Could Someone Give me Advice on Developing Narrative Voice?

Craft of Fiction
#1

Hello there,

I have been working on refining the narrative voice in my writing; and I have hit a bit of a roadblock. I would love to hear your insights and experiences on how to develop a compelling narrative voice that resonates with readers.

Specifically; I am struggling with maintaining consistency in tone throughout longer pieces of fiction. While I can establish a voice that feels right for the story protagonist or narrator in shorter segments; I find it challenging to sustain this over the course of a novel or a series of interconnected stories.

How do you approach this aspect of writing? Are there specific techniques or exercises you use to hone your narrative voice and ensure it remains engaging from start to finish?

Do you have any favorite examples from literature where you feel the author excelled in this regard?

Additionally; I am curious about your thoughts on the balance between voice and character development.

How much should the narrative voice reflect the protagonists personality versus standing as a distinct entity guiding the reader through the story?

Also; I have gone through this post; https://danieldavidwallace.com/2015/09/08/how-i-teach-college-level-writing-the-essay-the-problem-sap/ which definitely helped me out a lot.

Any advice; personal anecdotes; or recommended reading on this topic would be greatly appreciated. I am eager to learn from your experiences and perspectives.

Thank you in advance for your help and assistance.

1 Like
#2

Tip of the Iceberg advice:

In my experience, the narrative voice depends largely on POV and genre.

If you’re writing a personal memoir, then the voice is going to be your own. However, if you’re writing a fictional memoir, then it will be the voice of the character you’ve chosen to write it.

If you then add a genre, Crime, for example, the voice may need to accommodate police-procedural/detective procedural language.

Read as much as you can in the genre of your choice, and that will help you find the voice. And rhyming, apparently :wink:

Happy Writing.

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#3

If the narrator is, say, the main character, I think the narrative voice is simpler to develop and maintain since it depends then so heavily on that character’s personality. You probably have a good handle on that.

Things require a different set of considerations though if the narrator is not one of the characters in your story. Then, you should probably work out just how intrusive you want the narrator to be. I usually prefer an invisible narrator: I try to make them subliminal, hardly even present. I think that’s managed by how often, and how overtly, you make a statement about the ongoing story. You know the sort of thing:

“It was at this point that Herbert Humpington wondered if it might not have been better to go around the bear.”

When you consider these narrator intrusions, that’s when you should think about the tone you want for them. Is the tone superior, amused? Or are these intrusions purely whimsical; or to amuse the reader or poke fun at a situation or character? Is the intention to disturb, to allude darkly to something the characters haven’t noticed, or a possibility they’ve not imagined? How literary do you want the narrator’s use of language to be, or how down-to-earth?

Whatever you choose, you should I think pick something that fits the story you’re writing and will add to it or deepen it in some way, and which you enjoy writing. You don’t want it to be painful for you to write, hard work that you have to suffer through. That would really make the task harder!

I think I see a similarity between narrative voice in books, and breaking the fourth wall in movies. Some movies (e.g. Deadpool) do it a lot, to great effect. Most films don’t. Hmm, unless the POV of the camera is itself analogical to the narrative voice in a book? Hmm.

A final tip I think would be to Look Inside a bunch of famous and well loved books to read the opening pages, and see just how widely the narrative voice can differ. Look at them purely for the purpose of detecting the narrative voice the author has chosen, and how much they differ one from another.
You could even try taking a page of your current MS and just rewriting it in some exercise book (or file) with different styles of narrator, just playing and having fun with different options that occur to you.

Hope this helps!