Writers Tricks of the Trade SPRING 2017 ISSUE 2, VOLUME 7 | Page 13

T HE VOICE IS THE THING
BY R OBERT W. W ALKER , AUTHOR OF G ONE G ORILLA & K ILLER I NSTINCT
The very word VOICE has resonance. Words make sound at the elemental
level; in fact, at the ‘cellular’ level so do the letters of the alphabet, and they all
rhyme with one another like A and K, C and B. Let that sink in. Many an art relies
on resonance. singing of lyrics, poetic lines, acting, creating characters in a story
or novel; even a poem needs a VOICE. The careful selection of that voice and the
honing of it as one writes and rewrites a story is the number one ‘secret’ tool in
the pantheon of tools professional authors use every day.
R OBERT W. W ALKER
A UTHOR
W RITERS T OOL B OX
I will not bore you with quotes from every successful author who has written
on the importance of VOICE and its connection with Point of View. Instead, I’m
going to drive home the point here.
Writers have workbenches, tool boxes, saws, levels, and wrenches hanging
about their ears.
The working writer utilizes props, for instance, turning everyday items, such
as a door into a symbol of an impenetrable wall of silence, a symbol of the
inability of two people to EVER communicate. Writers awls and screwdrivers
from a box of tools they dip into when they need—let us say, a flat brush, a large
one, a thin-line brush—authors use props, objects, plugs in the wall, and they
color their stories with symbolic colors, or they choose to use no color in a grim
tale.
In their tool boxes, they have screwdrivers called setting, dialogue, character
(traits) and plot (challenges to the designated bedrock character of a given actor
in the story). Whole panels of authors get together at writer conferences to
discuss “The Most Important Element” in storytelling. One panel will concentrate
on Setting as the most important of all, while another will lambast the audience
with Dialogue as the most important element, while another will zero in on Plot
or whatever. The key element necessary to carry off all of the other elements,
however, and to use all the tools necessary to tell a story that unfolds perfectly,
remains VOICE.
I hope to convince you that harnessing the oft nebulous, hard to pin down
Authorial Voice (authoritative voice) of your given story is your #1 job above all
other ‘important’ elements and tools. By authorial/authoritative, I refer to an
uneducated child’s voice in Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as Huck tells his tale. In To
Kill
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE
P AGE 5
S PRING 2017