I'm prepping (get a load of that!) for a unit/week on voice, and I've been reading Janet Burroway's chapter from Imaginative Writing, which is pretty good, but now I have this question jumping around my brainy brain. Everything I've ever read about voice talks about where we're writing from, or from where the narrator/speaker is telling, how important it is to capture the idiosyncrasies of diction and syntax, pitch, tone, mood, etc. What I'm wondering is if any of you give, or have given, that same amount of thought to whom your narrator is telling the story? And, if so, did/does it help?
I've read of authors having ideal readers they're always writing to, and I'm interested in that, I suppose, if you have one and what her name is and what she looks like and when she gets mad at you or whatever. But I wonder if we sometimes fall into this ill-defined idea of the perfect reader who sits around reading literary fiction all day and loves to be entertained by writers with degrees. For me, it used to be y'all and our teachers I'd write to specifically, but, unfortunately, that's not always the case anymore. So I'm more curious to know if, other than epistolary stories or the semi-gimmicky 2nd-person turns to "the physical reader as the new, implicated character in the story," you can think of any stories (or have written any) with a clearly defined or implied audience. I'm wondering if this lesson we teach our comp students, about writing to a specific audience for a specific purpose (ie: you write an email this way to your parents, this way to your friends), might not benefit us as creative writers? Any experience, thoughts, suggestions? Does this make any sense?
6 comments:
Good questions. I don't tend to write interesting voices unless it's something I'm gonna read out loud, so I can't help much there. But I think my better stuff happens when I'm writing to explain an idea to somebody in particular (a real person) or figure it out myself.
My hangover misses you guys today
I, nearly always, love voicey fiction whether I am the author or someone else is. Funny though because I've always thought it was more of a reaction to this scary world-wide push for everyone to speak the same and express themselves in the same manner, pulling from the same lexicon, no accents allowed. To me it's akin to this gross homogenous push that every city needs to be the same--every exit must contain a Starbucks, Steak House, two super-sized gas stations, etc. So when I find voicey fiction, it makes me happy because it feels rebellious in a natural, organic way rather than a gimicky way.
But I don't think the above has anything to do with what you are asking. Dang!
when I was in school at ASU, in my Tom's workshops he was definatley my intended audience and my intended purpose with each story was To Get Tom To Have Sex With Me. Oddly, my stories were never about sex, or relationships. Maybe that's why it never worked. Later after I moved to San Marcos, I figured out that going home for Christmas, getting really drunk, and telling him I had something I wanted to show him worked a lot better.
Carmen, you are the most awesome girl in any room at any time.
this is the best response, ever, that anyone could ask for. thread closed.
thanks everyone! your reponses made me smile and miss everyone like crazy. (and that you could still love me after that horrid misspeling of "definitely," must speak to the strength of our friendships.)
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