It's funny, I've been having some offline discussions about a writer's voice lately and I wanted to share it here. Then I saw that the month's suggested theme was holiday reads and I must say that I found a very appropriate example. :)
THE SEASON
I love Christmas stories. Which is odd as I grew up in a household where Christmas was not the most comfortable time (Dad was not a fan of the season). But my wife and kid taught me what a joy Christmas could be when it is done with heart and soul. And I've now written seven novels and twelve short stories set in the holiday season. (A total surprise to me...and yes, many more to come.)
Here's a collection of all twelve short stories:
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| Grab a copy here! |
What's funny about this collection is that the twelve tales are actually in ten different series and five distinct genres:
- military romantic suspense (The Night Stalkers, Delta Force, US Coast Guard)
- romantic suspense (Firehawks Hotshots, White House Protection Force)
- science fiction romance (Science Fiction Romance stories)
- contemporary romance (Where Dreams, Henderson's Ranch, and a standalone)
- thriller (Dead Chef)
And yet, if you were to read all the tales, from the angst-filled Relive the Day! to the thriller romp of Christmas Cookied Chef, I think there would be little question that they were all written by the same author.
That's voice!
Not character voice, but the voice of the author. Which leads me back to the discussion I was having with some friends earlier. So, what the heck is an author's voice?
Well, that's the real beauty of it. The one person who can't hear their own voice is, indeed, the author. Why? Because to the author, it sounds like themselves. Which, curiously enough will sound a little dull and flat--but only to the author. (Yep, it's a crazy profession.)
The challenge for the author is to then learn how to stay out of their own way. My theory goes something like this:
- Do not over edit. That's the writer's intellectual brain trying to correct their natural, emotional one to what they "think" it should be. I'm not saying don't fix broken things in the edit, I'm saying try not to fix the things that aren't broken.
- Focus on having fun. That's when we're being our truest selves. When we just plunge in and tell story. Sure, this can be wrackingly hard, or everyone would be doing it, but we love it or else authors would find something simpler to do like creating world peace. :)
- Matching the author voice to the genre.
MY VOICE
This last point has already been a wild adventure for me. My career has spanned 25 years so far. I can't imagine what the next 25 will hold, but here's what I know so far.
Some authors LOVE a particular genre. They eat sleep and breathe: romance, science fiction, high fantasy, cozy mystery... When they go to write in that genre, they've spent decades as a reader training their inner writer's voice to love that genre and they can just climb right in and pull it over them like a warm blanket.
Me? Not so much. I was deep in a career of reading action-adventure (Melville, London, Arctic explorers--I was about 10), when my Dad set down a science fiction book he'd just finished. I picked it up and didn't leave SF (except for a little bit of fantasy) for a decade. Then I spent another decade in thrillers and more years in classics before I stumbled on romance. Except romance already worked for me because Mom had raised me on a steady diet of MGM musicals and albums of Broadway shows.
So, I wrote some SF, a couple romances, and a few thrillers. Then I sold a military romantic suspense (MRS) series to a publishing house. Thirty novels later, I popped my head up.
My career was going very nicely, but I wanted a little more surety and some variety. The next steps looked something like this:
- I plunged into contemporary romance. Fourteen books later, I was getting the same kind of stellar reviews I had in MRS...but about 1/2 the sales. Hmm... I thought. Hmmmm....
- I then looked at all my reviews (did one of those word cloud things where more common ones are bigger). Sure I got: character, romance, heartwarming...but I also got: action, tension, exciting, even thriller.
- Hmmm, I do love a good thriller. In fact, much of my romance and SF reading had been over on the thriller side of the coin.
THE PLUNGE
So, I'm now making an experiment and plunging into thriller to see if that genre more closely matches my author's voice. Early feedback offers a fairly definitive YES.
- "Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more." - Publishers Weekly
- "Superb!" - Booklist
- “The best military thriller I have read in a very long time. Love the female characters.” – Sheldon McArthur, founder of The Mystery Bookstore, LA
As I write this, Drone released yesterday to my strongest launch in two years, despite being in a new genre for most of my dedicated readers. Have I managed to match my voice to a genre? Only time will tell. For now, you can judge for yourself.
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| Not as Christmasy as the collection above, but way fun! Click here to grab a copy: e-, print, large print, or audio |
M.L.
"Matt" Buchman has 60+ novels, 100 short stories, and lotsa
audiobooks. Booklist says: 3x “Top-10 Romance of the Year” and among “The 20 Best Romantic Suspense Novels.” A project manager with a geophysics degree,
he’s flown and jumped out of planes and also bicycled solo around the world. More at: www.mlbuchman.com.
5 comments:
Matt, I remember you saying something similar about the perils of over-editing years ago. And I totally agree having fun in telling our story is paramount. I believe readers can tell if you are just putting words on a page to fill up space instead of living your story onto the page. Your Christmas "anthology" looks interesting and is an excellent way to introduce your audience to your other genre books.
Maybe not the intent of your post, but you amaze me. If memory serves me correctly--and that's not always the case--I remember hearing about a guy writing romance a couple decades ago. I kinda scratched my head and wondered how that would go. I think your writing accomplishments since then say it has gone very well! Besides being prolific in a number of genres, you seem to have a great handle on marketing. Interesting perception about author voice matching a particular genre. Something else to consider as I'm writing, and it will be interesting to hear your experiences with the thriller genre. Thanks for sharing and glad your wife and kiddo brought to an appreciation of Christmas!
I agree that an author's voice may be more suited to one genre than another. Probably several genres versus several other genres. I would guess your penchant for romantic suspense and characters in high-risk professions would slide nicely into the thriller niche. Congratulations on your new launch and awesome reviews!!!
Good advice, M. L. I need to try that cloud thing on my own reviews. :-)
Yes, Matt, wouldn't it be helpful if the author could actually ID their own voice. I have to keep asking my critique partners what my voice is :-) Someday, I'll get to the point where I don't have to edit as much. The worst part for me is when an editor wants to edit out what seems to me to be my natural flow :-) Congrats on a great new start with this new genre.
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