To have a lasting impact on readers, your writing has to have some style. Style comes from your characters and their actions, the descriptions and dialog, that make them uniquely “yours.” It comes from your vocabulary, tone, point of view, rhythm, syntax. Some writers call this “voice.” One of the main reasons readers develop favorites among the thousands of authors out there is because they like the author’s voice. And creating a voice begins with the words you choose.

Once an author develops a truly distinctive voice, you recognize it. I’ll bet you might recognize these distinctive literary voices, even with just a line or two.

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”
“From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”
“Folks like to talk about revenge like it’s a righteous thing but it’s just hate in a nicer suit.”
“Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

You may have recognized the authors who chose those words: Arthur Conan Doyle for Sherlock Holmes, Raymond Chandler, SA Cosby, and Mark Twain.

Irony

For a great many stories set in our skeptical times, one aspect of voice that authors can make good use of is irony. Authors are using irony when they set up statements or situations that reveal a reality different from what appears to be true. Irony works when the reader already has expectations and understands the disparity between what “should” be the case and what “actually” is.

It’s why we joke about the labor-saving devices that are more trouble than they’re worth, the customer service departments that give anything but.Or appreciate the humor in the accompanying cartoon. Or why we despair at politicians who espouse high-minded goals, then take actions that make them impossible to achieve.

You might assume irony comes up only well into a story, when those expectations and realities are established, but here’s a possible opening line for a romantic story that’s dripping with irony: I’d been told my wedding day would be the happiest day of my life. Uh-oh. Disaster on the horizon. It works because readers too have powerful expectations about wedding days.

Emotion

Writer try to engage readers by evoking emotions. But how do we do that effectively? The song we used at the beginning of this series of posts is “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.” If you remember it or read it again, you’ll recognize that it is absolutely full of emotion. But how is that handled? Does the narrator ever say, “I was angry with my short-sighted officers? I was sad my legs were gone?” No, he says the heart-breaking “Never knew there were worse things than dying.” And the equally poignant: “I thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me.”

Good advice for writers is: “never name an emotion.” When he was starting out, a friend who’s a writer of stories with terrific plots had to learn how to write about emotion, ironically [!], by not writing about it. He would always over-explain. He would show an action, then tell his readers what it meant. He’d name the emotion in sentences like:“She threw the plate of spaghetti against the wall because she was so angry.” There’s no need to say she was angry. It’s obvious.

If you do a good job showing, the telling is unnecessary. If you’ve used the strongest, most descriptive words to get to that point, your readers will understand the underlying emotion and only be annoyed if you also tell them.

This brings up another important rule of thumb: “Trust Your Reader.” Savvy readers stay engaged if you leave them hanging a little, having to figure things out, rather than having events and reactions over-explained to them. Let them have the thrill of discovering the meaning behind your story.

Next week: Last in this “Every Word’s a Choice” series: Dialog
Previous blogs in the series are under the Writers’ First Draft” tab of my main webpage (vweisfeld dot com).