The narrative voice constitutes one hundred per cent of every novel. The narrative voice is how the writer writes, and if he’s any good, you’ll never notice, because you are eager to find out what happens next. As much as plot and character, it is the narrative voice that keeps you reading. Some writers tell a story so seamlessly and effectively that you never think about it. You’re too busy consuming story. Other authors draw attention to themselves with every word. Raymond Chandler revolutionized the detective story with his hard-boiled Philip Marlowe.
“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
“She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.”
We keep reading because his words hit us like a water balloon. James Michener couldn’t be more different. He puts you right there, be it ancient Sumeria, Hawaii, or a Mexican pyramid. It’s like watching a superb documentary. What he shows us is so fascinating you never think about the narrative voice. In this sense, his narrative voice is ideal. You shouldn’t notice it. There is no barrier between you and the story.
A novel is words on paper and the shape and structure of the words themselves participate. We have all looked at novels, mostly high-falutin’, with little or no paragraph indentations so that the page resembles a block of Soviet housing. Forty-nine grim stories of machine-stamped soullessness with laundry hanging on the porch. Each story, each chapter, each page has a rhythm, and paragraph indentations are part of that rhythm. Dialogue is a surefire way to break up those slabs, because each person gets an indentation. Unless you’re John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, whose speech is one hundred and twenty pages long.
First person narrative shows the voice without clothes. There’s no place to hide. The protagonist is speaking. First person limits the point of view to one mind. Everything you experience has been filtered through that first person voice. In the hands of a master, such as John D. MacDonald, you can’t wait to get to the next sentence.
Second person is for losers. Don’t even think about it.
Third person is what I use, but I also use a limited point of view in that each chapter belongs to the person who wants something the most. I jump around from narrator to narrator. Third person also opens up the possibility of the omniscient point of view. Michener has it. Kevin J. Anderson, who writes the Dune novels, among others has it, and I think it’s partly a function of how Kevin writes, which is to speak into a recorder while hiking through the mountains. Kevin’s star-spanning sagas are ideal for his omniscient point of view. The narrative shifts from person to person within the same chapter, but in the hands of a master, you don’t notice.
James Ellroy has a unique narrative voice, distilled from the trash tabloids of the fifties and sixties. Ellroy’s prose sounds like machine gun fire. “He taught me. He explicated. He worked in ellipsis.”
Michael Chabon also has a narrative voice. In Telegraph Avenue, there’s a five thousand word chapter that is all one sentence. It doesn’t flag. You’ll learn new words. If you are searching for your narrative voice, just keep writing. You will get there eventually. There is only one essential writing book, Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. There are many excellent books on writing, but that one is a must.
There needs to be more than a "like" button for this -- a "love" button because this gets at the heart of writing, which so many writers are in need of.
My pick for best narrative voice in mystery fiction is Rex Stout's Archie Goodwin.