NARRATIVE VOICE: Turtle in Paradise (Post #2)

Dear Sleuths,

How many times have you been at a writer’s conference where an editor says, “I’m looking for books with voice”? The editor might use the phrase distinctive narrative voice or authentic voice. Then, when pressed to explain what distinctive narrative voice is, the editor sheepishly shrugs and says, “It’s hard to explain, but I know it when I see it.”

Sometimes, it feels like there is an entire sense of secrecy built up around the concept of voice. You hear about it all the time, but no one seems to agree on what it is or how to get it. Here is a quotation I found in one of my writing books:

A strong, distinctive, authoritative writing voice is something most fiction writers want—and something no editor or teacher can impart. (p. 128, Self-editing for Fiction Writers)

Well, when I read Jennifer Holm’s book Turtle in Paradise, I thought to myself, “Here is a clear example of a distinctive and authentic narrative voice. I see it!” But what is that voice? How did Holm create it? Turns out, those editors weren’t lying. It is hard to explain.

Let’s start with a description of voice (note, I did not use the word definition). Author K. L. Going compares narrative voice to people’s actual voices: 

Our word choices and speech patterns reveal who we are, where we’re from, and what we’re thinking…. The same is true for narrative voice. Your narrator can be revealed by what he chooses to say and how he says it. (p. 113, Writing and Selling the YA Novel)

A way of seeing

Eleven-year-old Turtle, who narrates the story, “sees things for what they are,” and she has no qualms speaking her mind. Take this commentary at the beginning of chapter twelve: 

Everyone’s always saying that hard times bring out the best in people, but as far as I can tell, the only thing that hard times brings out is plain meanness. I left my shoes outside on the front porch last night, and some rotten kid stole them (p. 113). 

She has her own perspective on the world, one that’s informed by her experiences, and she has no problem disagreeing with what “everyone says.”

Favorite phrases

The example above includes a couple of Turtle’s favorite phrases of speech, notably “as far as I can tell” and “rotten kids.” She also likes to say “it’s a fact,” “from where I’m sitting,” and “in my opinion.” Turtle has lots of opinions, and she shares them with authority and confidence. Returning to Going’s description of voice, Holm uses word choice and speech patterns to reveal Turtle’s character.

Metaphorically speaking

Given Turtle’s “see things for what they are” attitude, you might guess that the voice of the novel is plain and straightforward. It’s not. While Turtle is cynical and at times jaded, she’s also sassy and witty, with a wry sense of humor. She comes up with unique metaphors to explain her take on events and people. For example, 

Mama’s always falling in love, and the fellas she picks are like dandelions. One day they’re there, bright as sunshine—charming Mama, buying me presents—and the next they’re gone, scattered to the wind, leaving weeds everywhere and Mama crying. (p. 6) 

Metaphors such as this appear throughout the book, enriching the narrative with distinctive imagery and pleasing comparisons.

It’s important to note that the metaphors in the book fit with Turtle’s experiences and era. For example, about her mother, Turtle says, “’Mama’s head is so high in the clouds, I’m surprised she doesn’t bump into Amelia Earhart’” (p. 94). Every kid in 1935 knew about Amelia Earhart. It’s the perfect comparison, both showing us how crazy Turtle thinks Mama is as well as reflecting the time period of the book.

Gee, that's swell

While helping to reveal character, narrative voice also helps build a sense of the book’s time period and setting. The kids in the Diaper Gang don’t say things like “That’s cool,” or “That rots.” They say “gee whiz” and “aww.” Words such as fella, gotta, dough, gang, swell, folks, mama, and sugar all sound appropriate—even authentic—to the 1930s.

They call it banter

In fact, as I read Turtle in Paradise, I couldn’t help but think about a few classic Katherine Hepburn movies such as “Bringing up Baby” or “The Philadelphia Story.” It was more than the choice of appropriate words and historical details such as references to Little Orphan Annie. It was the wittiness of dialogue. Here’s Slow Poke and Turtle after Slow Poke rescues Turtle from the water.

“I thought you said you could swim like a fish,” Slow Poke chides me.

“A dead one,” I say, and cough.

“Honey,” Slow Poke says, shaking his head, “dead fish float.” (p. 68)

Slow Poke might be late to everything, but he’s got a quick wit, as do all the characters in Turtle in Paradise. This smart dialogue, which often ends on a perfect zinger, contributes to the overall narrative voice.

Short story writer Sylvia Watanabe wrote an essay on voice in the book Creating Fiction. After analyzing a story by Flannery O’Connor, Watanabe tried to “identify the specific aspects of a story’s voice.” These aspects, she says, include:

choice of genre, articulation of point of view, treatment of exposition and dialogue, selection of detail, use of language… and the handling of sonics (the sound and rhythm of the prose). Voice, it would seem, abides everywhere in the story. (p. 202)

Perhaps therein lies the issue: voice abides everywhere in the story. I saw one person summarize voice as “what you write and how you write it.” It’s the combination of word choice, attitude, phrases of speech, regional or historical details, and patterns of speaking.

The combination of all these elements in Turtle in Paradise work together to create a distinctive narrative voice.

StorySleuths Tip #93: When writing and revising, look for ways to use distinctive words, metaphors, dialogue, details and patterns of speech, as well as opinions and attitude, to enrich a story’s narrative voice.


Post #3: The Narrative Hook

WORD CHOICE AND ORAL LANGUAGE RHYTHM: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon Post #1

Dear Allyson and Heather,

We are in for a delicious treat this month as we get to savor the tasty writing and rich story of the book we've chosen to focus on: Newbery Honor winner Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. This is a book that I can almost taste as I read. You know that kind—where you want to speed up to get to the next page and slow down to savor each word? That’s Grace Lin’s gift—she leads me deeper and deeper into the web of her story while at the same time enticing me to reflect on her language and images. What a feast she has written.

There’s so much to look at in the first chapter, where Lin:

• establishes a vivid setting
• introduces a feisty main character
• includes the first of 16 stories set apart from the narrative and main characters while concurrently interweaving with them
• identifies the central story problem, and
• propels readers headlong into the next chapter: “Maybe,” Ba said, glancing at Ma, “I should tell you that story tomorrow.” (p. 10)

But I’m not going to focus in this post on any of those elements.

A common thread in the two starred reviews of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is the description of Lin’s writing as particularly noteworthy. Jennifer Rothschild in School Library Journal says, “The author's writing is elegant…,” and Andrew Medlar in Booklist says, “With beautiful language, Lin creates a strong, memorable heroine and a mystical land.”

I, too, felt Lin’s language pull me into the story and engage me with the characters, so I decided to take a look at the choices Lin makes with respect to word choice and sentence structure--the building blocks that we, as writers, use in creating our stories.

ALLITERATION

Lin uses alliteration to bring harmony to her writing, starting off with the title, which includes 3 words with initial m’s: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. In addition, both Mountain and Moon have final n’s, giving the title unity and resonance. The main character’s name also begins with an initial M, linking her alliteratively to the title of the story. Minli’s impatient mother is referred to as “Ma,” another initial M. And the person who Minli decides to seek by the end of Chapter 1 has two initial M’s in his name:

Whenever I ask something important, people say, ‘That is a question you have to ask the Old Man of the Moon.’ Someday, I will ask him. (p. 9)

The predominance of the initial M’s in the names of all these characters introduced in Chapter 1 gives Minli’s mission a feeling of intentionality and purpose.

WORD CHOICE

Whereas alliteration gives Lin’s writing the feeling of flowing liquid, contrast gives her writing punch and bite. In the first sentence Lin selects hard words to emphasize the harshness of the setting:

Far away from here, following the Jade River, there was once a black mountain that cut into the sky like a jagged piece of rough metal. (p. 1)

Nothing could be harsher than the landscape described as “black,” “cut,” “jagged,” “rough.” But to top this harsh landscape off, it is smothered in dullness:

Crowded into the corner of where Fruitless Mountain and the Jade River met was a village that was the shade of faded brown. This was because the land around the village was hard and poor….Over time, everything in the village had become the dull color of dried mud. (pp. 1-2)

Nothing could be drearier, sadder, or more hopeless.

Yet in the midst of this dull brown village there was a brightness that Lin conveys initially through her selection of the image that describes the house where Minli lives, even before we meet Minli herself:

One of the houses in this village was so small that its wood boards, held together by the roof, made one think of a bunch of matches tied with a piece of twine. (p. 2)

Lin chooses the word “matches” as an image to describe the house, with the association of “matches” as something that ignites, that lights up, or enlightens, just as the child who lives there will add her own light to the dullness, the hardness, the poorness, of where she lives. Lin states this contrast clearly:

Minli was not brown and dull like the rest of the village. (p. 2)

Lin then selects words that connote light to describe Minli: she has “shining” eyes and a smile that “flashed” from her face. When Minli hears the stories her father tells her every night at dinner she “glowed” with wonder and excitement. She reflects some of her father’s light as he tells her the stories:

Ba seemed to drop his gray and work weariness--his black eyes sparkled like raindrops in the sun when he began a story. (p. 3)

and

...as he set down his chopsticks his smile twinkled in a way that Minli loved. (p. 4)

"Shining," "flashed," "glowed," "sparkled," "twinkled"—Lin chooses words foreshadowing the light that Minli will bring to the poor villagers in the dull brown village at the bottom of Fruitless Mountain, where “nothing grew on it and birds and animals did not rest” (p. 1).

RHYTHM

Even before Ba’s story begins, Lin writes in the rhythm of oral language. The first sentence itself echoes the rhythm of a fairy tale: “Far away from here…once…” (p. 1). The place and the time of the story are far away and long ago, and the story opens with a storytelling voice. Elizabeth Law said in her First Pages breakout at the Western Washington SCBWI Regional Conference a few weeks ago, “Get into the voice of your story on the first page.” Lin does.

A storyteller’s voice tends to run on without using commas to separate the words in a series, as is accepted practice in written communication. In this first chapter, Lin repeatedly writes without using commas in a series. Take this sentence:

The villagers had to tramp in the mud, bending and stooping and planting day after day. (pp. 1- 2)

And this one:

Working in the mud so much made it spread everywhere and the hot sun dried it onto their clothes and hair and homes. (p. 2)

How different those series would sound if punctuated: “bending, stooping, and planting,” or “clothes, hair, and homes.” The rhythmic storytelling voice continues into “The Story of Fruitless Mountain.” Describing the Jade Dragon’s four dragon children, Lin says:

They were large and strong and good and kind. (p. 4)

Although the stories that Lin includes within the context of Minli’s adventure are set apart by their titles and different typeface, they flow seamlessly together because the whole narrative is written in a clearly oral storytelling voice. As a storyteller myself, I’m intrigued and impressed by how beautifully Lin captures the sounds and rhythms of oral language and expresses them on the printed page. It’s a pleasure to read them silently, to feel them flow, and to “listen” to them echoing as I read.

StorySleuth’s Tip # 68: One way to write elegant, beautiful language is to use the sounds and rhythms of oral storytelling language.

DIRECT ADDRESS: Geektastic

Dear Allyson and Heather,

What Heather wrote about unity in “The Truth About Dino Girl” also pertains to “This Is My Audition Monologue,” by Sara Zarr. Rachel’s consistent references to the theater in general (“actory personalities” of other students) and to the audition monologue parameters in particular (“the time limit,” the “audition form”) connect me to the character and anchor me in the setting of this story.

But it’s the stunning first person point of view written in direct address that immediately pulls me into this story. Like Billie in “Secret Identity,” Zarr’s protagonist addresses a specific “you,” but unlike Billie, whose medium is written (consistent with her geeky passion for the internet), Rachel’s medium is speech (consistent with her geeky passion for the theater). Billie’s object of direct address isn’t physically present as she writes to him, but Rachel’s monologue is written with an eye to direct person-to-person delivery. And it kicks right off with the title.

In fact, the story begins with the title itself--“This Is My Audition Monologue”--a complete sentence, which also serves as a comprehensive first line that clearly establishes the main character (an actor), the setting (a theater), and the point of view (first person). The first line of the story--“I wrote it” (p. 319) -- even includes a pronoun which refers back to an antecedent (audition monologue) in the title. So we are plunged headlong into the fast pace of this amazing story--er, audition monologue--right at the get-go.

In discussing point of view, Janet Burroway in Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft says:

the story may be told to another character, or characters, in which case we, as readers, “overhear” it; the teller of the tale does not acknowledge us, even by implication....We are eavesdroppers, with all the ambiguous intimacy that position implies. (pp. 209-210)

Rachel speaks directly to Mr. P., and in doing so, Rachel’s voice is so unique, so strong, so cocky, so funny, and so relentless, that in just a few pages I feel like I’ve glimpsed her directly, by hiding in the wings--eavesdropping--and listening to her audition monologue.

As I mentioned and as you can see, I do not have a lot going on in the cleavage department.... (p. 323)

Zarr illustrates that direct address is a great tool for voice--her protagonist gets to expound nonstop from start to finish.

The funny thing is I thought drama would be a place where being not like the others was okay, but it turns out you have to be not like the others in a way that is exactly like the others who are not like the others. (p. 325)

Rachel also offers a vivid portrayal of her antagonist, the director who doesn’t remember her name, even after three years of tryouts:

I’m not trying to embarrass you, Mr. P., but you’ve had trouble remembering my name since I first started auditioning freshman year. (p. 319)

Direct address also emphasizes dramatic conflict--Rachel ramps up intensity by addressing Mr. P. periodically throughout the monologue:

You don’t know this about me, since you’ve never taken the time to know anything about me, but I use humor that way. (p. 320)

What I’m saying is I know you don’t know what to do with me. (p. 325)

and finally, her parting shot:

This time you’ll remember my name. (p. 328)

In reading “This Is My Audition Monologue,” I was especially impressed with how Sara Zarr was able to integrate backstory while sticking to the limitations of direct address. And she drops the backstory bombshell at the beginning of the “official” monologue:

You can start timing me...now.
Scotty King got electrocuted while running the light board. (p. 320)

Now THAT grabbed my attention. I want to find out WHO Scotty is, HOW he got electrocuted, and WHY Rachel kicks off her audition monologue with this information. All of these questions are answered during the course of the monologue, as the backstory is sporadically filled in, while Zarr maintains Rachel’s breezy voice and her sidelong comments to Mr. P. In addition to answering the Who? How? Why? questions about Scotty and his death, we learn what his death means to Rachel. She announces that his death is a sign to her to “Stop being willing to stay behind the scenes when what you want is to be in the scenes” (p. 327).

The monologue rolls on to an unresolved conclusion--at the end we don’t know whether Rachel will get a part or not. What we do know is that Rachel will no longer stand in the shadows, as a “backstage kind of character” (p. 324).

While there are novels for young readers written entirely in direct address, such as Beverly Cleary’s Dear Mr. Henshaw, more often novels are written partly in direct address and partly in 3rd person narrative, as Deborah Wiles’ Love, Ruby Lavender, in which Ruby’s letters to her grandmother are an important structural and dramatic element. In both “Secret Identity” and “This Is My Audition Monologue,” Kelly Link and Sara Zarr demonstrate the power of using direct address in writing entire short stories.

StorySleuths Tip #43: Consider using direct address, especially in short stories, to create vivid characters (both protagonist and antagonist), to clarify setting, to emphasize dramatic conflict, and even to add backstory, all in the voice of the speaker.

UNITY: Geektastic

Hi Allyson and Meg,

Most of the tips we’ve found so far in Geektastic apply to fiction writing in general, whether short stories or novels. Today, I’d like to focus on unity as a craft element that may be more relevant to—or at least more evident in—short stories vs. longer fiction.

In Between the Lines, Jessica Page Morrell says

A unified story unfolds seamlessly without needless digressions, extraneous characters, and unnecessary scenes, and leads to an inevitable conclusion and an enduring sense of reality (p. 11).

Barry Lyga’s story “The Truth About Dino Girl” provides an excellent example of story unity. Katie, the protagonist, is a high school freshman whose passion for dinosaurs and paleontology pervades every aspect of her life, from how she attempts to understand the behavior of boys to the way she views her social status in school.

At its heart, “The Truth About Dino Girl” is a story about an impossible first crush: Katie, our paleontologist-to-be, develops a crush on a boy in advanced biology, Jamie Terravozza, a junior on the baseball team. Jamie, of course, barely notices Katie’s existence; besides, he is dating the captain of the girls’ soccer team, a gorgeous junior named Andi Donnelly.

What makes “The Truth About Dino Girl” different from any other first crush story is the way Lyga uses dinosaurs as a unifying effect. Dinosaurs are Katie’s passion. She spends her free time reading Scientific American, sketching fossils, and hammering rocks. As proof of Katie’s expertise, Lyga incorporates plenty of dinosaur details into the narrative:

I am uncoordinated. If there is a piece of furniture in the room, trust me to stub my toe on it. I’m sort of like an allosaur or a T. rex—they could move somewhat quickly but only straight ahead. The saurischian hip structure isn’t designed to swerve from side to side… (p. 294).

As in the example above, dinosaur details become metaphors. Dino facts also infiltrate the way Katie and her best friend Sooz speak. They even swear in dinosaur:

“Coprolite!” [Sooz] said. “This is just one big piece of coprolite!” (In second grade, I made the mistake of telling Sooze the scientific term for petrified dung.) (p. 289)

These examples, along with the many other dinosaur comparisons, facts, imagery and vocabulary sprinkled throughout the story, reminded me of a talk on voice that Kirby Larson gave several years ago at our local SCBWI. She recommended looking at a character’s “frame of reference” or “world view” to develop unique metaphors and vocabulary. Larson said that a boy who loves insects might compare a ballet teacher to a daddy-long-legs just as in Lyga’s story, Katie and Sooz refer to Andi as an apatasaur. “Apatasaurs had a terrible brain-to-body-mass ratio” (p. 291).

Katie’s passion for dinosaurs extends beyond language alone. The story’s crisis, theme, and climactic action all evolve out of Katie’s dinosaur frame of reference when she realizes that, “In this world, you’re either predator or prey” (p. 309).

Katie takes action against Andi, first ambushing her like a T. rex and then crushing her in a shockingly vicious act of revenge.

Rust Hills, author of Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular, says “there is a degree of unity in a well-wrought story… that isn’t necessarily found in a good novel, that isn’t perhaps even desirable in a novel” (p. 3)

He then explains:

In a [short] story everything’s bound together tightly. The theme in a successful story is inseparably embedded in the action taken by the characters—and indeed is implicit in all the other aspects, even the language. In density of language, in multiple use of the sound and sense of words, the short story is comparable to lyric poetry. (p. 3)

Lyga uses Katie’s passion as a way to weave together theme, characterization, language, and action for a unique and unified story that leaves a lasting impression.

StorySleuths Tip #42: Look for ways to unify a short story through voice, theme, subject, characterization, action, and language. Use the character’s frame of reference to find fresh metaphors and vocabulary.