's so impressive and so when i was pregnant with my twins um and the summer of 2021 um the whole of 2021 is pregnant and oh no months of it should I say and 37 five weeks I carried those twins it felt like it felt like it felt like it I felt that on 20-20-1. It always does, man. And for the 37.5 weeks of my pregnancy, I listened to what would be called chicklet and rom-cobs, and I got super into it. And I listened to Emily Henry. I listened to, okay, let me tell you, my queen, apart from Marion Keys in this area of commercial fiction, my queen is Jane Fallon. Gwen, go on, go on.

Jane Fallon's voice, you pick up any of her books at any point. You're in there. And you hear her voice and you're in. And you are like, Jane, baby girl, tell me, tell me what went down between her and him and her. And what does she do? How does she mash him up? How does she mash him up? How does she make him pay?

You tell me, Jay, baby. You tell me, I'm with you. You know, and it's like. You know who's another one? Dorothy Coomson. Oh, yes. I am, I am, oh, yes, Dorothy is. Yes, she is.

You know, and you can hear their, or a four-o-all voice, and then you have the characters, and they are so good at it. And so I came out of my pregnancy, reborn, not just as a mother of three children, but reborn as a new type of reader who understood voice and character and genre in the way, a totally different way and actually would spend a lot of that 37.5 weeks speaking to Elizabeth being like, oh my God, I just read this. And it's, have you read it? And also, I was doing a lot of it in audiobooks because I wasn't leaving the house. So I was even closer to this voice. And I could really hear it. Beth O'Leary is really good at it, like, as well. You know,

Kit DeVal is really, really great. And I mean, she's more literary. But it's like, you could just like voice, you know. I just want to get in there, because I'm going to just say this. Voice for me as an agent is the number one consideration for a book. I knew you'd say that. Absolutely, 100%. Like, it is the seduction for me. It is, I mean, you know, I have some people on very little material because that voice has just come in and hook me. She's saying I had very little material, Charmin. That's what she's saying. the race is right now. Sorry now. Keep going. It's okay. Dobs me in and your head girl energy. But it is that thing where it's just, it's the rhythm, it's the vocab, it's the warmth, it's the humour. I mean, voice is it. Voice is so important. And I think you can have an amazing plot and idea. But if your voice ain't shit, it's not going to translate. Voice is my kryptonite for just people generally. And I think that's what brings me to stories is that I'm just,

really obsessed with how people speak and articulate themselves. You can get protein at home or a protein latte at Tim's. No powders, no blenders, no shakers. Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein lattes, protein without all the work, at participating restaurants in Canada. This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin turbo V8 engine, the defender, Octa, is taking on the Dakar rally. The ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca. So we've heard our host's favorite authorial voices, and I'm a huge fan of the big-uping for Jane Fallon.

I'd like to add William Thackeray and maybe Sally Rooney or Raven Laylarnie into the mix. There's some of my favourite authorial voices for reasons we don't have enough time to go into right now. But I think the brief way of saying it is that there is such a specificity to each of them that I believe even if I didn't see their name on the cover, I would know who was writing the text. But what do we actually mean when we say voice? what really is it and what types of voice are there? Here's Nell with some of the answers. I'd like to talk a little bit at this point or raise this particular subject

because a lot of times I find writers, when they're just starting, coming to the agent, haven't got a publishing deal yet. It's been a very kind of raw space. When you're giving feedback, you do give feedback on the voice, but you get this confusion for authors between voice and tone here. And for me, tone is what I decide, what the reader decides a book is. You know, you've ever read something, or you still something in television? I didn't like the tone.

I didn't get the tone. It didn't kind of work for me. And I think tone is different from voice, but I think it gets confused with voice in quite kind of a big way. And I think tone is kind of the impression that the author wants the reader to have, which they use their voice to help create. But ultimately, you're not in control of that. And for me, as an agent, but also as a reader,

what pisses me off is when someone is basically using their voice to hammer what they want your impression to be down so much that their voice ends up becoming a polemic. And you're like, just let me fucking think for myself. Think for myself. Let me think for myself. Let me decide whether or not this person is good or this person is bad. Like, I have my contribution to make here too. The other thing, though, that pisses me off is when the voice is so bland or so lacking

in injection from the author that you're like, what do you want me to get from this? Like, where are you? Where are you? And it is finding that balance, which I think is, I guess, the voice of the book, where you're like, okay, so the voice of the characters here, the voice of the book is kind of coming together to create a certain tone, but there's a participation then. And I think the people that we talk about have this incredible perspective, this very clear sense of what they want their perspective on life to be. And it's up to you to decide whether or not you receive, agree or challenge that perspective.

And they use their voice to do that. But for me, the failures that come with people in their voice is when they are using that to bludgeon the tone one way or the other. that will always turn me off in a voice always always always it makes me going i'm out sarah's really annoying though because she never needed any help on her voice shaman she didn't no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no wait a lot of help of help. Like, the voice is like, maybe not from... You.

Do I need help for me? I can remember. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, and click. That is not what I meant. And I needed help from you, Mel, as you know, vast amounts of help. My point is, I'm not sure anyone can help with your voice, but you, because voice is personality. So it would be like me saying to you, Nell, help me to be me.

me, do you know what I mean? So I have a theory that there are many different voices. There are characters' voices, but the two important ones when you're starting out are the voice of the novel. And each novel might have a different voice, but beating beneath that, there's a kind of authorial voice, which is your personality or your take on the world, what you hate, what you love, what it is you're trying to say, you know, that thing that's driving you to write this novel. That's what I mean when I say voice. So can I just check that we're okay? While she is giving you side-eye, that's where I'm going to interject and say, that's where the confusion of the author voice, the narrator's voice and the character's voice. So before you two continue this, then we have to be clear that there is a distinction between the three.

And so what you're saying is that where you didn't necessarily need Nell's help at that moment in time was about. your author voice, but what you needed later was editorial advice and editorial and character and character, just saying. It's also helpful, this kind of argy bargy, to show that voice in itself is so complicated and multi-layered and made up of so many things intricately woven together. To have these like distinctive voices through character and then distinctive voice through narrative is just absolutely fascinating. We had this with Rainbow Milk, by Mendez, when we first read it, there was something about it that we said to Mendez,

like, you're not screaming. It came in as nonfiction. And we were like, you're not able to scream at the people that you want to scream. You're not able to shout, you're not able to rage and rail. But I can feel that this, that your character wants to do that. If you turned it into fiction, it might give you that space to be vulnerable,

to shout, to scream, to to rage and also to love and to feel that love and to have the multitudes. And at the moment, this is an incredible story and it's your story. But if you were to move it on and to make it somebody else's story but transpose some of those feelings onto this character and make it fictional, then perhaps you might be able to do something different. And that difference is what will make it really sore. And they went away and they did it and it took them a couple of years.

But they came back with this really incredible book, Rainbow Milk. And you can see with Jesse as a character is not Mendez. They're a different person. But they may have been through some similar things. But actually it's Jesse's voice alongside that authorial voice from Mendes. that makes it really, really powerful. And so when we published this book in April 2020, then people really loved that level of authenticity,

but also that Jesse's voice was just so clear, and it still soars so high. People really, really love Rainbow Milk and really, really connected to it. And I'm so glad that Mendez was able to take on that advice and go away and dig deep and go fast. Was his voice really different when it moved across the genre? Yes.

Really? Yeah. Why? Certain things weren't quite coming together and the story was almost being gobbled up. So once it was a different story and a different genre, then you were able to elongate those experiences so that we could actually feel them and we could hear them. Whereas before it was kind of like, and then this happened. It was just different. It was totally different.

I think there's something psychological there as well because you kind of give yourself permission to go to places where you might be afraid to go in nonfiction for whatever reason, just the kind of the feeling of revealing something or of tapping into something or even of offending living relatives or friends or whatever it might be. Like I do find myself quite reluctant to say things in nonfiction that I will tackle in fiction that are absolutely true, they happen, but I've disguised them. and then you sort of feel yourself a bit more free to go where you need to go. One of the things that I deal with voice is really character voice and the distinction of character voice.

So today I've been writing an editorial letter to an author and I was saying that there's lots of instances where there's three women and they're going through sort of a similar thing because they're in the same place. And it can be quite hard to find the distinction between their voices. because although they are distinctive characters, there isn't enough nuance between them for me to delineate who's who. So I'm sort of forgetting which characters which. And when I see them as individuals, then when they're not with the others in a scene,

then I know who they are. But when they're all together, they kind of end up being one, especially because they're from the same place, so they have a similar accent. And so I'm literally writing this letter today to an author saying what I think that they need to do to make it distinctive. And one of the things that I'm suggesting is actually giving more weight to the scene by adding more like clothing or adding gestures that we can see as being part of each character so that I could just separate them a bit. more because at the moment they're all coming together. And it's just really, really interesting how that can even happen. But I really noticed it in the second read that the distinction

between the narrator's voice and the characters, the three different characters' voices, is not distinct enough for me to be able to figure out who they are. You can definitely come up with ways of making sure the character's voice is separate to the narration voice and that the awful voice that's telling the story is just above. So you're really kind of doing three things at any one time because you're working with that awful voice, you're working with that narrator voice, and you're working with the characters are separate but one voice

because of how they interact each other. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days, delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groom lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered. A cabana? That's a no. But a banana, that's a yes.

A nice tan, sorry, nope. But a box fan, happily yes. A day of sunshine, no. A box of fine wines? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now.

Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. This episode is brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant. you're building something big and Square's there for all of it giving your customers more ways to order whether that's in-person with Square kiosk

or online instant access to your sales plus the funding you need to go even bigger and real-time insights so you know what's working what's not and what's next because when you're doing big things your tools should to

visit square.ca to get started So as you've just heard, we've moved there from authorial voice to character voice. But how often are these different voices blended together? And does it matter? Here's Nell asking the question. I mean, I'm really interested, Sauron, in how much of your voice is in your character's voice? actually because when I'm editing I find voice is a thing that's really personal and it's definitely going to be the thing that when I'm editing I think is the biggest bug bear and I wonder

if that is because it is quite personal yeah I think that's exactly right and I think it's also why it's sometimes an uncomfortable question to answer because I think to write a good novel you have to reveal things things that people will align with you wrongly or rightly that could be quite embarrassing or personal or delve too deep in the psyche, you know, including difficult things or horrible things. I mean, I always start out answering this question by saying, I am not an accused double murderess, you know, like, and I've never wanted to kill anyone. Oh, are you sure you've never wanted to kill anyone, sure. I love, I'll shine are you, I know, got straight in there, like, only in theory, only in theory, like, what the hell, where are the bodies of

your backyard. None. I don't have a backyard. What we're doing is it's this really strange illusion of like building fake people and convincing readers that they're real, right? And so you don't get that without searching for authenticity. And you can only really find that in two places when you're, I think we're talking about character now, but you can't really talk about voice without talking about character. And one is you, your own experiences or your own feelings about the world or the way you react to things or those sort of secret fantasy. and desires or hates or whatever it might be that will make a character interesting and give them a voice that is interesting. And the other is real people, which is the other uncomfortable thing

that everyone in a writer's life should know that they are probably being studied at some point for a gesture or a quirk or a turn or phrase or a story that's going to be stolen and used to make a character. But that's the only way you can make real people. It's the only way you can give people real voices. And I was thinking about what Charmaine said about this difficulty when you have people who come from the same place and identify as the same gender and are the same age and have the same accent. The only way I think to distinguish between them apart from externally is to think about their backstory because no matter how similar people are on the surface, no human beings have the same backstory and not even twins. We're all walking down a path where things have

happen that have shaped us. And I think the way I would tackle that is to think about how can I bring the backstory out in the way these women are speaking. So they're not going to sound different in a kind of surface way. But one may example be very sure of herself in the world because she's had an education or some man or woman has loved her the way she deserves to be loved. And another might have been a victim of a sexual assault or she may, you know, have just stolen something or whatever it is, these people have secrets and desires and fears and traumas and that affects the voice of the character. The thing is, it also affects the voice of the authorial voice is going to be informed and developed exactly the same way you develop a character's voice.

That is when it gets really personal and when you're kind of going into your own likes and dislikes and fears and desires and hates. But it all pours into voice for me. And so yes, there has to be a bit of me and everything. In fact, there's so much of me. I'm really loving this book I'm writing now. I'm saying that for your benefit now. Partly, I think, because there is so much of me in it. It feels easy. It feels actually like it's just flowing. And that probably means it shit. Don't get too excited. But it does feel as if it's just flowing. I didn't get to use my orgasm metaphor in the idea. Hod class. So I'm going to use it here. Because there is a moment, And writers will know this when it stops being work and it starts feeling like something has

clicked, like there's a lock sliding into place. And the moments are fleeting, but it happens where the character has done something you didn't have to invent or the voice is just, I talked about the first line of the book coming to me. The voice has just leapt out at you and it's just exactly what you needed. And it sounds like someone that you didn't create. It sounds like someone real who's occupying space in your head. And I call it the click or the orgasm, it is that feeling where you are helpless, you're not in control, you're letting go but something wonderful is happening. And I feel like when voice works, the writer gets there, the writer knows that this kind of magic is happening when the voice starts working. I mean,

I personally just can't wait to read it. But can I make a theory about this? Because actually, Sarah, I think the reason why this is flowing is because I think you are now at a stage where you are able to be readily vulnerable. I think voices are about being incredibly vulnerable. And I think when you first start writing, being that vulnerable, it's really fucked up. I think it's really hard to do that. But you're like, okay, I've done it.

I've been published. I've seen reviews. I've been like literally laid bare. I had to like adapt it and lay bare again. So I think you've made your peace with vulnerability and the ways that you can be vulnerable. and boundaryed. And that's probably so happy for you.

The flow is tapping into the voice, which is tapping into the characters, which means that the book is coming. And it's about being vulnerable. Which is good news for all of us. But that vulnerability in that exposure means that letting go is where the flow comes from. I think that's true.

I think there is an element of letting go. Of not being self-conscious, of not filtering yourself. Which comes into voice. Going back to authenticity. I am so glad we got to Sarah's orgasm metaphor in this episode. We got there finally. I mean, as we all know, sometimes orgasms do take a while to get to. We're going to leave it there for part one on voice, just as we arrive at the idea of vulnerability of having to surrender something of yourself to let your voice flow.

And that's a whole subject in and of itself. There's so. much more to say on voice that we're going to have to make this into a two-part episode again. In part two, you'll hear why vulnerability matters so much in the author's voice, as well as once you're ready, how you can go about excavating it. I mean, in a way, it's something all of us are honing and constantly in search of, that ability to plunder the depths of our truth and our emotion and to bring it to the surface and to discover that our vulnerability is actually our superpower and it is the thing that connects us all. It's the thing that connects us day to day with other human beings but it's also the thing that will connect you, the writer

to your reader in life as well as in writing. And to top it off in part two, there'll be a listener exercise to help you get those creative juices flowing. Join us next time. Until then, goodbye. so much for listening and please do remember to like and subscribe and share a link with everyone you know. This is a Daylight Productions and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast.