How Many Voices?

by Dianna Calareso, a team member of Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services

I was recently asked: "Changing voice in a story or book: Is it okay? Only in dialogue? Is it okay for more than one voice to tell the story? Using verb tenses?"

I think it's okay, the same way I think butter is okay: in moderation! In today's distracting world, a reader's attention cannot be taken for granted; one of the main reasons a reader will disengage from a book is confusion.

Multiple voices to tell a story can be extremely effective (think Faulkner, As I Lay Dying). However, it can easily move from a unique way to show multiple perspectives to a gimmick that the writer is using at the expense of a clear, confident story. Readers do not like gimmicks - they can sniff them out a mile away, and won't finish the story/book. Readers also do not like confusion...so if you feel that multiple voices are essential to your telling of the story, keep it simple, and keep it clear. Don't obscure for the sake of obscurity; don't insert vague voices to be mysterious -- just tell your story.

As far as multiple verb tenses are concerned, my opinion is that if you're going to do it, you'd better have a REALLY good reason for it....and then you'd better be REALLY good at it. Otherwise, it leads to confusion, then frustration, then...you've lost the reader. Generally, present tense stories are very hard to pull off; they have a meta-quality to them that can be wonderful if wonderfully done, and awful if weakly written. Readers will always be most familiar with a past tense voice, so I think it's a safe place to start - as the story progresses, you can go back and revise if you feel your story would benefit from a different tense.

It can be helpful to practice telling the story in multiple voices or tenses to figure out what ultimately works best. A truly good story can stand on its own, gimmick-free. Read the story to yourself out loud in each voice/tense. What sounds the best? Are you confused?

There may be times when you are writing to a very specific audience, in which case obscurity or jumping around may be appropriate. For example, if you are writing a very niche science-fiction story about time travel, naturally you may have good reason to work in multiple tenses. If that's the case, I say go for it - but be prepared and willing to be rejected by a mass readership who will not understand why their confusion is essential to the story.

If you are an excellent writer who is confident with alternate styles of story-telling and who has a target audience for this type of story, there's no reason why it can't work. Otherwise, your best shot at attracting and keeping loyal readers is to leave them with a story that they engage the entire length of the read, with no need to step outside of the story and ask what's going on. Sometimes the best way to keep them there is a simple, wonderful story that has a voice of its own.