Ron Benrey ~ Guest Blogger on Hearing Voices

Ron Benrey and his wife Janet have co-written three different Christian romantic suspense series for B&H Publishing, Barbour Books, and Steeple Hill. Their latest novel, “Grits and Glory,” from Steeple Hill will be available in early June. Ron is also the author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Christian Fiction,” published by the Alpha imprint of Penguin. His next non-fiction book, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Christian Mysteries” (which examines the most difficult Christian teachings) will be published in early August.

You should hear voices when you read a well-written Christian novel.

From a reader’s point of view, voice is the “sound” that the novel creates in a reader’s head—the soundtrack, if you like, of the “fictional dream” that puts a reader in distant places and inside different characters.

Although we typically talk simply about voice, there are actually three kinds of voices that novelists need to worry about:

1. Authorial voice—the overall “sound” of the author. We all agree that Charles Martin has different authorial voice than Angela Hunt. This is the “voice” that editors seem to have in mind when they talk about “strong voice,” “new voice,” “authentic voice.”

2. Narrative voice—the distinctive “sound” of the first-person narrator (in a novel written in the first-person Point of View) or the all-knowing storyteller (in a novel written in the omniscient POV).

3. Character voice—the characteristic “sounds” of the various characters. A sassy female private eye should have a different character voice than a hero from the Bible, or a pioneer bride in a prairie romance, or an abused homemaker, or the alien captain of an intergalactic cruiser. Because readers soon catch on to the differences, character voice helps to establish who is currently telling the story. A common criticism editors level at new writers is, “your characters sound too much alike.”

When the three kinds of voice work together in a novel, they yield much the same effects that music achieves in a movie. For starters, voice helps to define the genre in a readers mind. Serious vs. scary vs. suspenseful; grim vs. cheerful vs. funny; romantic vs. smart-alecky—all of these “perceptions” can be brought about by appropriate voice.

Similarly, voice can sets the stage in your novel by communicating locale and time frame. First century Judea will have a unique “sound” compared to present day New York City, or a mountain pass in 19th century Utah, or a distant galaxy, far, far away.

Finally, voice can create the psychic distance between reader and character. A close voice is perfect in a suspense novel when you want the reader to feel threatened by the antagonist along with protagonist. By contrast, a more distant voice is useful for describing setting that the reader doesn’t need to “see,” “smell,” or “touch” through a point-of-view character’s consciousness.

Agents and editors—the principal gatekeepers who decide whether or not a novel is publishable—care about voice because it plays a critical role in how readers experience a novel, and ultimately, how much they enjoy reading it. Voice is also one of the first attributes of your work that each gatekeeper gets to evaluate. S/he knows if your voice is strong long before the quality of your storytelling or characterizations shine through.

The bottom line: voice is important. It also seems to be the one critical aspect of writing publishable fiction that can’t be taught. A quick Internet search will yield a gazillion surefire tips to help you plot your next novel, but you’ll find little useful advice about how to improve your voice—other than the suggestion that you read lots of novels you respect.

Voice is hard to teach because it encompass the countess decisions that we make when we sit down to write: choice of words, point of view, sentence length, balance between narrative and dialog, kinds of figures of speech, amount of humor, past or present tense, balance between narrative and dialog, use of flashbacks, use of dialect ... the list of key ingredients goes on and on.

I also believe that good voice reflects confident writing; if you’re uncomfortable with (or lack knowledge about) the subject matter of your novel, your voice will change for the worst, probably becoming hesitant and tentative.

Because voice is such a complex critter, it’s difficult to diagnose voice problems. Consequently, while agents, editors, and critique group members may make vague criticisms—e.g. “your voice needs work”—they rarely offer practical advice for fixing what’s wrong, other than the generic suggestion to read, read, and read some more.

While it’s probably true that great voice is instinctive, good voice can be developed and/or nurtured—both by reading and by writing.

On the one hand, reading other writer’s work seems the best indirect method of strengthening your fiction-writing voice. Reading good writing trains your “authorial ear.” Once your internal voice sensor has perfect pitch, so to speak, you’re equipped to find your own voices.

On the other hand, as with other aspects of writing, the more you write the better your authorial voice will become. Your voice ultimately reflects your skill, knowledge, history, taste, preferences, sensibilities—and mileage behind the keyboard.

Now, you might think that for this kind of ad hoc voice training to work, you have to read the kind of fiction you want to write, then write solely in your target genre. Not necessarily. I sharpened my fiction voice by reading and writing non-fiction. Over the years, I developed three distinct voices:

1. Chatty and cheerful.
2. Neutral and authoritative.
3. Pompous (ideal for pretentious corporate publications).

However, now that I write fiction, I do try to prime my authorial ear by reading authors who have the kind of voice I want to achieve. After two or three novels, my authorial voice moves closer to theirs, but never becomes identical.

The other side of the coin: when I’m writing a novel, I don’t read fiction written in significantly different voices. I find that upsets the cadences of my work-in-progress.

Many new authors wonder if authorial is voice unique. Well, conventional wisdom says that it can be—that Stephen King, Charles Dickens, James Michener, and other distinguished novelists have unique voices which readers can identify merely by perusing short excerpts of their novels.

I won’t argue the point, except to say that many successful writers don’t have unique voices. A best-selling author of Christian women’s fiction told me, “I wouldn't recognize my authorial voice if it called to me.” And a popular Christian suspense/mystery author added, “When it comes to a recognizable authorial voice, I've always believed that I have laryngitis.”

This is encouraging news for the rest of us. Voice may be the sine qua non of successful fiction (Ooops! I slipped into my pompous voice. Sorry!). I mean that, voice may be an essential ingredient of a publishable novel, but strength and confidence seem to be more important virtues than uniqueness. Consequently, we all can develop the kind of voice that’s necessary to write compelling Christian fiction.

A killer tries to make the hurricane that blew through Glory, North Carolina, look like the bad guy. But Storm Channel cameraman Sean Miller knows the body buried under the rubble wasn't the victim of a fallen church steeple. Feisty secretary Ann Trask seems to be the only person who agrees with him. But the woman of Sean's dreams is busy being romanced by a phony celebrity weatherman, who cried on cue and hid during the fi rst strong gust of wind! Which means it's time for Sean to invite Ann for some serious off-the-air investigation….