On Tone and Voice and Style
and the Differences Between Them
I’m going to write a few hopefully useful notes around the subject of narrative manner. I say manner to avoid the three terms in today’s title.
The way I define these terms comes out of my teaching, rather than some grander literary rigour.
POV
For the moment, I’ll keep point of view — POV — to the grammatical. Meaning first person singular past tense or second person plural past tense rather than anything to do with attitude (so not the narrator’s point of view on masculinity or marriage).
All these three ways of referring to narrative manner could be mixed up — tone is voice is style.
In some writers, that mixing up may be deliberate. They might feel they write better in the murk.
However, I think all three need to be kept separate, conceptually, for clarity’s sake — especially when they are being worked towards, either at an early stage in a writer’s development, or an early stage in their writing of a story.
TONE
Tone can be distinguished easily enough. A novel, or a passage in a novel, can be elegiac or mischievous, and that is its tone. The style it is written in may be wordy, with complicated syntax, or minimal, with few commas, but it can still in tone be elegiac or mischievous or all the other possibilities.
Tone is often seen as more a matter of conscious authorial choice than style or voice. Because tone, in a way, is what the story is about. A sad story is told sadly, in a fittingly sad tone.
Tone is intimately related to the narrator’s attitude toward the action, toward the events narrated, rather than their attitude toward language or toward the reader-writer relationship.
STYLE
Style is something over which the writer perhaps forlornly hopes to keep control. I will make my style this or I will write my book in this style or, quite often, I will never again allow myself to write in a style like that. But some writers seem to default to one style or other. And often this is a style they first encountered as literary, or a style they fell in love with in a particular writer or genre of writing. This is influence.
Style dictates syntax, word choice, use of allusions and echos, but is also the manifestation of an attitude. See below.
VOICE
To students who might get intimidated if I talked to them about their style, implying they already needed to have one, I talk about voice.
They all already have a voice. They just may not use it for their writing.
Those two things can, I think, be separated — style can be put on, on top of voice. The two won’t necessarily fit. An affected style can undermine a potentially good voice.
The difference is often that between style and a style.
STYLE AGAIN
Style, true style, is a manner of being — it is a disposition toward the world expressed through an attitude to words. Usually, developing this takes years.
Because of this, style is a deep thing, perhaps a pervasive thing, whereas a style is an improvised and often desperate thing. But for beginning writers, adapting a style may be their way of working toward writing in their own style. (This was certainly the case for me. Adventures in Capitalism, my first book, is full of stories where I’m trying out a style and then another style.)
It is easier to attempt to write honestly and directly than to attempt immediately to write with your own distinctive style. Some writers believe that style is merely honesty — they are usually male, macho, heterosexual and lying. Style is often deceptive and excessive. Even literary minimalism à la Gordon Lish is a form of excess — excessive omission. Look at all I can do without!
The most important thing, I believe, is to do is begin writing with as much energy as you can. Energy can go equally into understatement as verbal exuberance. (This is not about using energetic doing verbs.)
Showing off is a good way of finding out what you have to show.
You may find you end up with something very raw and true to show, as a result of months of merely showing off.