Finding Your Writer's Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction

Thaisa Frank, Dorothy Wall

Macmillan, Dec 15, 1996 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 256 pages

An illuminating guide to finding one's most powerful writing tool, Finding Your Writer's Voice helps writers learn to hear the voices that are uniquely their own. Mixing creative inspiration with practical advice about craft, the book includes chapters on:

Accessing raw voice
Listening to voices of childhood, public and private voices, and colloquial voices
Working in first and third person: discovering a narrative persona
Using voice to create characters
Shaping one's voice into the form of a story
Reigniting the energy of voice during revision

Contents

• Telling Begins in an Atmosphere of Urgency: 3
• Voice Your Most Powerful Tool: 5
• The Writer as Singer: 8
• The Importance of Raw Voice: 10
• The Voice as an Instrument: 15
• Inner Listening: 20
• Distilling Voice: 24
• Inviting Accidents: 26
• Listening to the Voice of Childhood: 28
• Public and Private Voices: 32
• The Sound of Colloquial Voice: 35
• The Chorus of Voice: 38
• Whos Speaking? Voice and Character: 41
• Capturing the Inner Critic: 46
• Learning to Spot the Imposter: 49
• The Writer as Presence: 54
• Becoming a Prose Thief: 58
• Using the Journal Dangerously: 61
• Writing in the Pressure Cooker Leading Raw Voice into the Story: 65
• If: 68
• Craft and the Voice of the Story: 73
• Going Deeper into the Story Voice as Composer and Instrumentalist: 77
• From Anecdotes to Stories: 80
• Catalysts for the Story Character Plot and Vision Driven Stories: 85
• Working with Short Forms to Discover Your Story: 90
• Point of View: 97
• Meeting the FirstPerson Narrator: 103
• Working with Third Person Discovering a Narrative Persona: 111
• Secrets as a Key to Character: 117
• Finding Dialogue through Impersonation: 122
• Voice and Tone: 127
• To Plot or Not to Plot: 133
• Gender Bending Race Switching and Beyond: 139
• Unity Discovering a Storys Design: 145
• Returning to the Pressure Cooker: 152
• Revision Exploding the Myth: 159
• The Art of Reading Your Own Fiction: 164
• Should Dick Have a Beard? Meeting Your Editors: 169
• Listening for the Story Editor: 173
• Listening for the Sentence Editor: 179
• The Timing of Revision: 184
• How to Surprise Yourself in the Middle of Your Story: 187
• Filtering Feedback: 191
• When to Rewrite from Scratch: 196
• Talking to the Stranger Another Angle on Revision: 200
• Returning to Raw Voice: 205
• Voice over the Long Haul: 208
• Audacity and Ruthlessness DeConstructing a Writers Life: 213
• The Writer as Character: 217
• Writing during Hard Times: 221
• Some Truths about TruthTelling: 226
• The Importance of Lying: 233
• Becoming Your Own Sovereign: 237

About the author

Thaisa Frank, author of three books of short fiction and a forthcoming novel, is a two-time PEN award winner, and contributing editor to The San Francisco Review. She has taught at San Francisco State, University of California at Berkeley, and currently teaches at the University of San Francisco. Dorothy Wall, poet and writing consultant, is also the author of numerous reviews and articles. She gives writing workshops and seminars, and has taught at San Francisco State University, Napa Valley College, and University of California at Berkeley, Extension. She lives in Oakland, California.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Finding Your Writer's Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction
• Authors: Thaisa Frank, Dorothy Wall
• Edition: reprint, revised
• Publisher: Macmillan, 1996
• ISBN: 0312151284, 9780312151287
• Length: 256 pages
• Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Rhetoric; Language Arts & Disciplines / Writing / Authorship; Language Arts & Disciplines / Writing / General; Reference / General