geoviki | Voice and detail

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Voice and detail

You won't find my name in the post asking for anonymous concrit. I don't think it's inherently wrong for those of you who've tossed your hat in; I hope its helpful. I could describe my own reasons carefully, but

scoradh and

parthenia14 did such a nice job of it that I'll just point you there. This way you won't know what a tissue-paper-thin ego I am hiding from you. I got broadsided back when I was a new writer by a HP hatefic post, which asked for nasty anonymous comments about stories, but without the author buy-in. It only made me feel bad and suspect people for no reason.

I've been thinking, though, about how I am willing to accept praise from all and sundry, yet I sternly judge the bearers of not-so-happy concrit. If it's from a stranger, I want to know her street cred before I'm willing to allow that she may have a point. My conclusion is that I'm a big, fat hypocrite. Still, I think there are enough other ways for you to tell me what you think I need to hear. And to be honest, I depend quite a bit on my betas to keep me between the ditches.

Besides, we all value different stuff. (Ooh, can you sense the segue hovering on the horizon...)

(Disclaimer time - I majored in science. My last formal lit class was long before a lot of you were even born. So I should warn you that there's probably a high bullshit ratio here, and I don't know the proper meta terms that many of you do. Still I know what I like.)

There are two things I want to mention that, when done well, turn me into a slobbering fangrrl: voice and detail. I want to use a story to explain what I mean by this (show, don't tell; right, class?). It's not even an HP fic - it's

resonant8's Higher Education. It's fanfic from the movie The Breakfast Club, and although it's nice to have seen the movie, it's not necessary. The movie was full of types from high school: the popular girl, the freaky proto-Goth, the brain, the jock, and the rebel. Higher Education reunites the brain, Brian, and the rebel, John Bender.

Resonant does such a terrific job with Bender's voice that after one reading, I misremembered it as being written in first person (it's not). Every paragraph is wholly seated in Bender's POV – immediate, convincing, unwavering, intimate, and unique. Here are a few examples:

He crashed on Mitchell's couch for a while, but after a couple days Mitchell's girlfriend started bitching about his shirts on the floor and his roaches in the ashtray, and Mitchell quite sensibly chose pussy over friendship.

After that, his tale of woe got him a couple of nights in Lori Bauer's basement, with some fringe benefits from Lori herself. But Lori's stepdad made Dick Vernon look like a gentleman and a scholar. When it actually came down to threats, it occurred to John that he was, strictly speaking, a trespasser, and thus Lori's stepdad, unlike Vernon, probably wouldn't go to jail for kicking his ass, and therefore getting the hell out of there was the better part of valor.

Or this:

John had never actually had a long-term relationship, unless you counted his arrangement with Debbie Lugner, which had been more like, "Yeah, come on over any time, unless I have an early shift tomorrow or I'm seeing somebody who actually lives in town." He surprised himself by kind of liking it.

Brian didn't come around to the shop all that often -- every couple of weeks, a frequency finely calibrated so it didn't look like he was ashamed of John or scared of his co-workers, but not often enough that they got to expect him or think of him as John's best friend or anything. Mostly Brian met him at the house after dinner, or called him up and told him to save a table at Pucci's, and he'd come straight from the el station still in the clothes he wore to his summer internship at Chicago Edison, tie with a short-sleeve shirt like the dork he was.

By the end of the story, I was rooting for Bender to find true love and happiness based on how well I felt I knew and liked him.

But voice isn't the only thing to knock my socks off in this story - the detail is astonishing. Res has concocted an entire world around these two characters, entirely original. Bender works in a car repair shop, and each of his co-workers is described so clearly that I know they have completely independent lives outside of this story. And not only is this car shop described in loving detail, but so is the competitor across the street, the customers, even the cars themselves. Like this:

Dejuan left to open up his own place down in South Carolina, and Wysocki hired some scrawny rat of a kid named Chris who was barely literate and about one step up from homeless. John and Carlinhos worked a lot of overtime in the time it took the kid to decide whether he was going to bolt or stick around and grow up.

It was OK, though. Carlinhos said about two words an hour, but they worked together like four hands with one brain. The money was good. And it wasn't like John had anything else to do with his evenings.

The first job they let the kid touch was this weird little electric-blue thing like the dune buggy from a Matchbox Car set, with a set of handcuffs dangling from the rearview mirror. "Done by noon, sweetheart, or not a penny," said the guy in the tanktop who dropped it off, and Chris banged around in the back room hissing, "Fucking cocksucker faggot."

I mean, I can see that car and its owner as if he was standing in this room. Just like I can see - and smell - his cousin and her fiance:

"Johnny?" She took a couple of running steps and gave him a great big Eternity-scented hug. Damn it, somebody with tits like this would have to be blood kin, wouldn't she? "When they stopped talking about you, Ma figured either jail or the Marines, you know?"

"Man, Ange, you grew up!" Last time he'd seen her she'd been all skinny and pizza-faced. And definitely not a redhead.

She grinned, and then she pulled over a big tall fat guy with a shaved head and a huge gold chain around his neck, just like a rapper only white. "This is my fiance," she said, squeezing the guy's arm. "Mason, this is my cousin Johnny, feast your eyes, a Bender with a job! Johnny, you've just got to come to the wedding. I want to see Ma shit herself."

He didn't offer Mason his hand in case there was some kind of secret handshake he was supposed to know about.

To sum up, I think voice and detail are two areas I could use more work on, so I look to stories like this - and especially writers like Resonant - to show me how it's supposed to be done. Now it's time for class participation: link me to stories that you think use voice and detail especially well.

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what kind of pish-tish nonsensery is this?!?!?

help with VOICE and DETAIL!!!

bullocks & bother!

rubbish rubbish

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by "work on", do you find that the voice and detail you DO infuse (seemingly so effortlessly) in your narrative doesn't come to you as easily as you'd like? because i think most authors THINK that it's supposed to come easy, when in fact it rarely does, i'd imagine.

your voice is wonderful.

and you detail is keen.

but.... like you, i have a science (plus music) background and not a literary one. So, I could be talking... nonsensery.

(i reserve the right to make up words as i go along, so there!)

You are so kind to say so. Still, I know I always have things I could learn. It's the insecurity of the self-taught.

This story doesn't have a single word that doesn't serve the purpose of getting us closer to the characters, and I admire that. Well, obviously.

I've been thinking, though, about how I am willing to accept praise from all and sundry, yet I sternly judge the bearers of not-so-happy concrit. If it's from a stranger, I want to know her street cred before I'm willing to allow that she may have a point.

I don't necessarily think your position is hypocritical. Praise is like money--some of it's crisp, some of it's dirty, some of it's Canadian, but ultimately it's all good, you know? Criticism, OTOH, is more like brownies. In theory, all brownies are good brownies. However, in reality how good they really are depends on the recipe, the ingredients and the cooking. Sometimes you can recognize a good brownie. Sometimes you need to check and make sure the eggs were fresh. And if the bottoms are burnt, well then....

Your comment makes me...hungry!

I do appreciate praise (well, who doesn't?) but I think it's a teensy bit of a cheat when I accept it without asking the same question I do of criticism: how do you know what's good? (And secretly wondering if you also think fiction X is good)

*wanders off to find something chocolately and sweet*

I think voice and detail are two areas I could use more work on

Well, I can only speak for myself when I say 'me too'. I would dearly love to write original fiction some day, and I think that's precisely the hurdle I would need to overcome, to be able to create amazing characters practically from scratch and really make them come alive.

You and I both have written OCs in our HP fic, and I think I've already told you how much I loved the hairdresser in DSoT. I thought he was an amazing character, and the scenes from his POV were very well done. But I do understand the level you want to get yourself to, and I would dearly like to get there too! I'm not sure if I have any examples of such good writing to offer, but I'll think about it.

If it's from a stranger, I want to know her street cred before I'm willing to allow that she may have a point.

I don't think that's hypocritical, but maybe that's because I agree! ;-) I am happy to accept concrit, but the odds are I will only take it seriously from people (a) who write it very politely and intelligently, and (b) whom I know and whose opinions about writing and fiction I already respect. For example, I once got a long letter of unsolicited concrit about my writing style from someone, along the lines of "You should write more description. Tell us what color shirt Draco is wearing and what Harry's shoes look like and what kind of furniture is in the room." Accompanied by rewritten passages from my fic. My response to that particular person was that I only spend time on those sorts of details if they're really important for the story, and in this case they were not, in my opinion. What I wanted to say was, "Are you shitting me? I can't even force myself to plow through your fic because of the excessive description of every little nook and cranny of the setting, so why would I take writing advice from you?"

But, you know. :-P

I do know!

One of the ways I teach myself to use more - and more effective - description is to study how writers I admire do it. Mostly this is from published stories, but there are fan fic writers who are as good, I think. And I drool and envy and study them!

I also loved that story, and I adore Resonant in so many ways. And I think we can all learn, of course. Some only in tiny increments, and some need to scale large cliffs... but being open to seeing the technique in things like this is a necessary first step. Thanks for the pointers!

There are some stories, like this one, that I feel almost compelled to reread line by line, because the author uses language to such good effect. It's almost like falling in love.

Me too on everything. About the concrit (I weight criticism - and praise, for that matter - by the credibility of the source), and about Resonant's fabulous eye for just-enough-detail.

Do you weigh the praise? Because I'm such a pathetic and needy writer that I don't think I do that enough. I gobble it up!

I love praise from anybody. But it counts more if it's from someone whose writing I admire (or whose recs indicate their high standards).

Yes, that story is picture perfect and you couldn't have used a better example. I ADORE it and read it about once a week for inspiration.

I also agree with you that her third person is SO close that it reads like first person, actually something that JKR does very well. Harry Potter is written so closely that sometimes you have to remind yourself that it is from Harry's POV, which is why the POV of the other characters can be one-dimensional, i.e., in the characterization of the Slytherins.

I think we can always improve. And I look to other writers for inspiration as well. But how do you make that leap between someone else's style and voice and YOUR style and voice because they are unique?

Oh, I reread it frequently, too! I have a collection of stories I love so much that I have them printed out and I revisit them quite a lot.

I don't deliberately try to mimic someone else's style and voice, because I think that's not possible. When I referred to voice, I mean the character's voice - Bender's'in this case. The whole story reflects his choice of words and world view, even in the descriptions. So I look over the way the author does it. If I'd studied lit in college, I probably would have more tools at hand, but sadly, I have to learn by teaching myself. Maybe someday I'll take a class again in writing. I'm not sure if that would help or hurt, though.

Thank you for posting a link to that fic by Resonant. It's a damn fine story, and one I would have been sorry to miss out on.

It is a great story! I hadn't seen the movie since I saw it in a theater in the early '80s when it came out, but the story spoke to me. Afterwards, I snagged the movie from the library and watched it once more.

And I see you recced it in your LJ, too! Spread the Resonant love!

Dear geoviki,

First of all, you really have no severe problem with either voice, detail or anything else. Unlike yours which was years ago, my last Literature class was twenty minutes ago when I had to conduct a pracitcal criticism session of "Ambulances" by Phillip Larkin with an accelerated high-school class. (There, now you know what I do for a living.)

I admit that when I first started three years ago I read simply from a desire to consume plot. I used to think of reading fanfiction as a rather naughty and unhealthy hobby of mine, till I started being able to sift the wheat from the chaff. Most of the stories I cam across, and worse, which I admit I read...were as far from Pulitzer standard as Kafka from FHM. If tehre was a way to obliviate them from my mind, I would do it.

As you already know, you wrote my HD gateway fic, "A Thousand Beautiful Things" and although it could be polished up here and there, it is something that I would never hesitate to defend as an excellent piece of fiction, albeit a derivative work. Your voice in "The Waters of March" and the detail in that story deserves great praise as well. I could be much more specific but I'm running out of break time here.

When you wrote about voice and description, a couple of stories I read recently came to mind. I'm sure you've read Nope's work before but anyway, here's link to one of his/her pieces: You've Got It All Backwards. It's A Love Story. (http://www.somedistantgalaxy.com/veela/reads.html) Another piece I hold right up there with all the others is Things That Change by hydaspes (http://eutychides.livejournal.com/), which I know you enjoyed as well. The level of detail in that story is absolutely astounding without verging on excessive. The spare writing style and subdued prose tricks you into thinking there's less going on than there is, till you find your toes curling from the cumulative effect of all the little details tucked into the exact right places.

I don't think that perfect voice OR detail necessarily make or break a piece. It's not a magic formula that works for all writers. One really must judge each piece on its overall merit and effect.

Like I judged yours...and loved it.

*rushes to next class*
zen

Who needs anon concrit when you are so willing to come and say things that make sense - and that are so nice to boot! Thanks so much. When you tell me that ATBT was your gateway fic, I glow with pride and satisfaction.

Your recs of Nope and Hydaspes are terrific examples, too. I love the way Nope uses language and voice, and his Happiness Involving a Tea House (http://nopespace.com/hp2/hiath.htm) is a short and sweet story I reread a lot, too. And Ociwen's Things That Change is subtle, you're right, but powerful, too.

I'm such a fangirl for a well-written story, and I've been so impressed with the beautiful stuff coming out in our fandom. Lucky for me, I avoided most of the tripe in my early fan days. Even now, I find it hard to keep up with the wonderful stuff being recced daily.

Thanks again, Zen! I really appreciate what you've said.

Hee, I got mentioned! This kept me amused for a long time.

As for voice and stuff, I don't really know what that means, so I don't know who's lacking it and who isn't. I'm interested in reading that fic, though, except that I can't remember anyone's names except Bender's (for obvious reasons). Should watch it again, methinks!

You got mentioned twice this week!

You must know what voice and detail are, because I nearly used your Clear as Mud (http://rainspots.livejournal.com/6139.html) as a second example, but my entry got too long. Because you do detail and voice like nobody's business.

You don't have to see the movie to read the fic. Lord knows I hadn't seen it in 20 years, and I still got it with no problem. Although afterwards, I did pick it up at our library and watch it again. No slash, though.

Oh, stop, or I'll strut. I'm warning you.

Really? It must be that better writer who lives in my head and eats sprouts. I just like the chance to use big words on page.

Oooh ... I spotted a leetle jock/Bender slash. I did. But then again, I am wholesomely depraved.

Fic Rec:Fever (http://orchid.hopelessfancy.net/wrestling/fever.html) by Orchid.

I've been recc'ing this story for years because of the artistic use of voice.

A few warnings: It's pro-wrestling fic-- give it a chance anyway :). And it's graphic slash. From your user info I saw you were okay with slash, but I couldn't get a read on your ratings comfort-level.

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