Last weekend, we were thrilled to host literary agent Kat Kerr for her Voice & Structure Deep Dive workshop inside our online community! It was a wonderful two hours of instruction punctuated by thoughtful and thought-provoking questions from the day-of audience.
I was lucky enough to be one of those in attendance, and now I present to you three of the shiniest gold nuggets of wisdom from the two-part workshop. Take note!
Takeaway #1: Readers can “hear” prose.
One of the top reasons agents pass on manuscripts is that they don’t connect with the voice. If you’ve received a rejection letter highlighting the voice as the reason, you might already suspect that’s because there are so many elements that go into voice! And these elements—tone, attitude, diction, vocabulary, figurative language, figures of speech, detail, imagery, and point of view—cannot be afterthoughts.
Why? Because (most!) readers can hear the narration inside their heads. You want to make sure the voice you write in—whether as an omniscient narrator or your main character—is doesn’t slow a reader down.
To illustrate her point, Kat brought up the famous excerpt from Gary Provost’s 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Techniques for Writing With Style and Power.
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.
Gary Provost
Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
Kat reminded us that we can always read our work aloud or use AI voices to read our words back to us. Great tip!
Takeaway #2: A writer doesn’t need to translate their culture and experience.
Like us, Kat is a big fan of the #OwnVoices movement. When asked by an attendee how she would suggest handling [question], Kat responded by saying writers should feel comfortable writing about their own culture and experiences as they really are, offering context for unfamiliar readers to fill in the gaps for themselves.
As Kat said during the workshop, “Books don’t have to educate!”
Takeaway #3: Know your goals when it comes to the reader’s experience of your story.
You know what your character’s goals are, but what about your goals for your reader?
Having in mind—or even writing out—how you want the reader to feel or what you want them to know by the end of your story helps you make sure your story has a clear purpose and a message. It can also help you make storytelling decisions while writing the book.
So, if your reader misses everything else about your book, what is the one thing you hope lands?
Curious to hear what else Kat Kerr has to teach? You can still catch the replay of our Voice & Structure Deep Dive workshop!
And once you claim your access, you’ll also become part of our online writing community!
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