How To Date - How to Write a Book | 4. VOICE (Part 2)

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

In this fourth episode of How to Write a Book, Elizabeth Day’s new podclass series, hosts Sara Collins, Sharmaine Lovegrove and Nelle Andrew continue their discussion about 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. And, at the end, Elizabeth provides her final reflections. We hope you enjoyed this week’s episode on voice. Stay tuned for next week’s conversation on…CHARACTER. 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. c a slash ymx hello and welcome back to how to write a book it's elizabeth day here author podcaster and 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 and 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. In part one of this two-part episode on Voice, we chatted about the most inspiring authorial voices we've read or heard, and the types of voice we should think about in crafting our own work. But why do we need to learn to be vulnerable? Here's now answering that very question. A lot of times I will say to authors, I'm like, you're not being vulnerable, you need to go further.

You've got to go into this. You're resisting it. Why are you resisting it? I think there'll be some listeners who'll be like, well, I'm writing a rom-com. Like, I don't need to be vulnerable. Or I'm writing like a thriller. What does this have to do with me?

Yeah. And what I would say, though, is that voice is connection. The voice of the book, the voice of the character, the voice of you as the author is the connection point between me, the reader and you, the writer. And the voice is what makes something that might seem incredibly literary or erudite accessible. And it's what might take something that might seem quite straightforward, particularly in that genre, and elevates it and takes it up into somewhere else. When I think of voice, I think of the cool girl speech and gone girl, okay? There's lots of people who may not like that book. There's loads of people who absolutely adore it.

But I think the one thing that people talk about again and again and again is that speech. There's something in the voice of that speech is the way that she articulates the rage and resentment of what it's like to be female, trying to, you know, adapt and adjust yourself in a relationship to make yourself be a certain kind of thing and attract a certain kind of person and not be vulnerable and having to hide that. That, like, accessed a lot of wider female vulnerabilities in that regard. And it was really kind of connective. And I guess that's when it really, really works. The question, I guess, a lot of people might be asking is, well, what makes it not work?

What is it about my voice that's not connecting with someone? And I find that really hard to answer. It goes back to that question that we talked about with ideas, which is around consistency. What I love as an editor is helping writers find that consistency in a voice and ensuring that their characters have that consistent voice, even if they're doing different things that they still sound like themselves. Your voice has to have a consistency to it

because we have to be able to recognize it and we have to be able to trust it. and with vulnerability comes to trust. And so what we're saying is that that consistency that leads to trust is through the vulnerability ultimately. I think it's also important for writers to accept. Not everyone is going to like your voice. I mean, you know, it's a fact of life that it's a very difficult thing to do to be vulnerable and put yourself on the page.

And it's going to connect with the people who will respond to it. If it is your authentic voice, if you've done the work to find that, to access that, and to bring that to the page, and you've done the work on the characters, and all of your work has been done to the best of your ability, still is not guaranteed to please everyone. There will be reviewers who don't like it. There will be readers in your own family who will sort of shuffle up to it, a family gathering and say, I read your novel and then silence. You know, that every author has, brutal. it's brutal. Or then looking at you, like, you know, you've just taken all your clothes off in public or something. There will be people who do not like your voice. But it is such an exercise and self-esteem and self-confidence. If you know this is your voice and you are behind it,

you're putting it out there, it will connect with the people who will respond to it. And not every book is going to be loved by everyone. So we've learned why vulnerability matters, but that still doesn't solve the most pressing question of all. Where the hell do we find it? back to Nell again with an answer from Sarah, who, as we know, has found hers. So how do you find your voice? I mean, I can tell you whether or not you have found it, but how do you find it? It's not an easy answer. It's not necessarily one that people want to hear because I'm not sure there is a blueprint. And Zadie Smith said this thing once where she's like, you know, you have to start by reading a lot as a child, which is really on help of your

writing novel at 45, but there's something to it. Grace, Paley said, the voice has to do with the air. So before you find your voice, you tune your air. And I like that, because I think of writing like music. For me, there's an internal rhythm. There's a kind of preordained form of every sentence. And you're writing to that, that kind of wave in the mind idea. So she said you train your air two ways, or you have two airs. One is the air of childhood. So the language you're absorbing around you, school, home, community, whatever that is, is soaking in. And the second is literature. So I don't think voices just come out of the ether. I think my voice probably has a lot to do with Tony Morrison and Margaret Atwood, who I mentioned

before. And the people who I love their voices, the Brontes, I've given the Brontes lots of credit as I talk about the novel that I wrote. You're training your air on these things, like a good musician, you know, sort of absorbing jazz and then deciding you're going to be a good jazz musician. It doesn't come out of nowhere. I think unless you have had that kind of training, it's going to be really difficult to come up with something that is genuinely unique and that kind of stands out. It takes a lifetime of soaking these things in and then when you're ready, being receptive to the effect that they've had on you and finding a way to sort of filter that then into your own writing. Listeners will be saying, but I'm doing this and everyone's saying my voice,

this is working. Okay, let's be nelly negatives. When, what makes it not work? When you're like, why is this not working? Like, again, you've given us a very good example of how to make it work when it isn't working. But why is it not working in the first place? Like, why is it shit? You must, because you get submissions shot and you must look at them and be like, no, it's not working. Yeah.

Yes. What's not working is conviction. I don't believe you. Yes. And also, I don't care. Oh, my God. The cardinal thing. Those are the two.

Those are the two things. Yeah, it's the two cardinal things, as if, and why bother. And I'll forgive and as if more than I'll forgive a why bother. But if why bother is like never. But I love that. Keep it moving. I love that. I'm going to use that. And the why bother is about personality. This is going to sound a bit trite, but it just can't be boring. So you know, you tell yourself the story, the first draft, then part of what you're working on after that in subsequent drafts is, all right, so how do I make this engaging? How do I bring something? something really sparky to it. How do I give it a point of view that people are going to listen to? Listen, I always think about Lolita, right? That man wrote a whole novel about a paedophile and it feels like this odious person is just sitting down and starting to whisper about their odious stuff in your head, but you're there because he took so much care over distilling the essence of that man into the language and making it completely unlike anything you'd ever read and making it seductive. seducing people with something, whether it's tone, style, language.

I think the mistake people make is they think that we're seduced by story, but stories really only plot, I mean, by story, I mean, plot is only part of it. On top of that, so you've got what happens. Now you've got to decide, how are you going to convey that? And that's where the magic is. Like that thing that Charmaine says about, I'm there, girlfriend, tell me, tell me, tell me, I want to hear. It's the same as, you know, there are friends when you're going for coffee with them. You're just going to sit, you're going to laugh.

You know, they tell stories like no one else. That's what you want on the page. And it is really frustrating because people are like, well, tell me what doesn't work. And partly you can't because there is a little bit of magic to it. But it does boil down to try to say it in a way that you feel is going to be irresistible, seduce people in some way, not just with the elements of this happen and this happen next, but in how they're being told the story. It's all about that flow.

You listen to some people and they'll say, I can listen to anything that this person says, you know. Yeah. I will read anything that they write. And that's what we're looking for as readers. We just feel compelled to keep going back. And remember what I said in the first episode of our pod class, which is when you've got that idea and that you're in the bookshop, you're asking people to spend eight to 12 hours. Like, not just their money. Not just their money.

$22 for a hardback. But you're asking them to spend, you're asking them to spend eight to ten, eight to twelve hours, their time, which is valuable in what you're saying. So you do need to, you do need to make sure that there is this like consistent flow of trust with vulnerability that brings people in and then has this compelling aspect that keeps you absolutely engaged. And if you don't have those components, and if the book isn't doing that, if the voice isn't doing that, then you have to keep going back to it until you find that, until you find that flow. And so the drive comes from the idea that we looked at last week. And now we're looking at the voice, which is what carries us through. So yeah, that's for me the compulsion. You're in a party, listeners. And Sarah's on one side. And she's like, you've bought the fuck out of me. And I'm. snoring and and Charmaine's on the other side being like you're a goddamn liar and I don't believe a word you said and what you want to do is just not be those two people at the party okay

you need to not be those people at the party 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 and 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. Quite right. Don't be those people at the party. hopefully we've inspired you to go in search of your authorial voice

and hopefully we've also inspired you even if you're not writing a book to go and find your own vulnerability and to lean into it because that is the source of true strength and if you'd like a helping hand with all of that here's a listener exercise to point you in the right direction so we talk about what kind of exercises we can give people on a practical level to try and not be those people at the party to be that person who's standing in the middle with a cluster of

people gathered around them, like, avidly wanting to listen to their story. Okay. So I think what you can do for this is, and this is like one of my favorite ones, because obviously I'm like, pick three books as a former bookseller and as a public, just like pick three books,

which is hard to do. But just pick any three books, read the first few pages of each, and then write down three words that describe the voice that you've just experienced. is it active is it scary tender comforting knowledgeable and is it written in the present tense or the past and are there lots of adjectives or is it more straightforward and after you finished pick up three words from your list of the nine words at random that you should have and then go back

and think about what you were doing last week of thinking about your inspiration and add an observation of something that interests you. So your mission this week is to rewrite that moment in a voice that embodies these three words. Yeah. That's quite a lot to do, but I'm really excited about it. I think I would put a little caveat on Charmaine's exercise, which it should be three books that you like, because there's no point. If you really hate the book in the first three pages, put it down and find one. Find books that grab you and think about why they're grabbing you and then extract your adjectives from there.

Can I ask one last practical question, Sara, how would you advise people to get the chokehold off their voice? I think it's like, this is where writing is like therapy, right? It's, I find it is really helpful to try to do some free writing. So, and this is not unique to me. It is an exercise that is sort of given to creative writing students. So set a timer. Why don't you set a timer with Charmaine's exercise? And for the length of that timer, you are not going to edit or stop or cross out.

You're just going to put, and some of it might be gobbledygook, but you're just going to get the stuff flowing, flowing, there's that word again, onto the page. So if it's a 10-minute timer, you're going to allow yourself for 10 minutes not to edit any of it. Because the problem comes and you lock yourself when the editors on your shoulder saying, no, that's not a good sentence. And so you stop at that sentence and try to fix it. Don't try to fix anything. just let it run out onto the page and then at the end of the 10 minutes, see what you've got

and then compare it to your list of adjectives and see where the gold is in that. Then you've got a shitty first draft. What you might want to do is do another 10 minutes editing it, stripping out that gold and seeing if you can make something approximating the voice you're aiming for out of that. But first, switch the editor off by doing some free writing. This has been amazing, ladies. I've really loved this episode because I think, once you've got your idea

it's so vital that you find your voice and your way into the story and how to bring us on that journey with you and your characters it's a huge amount of work and I hope that we've kind of shown that it's complex but it's also possible

and it's also really enjoyable even though you have to kind of dig deep into those layers to find that vulnerability to make it happen And again, going back to reading is just like such a huge part of this and acknowledging what other people are doing with their voices. I think we've also covered really well that different genres are really important in finding

your voice. It's been such a pleasure to speak to the two of you. So much fun. So thank you so much to everyone that's listening. I'm just really excited to see what you do with your. tasks and where you get to and I hope that has inspired you. So now we've done ideas and voice next week. We're going to sit down and de-character. We did a lot of character today as well. It's a lot of crossover. We're going to move over. We're going to do character. So come back

for that session. As we've talked about, time and energy is very important. So thank you all for your time. And ladies, thank you for showing your time with me today. I've so loved it. Oh, I'm going to let you go. I like talking to you, T. You get you so wise. Mel, I think you should be a pod classer. Honestly, you're so good. She already is. I just know what podcasts were about like two years ago, so don't get me started. All right, let's be moving on.

This is me like kissing chef's kiss, goodbye. 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. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. This fall get double points on every qualified stay. Life's the trip. Make the most of it. at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. And now, after a whole episode on voice, you have my voice. It's the voice of Elizabeth Day,

back in your ear holes, to talk about the voices of Sarah Charmaine and Nell and what they were saying about authorial voice, which is such an interesting topic. And yet again, it's one of those very subtle, very nuanced subjects that unless you have people who know what they're talking about and who have actually done the things that they are talking about, it's actually so difficult to get your head around. And I hope that that's what this podcast does. It gives you practical expertise so that you can go away and have a think about something that you might not have expended too much time thinking about before. Because authorial voice, as distinct from character voice, although as we heard, there are considerable overlaps,

authorial voice is really your calling card to your reader. It is not only a calling card of the kind of writing that you are going to be doing and the kind of story that you endeavour to tell, but it's also a kind of guarantee that if the reader gives you their attention and their trust, you will repay that attention and trust and that they can feel safe in your hands. And I think different kinds of authorial voice are so interesting to think about when we come to finding our own. And that's really what Sarah was saying, wasn't she, when she was quoting Zadie Smith, talking about reading around an awful lot, submerging yourself in other people's writing and really analysing how they do what they do. So one of my favourite authors is Tom Wolfe, who wrote

The Bonfire of the Vanities. And part of the reason I was drawn to him was specifically to do with authorial voice. I came to the Bonfire of the Vanities when I was in my early 20s and I read it on my first ever trip to America. For those of you who don't know, it's all set in the New York of the 80s, the New York that is governed by big bankers, the masters of the universe. And one of these masters of the universe, Sherman McCoy, gets involved in a hit and run one night in the Bronx. And it's about what happens after that. And it's this kind of panoramic, cinematic, sweeping novel that is really about the state of America then and now. And we're What really, really grabbed me from the first page was the way that Tom Wolfe wrote.

His training was in journalism and yet this is a work of epic fiction. But he fused the two forms and he developed this new kind of style which had this sort of fizzing kinetic energy to it that made you feel you were on a roller coaster and willingly going wherever he would take you. And the way that he did that was that he paid real attention to pace and rhythm and structure in the same way that you would structure a newspaper article, to grab a reader's attention over their morning cup of coffee, and to maintain that attention through each subsequent paragraph to communicate something cleanly and clearly and efficiently. And Tom will fuse that with all the lyricism of the invented story that he was telling.

And he does that in specific ways. It's not just the rhythm. It's also the onomatopoeia, the way that he writes sounds into sentences. He will literally write the sound of a car engine or a subway ticket machine with pop pop pops and fizz, fizz, fizzes in the sentence structure. And for those reasons, whenever I pick up a Tom Wolfe, even if his name went on the cover, I would know who I was reading. And it's really about finding. that space for yourself. It doesn't need to be like Tom Wolves' kinetic, fictional energy, but it could be something like, I don't know, one of the omniscient narrators of great Victorian classic literature, William Thackeray's Vanity Fair or the Bronte sisters, they have this tendency to rely, or Thomas Hardy is a great example. There's an authorial voice that sort of knows what's happening and has this knowledge beyond the page. and you know they know and they're taking you there. And as Sarah Charmaine and Nell said, it's a very difficult thing to pin down, but you can recognise it when it's not working. There was that unforgettable orgasm metaphor that Sarah gave us, that idea that it just clicks into place

and even though you've worked hard creating it, at its best, authorial voice should sound like something you didn't create. It should sound like something effortless that was always there. And Charmaine gave that great example of Jane Fallon being a mistress of the authorial voice. It's one of those things that it really transcends genre. Whilst authorial voice is incredibly important for identifying the kind of genre you're writing in, a great authorial voice will lead people in even if they think they might not be interested in the genre they're writing in in the first place. And then I also really gravitated towards what Nell was saying about letting go and using vulnerability as a point of connection with

the reader. And she gave this example, didn't she, of sometimes with her clients, she will feel in their prose. There's a slight resistance there. There'll be someone who doesn't want to fully explore who they are because they think they're just writing a book about other people. But ultimately, you can't write a great book unless you are also exploring yourself and that you're bringing yourself onto the page and it's that voice it's your voice that provides that essential point of connection that's the connection point between the reader and the writer and the voice is where we need to finesse that contact point and it's different from the voice that we are going to give our characters and that will come up in a later episode there was

a bit of that in this episode. And when Charmaine was talking about editing a book where there are similar women and similar backgrounds, similar ages, and she can't distinguish between them. And I thought Sarah gave a really brilliant tip there, which is, even if you don't use it all on the page, to think about your character's backstory, because everyone has a unique backstory. And that will necessarily inform the way they express themselves in conversation, but also the clothes that they were, where they choose to live, whether they're scared of the dark. And in a way, you can ask yourself those questions too in an attempt to find your authorial voice. And then the final thing that really struck me was that sense of the two things that you want to avoid

are a reader asking either as if or why bother. So as if on one hand, as if this could happen. I don't believe a shred of what you're telling me because I don't trust your voice or why bother? What you're telling me is boring because you're resisting your own exposure. You're not willing to be vulnerable yet and readers can sense that. As Simon Cowell always used to say on X Factor, the public knows. They just know. They can sense it. They can sense inauthenticity.

They can sense if you're holding back. So I really, really agree with Sarah's advice to do some free writing, to sustain. spend your internal judgment and just to see where the written word takes you, because the written word takes you on amazing journeys, both as the writer and as the reader. I'm impassioned, can you tell? And I can't wait for you all to come back next week when our three powerhouse women, Sarah, Charmaine, and Nell will be delving into the nitty-gritty of character. You do not want to miss this one. It has one particular exchange, which I think is one of the funniest exchanges I've ever heard on any podcast. So we look forward to seeing you then, and I hope you have a happy writing

week in between. Bye-bye. Thank you 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. Thank you.