Author: Kevin McGrath
Published: August 11, 1999
Last Updated: August 13, 1999
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Good writing

Margo Walker lifted chunks of thick leaded glass, blue as the deepest twilight, and piled them carefully into a box marked “fragile — this end up.”

This, she said, was our cross.

It was a beautiful cross, the one that overlooked the altar at First Christian Church in Haysville. Indigo glass that sparkled when the light shone through, with a dark figure that symbolized Christ’s body.

“It was inspirational,” Walker said. “It was so pretty.”

This opening to a story on a tornado’s aftermath, by writers Suzanne Perez Tobias and Van Williams of The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle, has everything a good story needs to grab readers’ attention, carry them through the jump and show them a piece of the world they might not otherwise see: revealing visual details, a sympathetic character, well-chosen quotes, a dramatic setting. And one further vital quality: a voice that accurately encompasses and reflects the story.

Voice is one of the least understood tools of writing, perhaps because it has no single form we can wrap our hands around mentally. It is amorphous, changing from story to story and writer to writer. And it is sometimes confused with tone, which it embodies. Worse, voice is something rarely taught beginning writers and often drubbed out of them, in school or the fist job, in favor of the institutional story voice of newspapering: “Three people died Wednesday when ...”

As a result, many writers don’t know they have a natural voice or don’t know how to find theirs. Here’s a roadmap.

What is it?

Simply put, voice is the writer’s natural way of expressing things; your spoken voice captured in writing, if you will. It can come through clearly even in the traditional inverted pyramid. And while voice is multidimensional, it follows one underlying rule: It always arises from the story. It both encompasses the story and expresses it. As such, the story, not the writer, dictates voice.

The story above, for example, carries a funerary quality, hushed and respectful, befitting an encounter with a disaster victim. But a writer can easily go to the other end of the spectrum if it accurately reflects the story. Consider this example from The Times, Munster, Ind.:

Vatican II? Outta here. That pope fellow? He’s history. And The Ten Commandments? Well, at this parish they’re The Ten Suggestions, bucko.

Welcome to St. James, the Less Catholic Church.

Well, not really.

A lack of punctuation combined with observers’ lack of familiarity with Butler’s Lives of the Saints have led to mass confusion (sorry) and more than a few laughs among the staff at this Highland house of worship.

The new sign outside the church at 45th Street and Kennedy Avenue reads “St. James the Less Catholic Church,” leaving some passersby and some parishioners wondering just what is going on inside.

The parish pastor, the Rev. Francis Lazar, and his staff have been busy fielding calls during the last two months, explaining that they are not less Catholic, but that the “Less” actually refers to St. James — as in St. James the Less, bishop of Jerusalem.

This writer was able to have fun with religion, a dangerous ground for comedy, for one reason: The church staff found the whole thing funny. His opening is meant to reflect their sense of humor. Had the pastor, staff and parishioners been upset about the sign and promising a new one, this story would have been woefully out of place, and an insult. Voice arises from the story.

How is it expressed?

Voice is multifaceted; a few qualities:

• A sense of conversation. More than anything, voice is the act of you, the writer speaking to me, the reader. I hear a human being in my mind when I read, not some faceless institution called a newspaper. This can be true even in inverted pyramid stories.
• Word usage. Each of us naturally strings words together in a certain way, and we regularly turn to certain words and expressions to convey meaning. Word choice — our selection from English’s rich menu of nouns and verbs, spiced with the occasional modifier — reflects the way we think. We may say “amble” rather than “walk,” for example. Word order reflects how we reason, assemble images in our minds and hear the language. So no matter what the story form, our word usage alone can carry our voice.
• Use of idiom or regionalisms. These spring from our upbringing in a certain place and culture, and can be used to flavor the story. For example, my mother’s use of “what in tarnation” and “conniption fit” reflects her rural Texas childhood. But I would be hard-pressed to fit them into something other than a column like this, unless I were writing about her area.
• Rhythm. The tornado victim piece unfolds slowly, reverentially, even though it is focused and specific. By contrast, a breaking news story would have a quick delivery, a staccato of fact-telling. Each is dictated by the story and helps express it.
• Point of view. Are the readers hearing you, the writer? The word choices will be yours. Are they listening to a character tell the story? The voice will be the character’s. But exercise care, lest your choice of expressions and word choices cast the character in a bad light. Here’s one last example to illustrate point of view. The writer is Roy Wenzl of the Wichita Eagle, surveying tornado damage during a two-day walk along the twister’s path. Notice his word choices and sentence structures: