What is a narrative voice?

DokiDokiTsuna 2025-12-12 03:47:27 UTC #1

So I've been watching a lot of booktubers lately-- as in, YouTubers who specialize in talking about books and new developments in the publishing industry. Not only is it interesting to hear all the drama (there's something about the uniquely normie-yet-niche industry of bookwriting that seems to grow worms in people's brains (¬‿¬; )) it's interesting to see what modern-day bibliophiles have to deal with, as they search for quality media. Like, for instance...rich young people with enough money/connections/social media followers to brute-force their way through the publishing pipeline despite not even knowing how to write. At all.

And one such case really confused me, to the point of reminding me of some of my own experiences, and inspiring me to start this topic:

So basically, this author in particular spent millions of dollars essentially building a miniature production company to hype up her debut fantasy novel, which was allegedly her magnum opus; a masterpiece 10 years in the making...and most of her disappointed customers can believe that last part, because the novel does indeed feel like it was conceived 10 years ago, when she was 12 years old. The problem is, it also feels like it was fully written when she was 12 years old, and left untouched and unedited until it was finally shipped off at 20 bucks per copy.

I just spent most of my workday listening to someone try their best to read through it and summarize it-- yeah, it's not great. The "plot" is pretty much that of your average lazy YA fantasy novel: a misunderstood, ostracized (yet extremely special and lovable) protagonist rebels against the system with their friends. What made it particularly bad was the language usage-- simply put, this writer writes like the English language is just an abstract concept. The entire novel is filled with word salad from start to finish; it's a chore just to figure out what is being said at any given moment, let alone how much logical or narrative sense it makes.

What stuck out to me, however, was that this phenomenon ONLY occurs in the novel. When this author talks, she speaks normal, fluent English. When she writes public statements to explain things to her audience (like her constant bragging about how many professional people contributed to the editing and revisions of this book...in an alternate reality, I guess?) they are written in normal, fluent English. She seems to clearly understand what a sentence is supposed to look like and what words mean...until you open up her book and witness the nonsense inside. Weirdly repetitive phrases, random nouns thrown in to describe (?) things, constant mismatches between subjects and predicates...it's a whole mess.

And it made me think about some of the near-identical writing I've seen here on this forum, during the years I spent working on/off on my react thread...I tended to assume that people who wrote like that just didn't know English very well. And I'm sure some of them were working with a language that was foreign to them...but now I'm faced with the possibility that some of them were actually native English speakers who inexplicably shed brain cells as soon as they sit down to write prose. o_O

Yes, that's harsh...but I truly don't understand it. Not only do I not understand how something like that would happen, I don't understand how a writer (even an amateur!) would see it as normal when it DOES happen. Do you never...read any of your sentences to yourself? Do you not hear that you sound like a stroke victim? Does it not alarm you, or at least feel like something you might want to investigate...? Do you never consider that other authors DON'T sound that way, and wonder why you've decided that you SHOULD?

I doubt anyone is going to admit that they do this, but if by chance any of you out there do this and are willing to own up to it, I'd appreciate it if you could explain to me...like, just how. I think it's insight that would be valuable for me to have. ._.

I do have a theory, though...my best guess as to why this happens is the Occam's Razor approach-- i.e. a lot of people recognize that a narrative voice is somewhat different from everyday speech (and it can be), but they don't know HOW it's different, so they simply take a wild guess and start throwing words at the wall to see what sticks.

With all that said, I'd like to invite people to use this thread to explain what you think a narrative voice is, and how to create one strategically, rather than throwing basic grammar in a blender and hoping you end up with one.

I would define a narrative voice as the general tone and word choice that you employ when describing the events of your story, explaining the characters and events in between bouts of dialogue. The 'narrator', whether it's the MC or you or a nondescript POV entity, should be treated almost like their own character, with clear priorities and a viewpoint that enhances the story/scene.
And I have two main tips for any writers struggling with creating one:

1] Write like yourself, and build from there
I actually really like it when writers have a recognizable narrative style, regardless of what kind of story they're writing. Like, if they have a certain succinct or flowery delivery all the time...I don't think that harms the story as much as some amateurs seem to think it does.
And I say ^that because there's no real reason to make up a new form of English to use in a novel unless you're convinced that your own natural writing voice is somehow inappropriate. I'm not saying to write in netspeak or anything, but just to write as if you were drafting an essay or filling out a job application-- that kind of neutral, formal voice should work for pretty much any genre. So just start there for your first draft.

Then after that, you can tailor the voice to better fit the setting and overall tone of the book. If you DO want netspeak, that's when you start adding it in, finding a balance between crafting an authentic informal delivery and maintaining the clarity of purpose that your first draft (ideally) set up. Conversely, if you need the voice to sound less modern than you do, you'll be finding a balance between recreating an antiquated speech style (of which there are many to choose from; do your research) and maintaining that clarity of purpose.

And remember to always rewrite whole phrases, at least in the beginning of the editing process. Replacing a single word with a fancier/older/whatever counterpart in an otherwise untouched sentence is a recipe for embarrassment... "Gimme my tea in the solarium at 3 sharp" does not sound like a 19th century princess, but "I'll have my tea in the solarium at precisely 3 o'clock" does.

2] Descriptors are for emphasis
"I fell to the ground" is a fairly neutral phrase; could mean several different things depending on the context.
"My knees buckled as I fell to the cold ground, feeling as if I would never get up again" is much more overtly sad and dramatic. It paints a more specific picture of what the subject is doing and feeling, and thus demands the reader's attention more strongly.

^That is what adjectives and extra descriptive words are for. To attract attention and emphasize things, not to make your sentences 'look pretty'. Every time you add even one of those descriptors to a sentence, it should be a conscious choice and you should know why you made it.

...Tbph, I consider ^that rule "easy mode"; if the voice you're using is more flowery or eccentric (or just generally dramatic), you will have a slightly different and more complex strategy when it comes to emphasis. But 75% of writers don't need to think that far; they need to put the thesaurus down and K.I.S.S.
The vast majority of the time, overly wordy prose is more distracting and unnatural than overly succinct prose; always err on the side of shutting the hell up and letting the events of your story speak for themselves. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk~

vapidink 2025-12-12 04:24:52 UTC #2

Lmao, I know exactly who you're talking about (and I believe they actually transitioned and go by he/him pronouns right now). I think their issue was actually that they never edited something they wrote when they were all of twelve years old. They claim they did, but apparently the "editor" they said worked on their book only did a read through and then offered suggestions which were clearly ignored.

There's a lot of young--and not so young--writers who struggle with accepting criticism, even from themselves. There was a guy in another writing site who never took any valid criticism from anyone and it showed. He wasn't a young writer and he insisted he was the greatest writer ever, so that should tell you what his problem was. So, a part of the issue is ego and another is naivete. You have writers who think their work needs no fixing and others who are too young to know what to do with criticism (or struggle with getting any).

As far as why writers sometimes lose it in their own work, well, sometimes it's pressure. I'm writing two chapters a week on a deadline apart from my other stuff and sometimes life makes that hard. I sit down, do the best I can, but sometimes something shorts out in ye olde noggin' and my editor gets a chance to shine.

Sometimes it's easy to say, you should have written this instead of this, but when it comes to online writing I'm willing to show some grace because a lot of people aren't thinking that deeply about it. They just want to tell a story. And also, they probably don't have an editor. Now, if they're trying to get paid for it, that's different.

The problem with that mystery book that definitely has nothing to do with zodiac signs is that the writer was young when they wrote it and likely made the mistake of confusing "wordy" with "smart" and never corrected that. The difference between their book and their recent written statements is actually ten years.

That writer from the other site I mentioned did the same thing with how he wrote things. He sounded normal enough when he wasn't ranting, but his books could get super wordy to the point things were incomprehensible and he always just blamed everyone being too dumb to understand his writing. So, yeah, sometimes it's a lack of experience and other times it's an abundance of audacity.

Basically, there's a lot of reasons writers sound weird sometimes in their books. I definitely don't sound the same when I write most of my books, but I also don't try to use too much flowery language. I like to get to the point while also taking a little bit of time to paint a picture of what's going on. Mainly, I don't want to bore readers or confuse them.

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about narrative voice for my books, so I can't really tell you how I do it past considering the setting and what's going on in the story and trying to match that in tone. My books are all very different and if you read my comedy about a henchman trying to help his boss get an invite to the annual villain jamboree, that's gonna sound different from my dark fantasy about a dying necromancer. Personally, I think too many people overthink these things and don't focus enough on telling their story clearly for an audience that knows nothing about said story.

ShidoDraws 2025-12-12 06:00:36 UTC #3

I'm probably not the best person the explain this phenomenon, but from personal experience I used to believe that the more words you can put in a paragraph the more sophisticated you sound. Referencing books without knowing the writer's actual intention can lead to terrible writing habits. I am currently in the process of undoing bad habits that prevents me from writing a good novel. And I find that writing for myself helps a whole lot too. Something I noticed with the trend this decade is the lack of appreciation for editors; people want to get to the final product when writing a first draft of their story. You'd think that this is a rookie mistake, at the rate that things are going with the publishing industry, I don't even think LLMs can save them.

Sadly, publishers who's been in the game since forever are also releasing these brain rot stories. If booktok would just stop buying this crap, we wouldn't be here in the first place. It's all fun and game until we all start sounding the same. It's why I like to watch/read a variety of entertainments. I know a lot of people want to push for pirating of their favorite types of entertainments. Don't know why people need to push for piracy when there's free and cheap entertainment from indie creators.

Anyway, sorry that the topic got sidetracked. I hope this answers part of your question.

Edit: Reading this thread did remind me of a video I've seen where a male writer was giving people advice on writing shorter sentences. I made sure to pay really close attention to what he's saying, and honestly, I wholeheartedly disagree with him. Like, unless your goal is to hit a minimum word count, I don't think lobotomizing a sentence is going to make your story better. And as expected, I wasn't the only person that thought that. Unfortunately, he gives me audacity energy, and I watched 3-5 videos before making that assumption.

DokiDokiTsuna 2025-12-13 01:13:18 UTC #4

Dang, it was that obvious, huh? ^^; Well, congrats to him I guess...I hope he's made as many discoveries about his writing as he has about his gender...

I feel like there's got to be another layer to it...like, the book isn't just wordy, it's actually nonsensical; even the shorter sentences are filled with errors.

I was also tempted to just chalk it up to the writer never correcting the book at all in 10 years (which clearly did happen), but then I was reminded of all the promotion he did where he pretended to be editing and correcting it, including full pages of annotation where he was re-reading his work, even if he wasn't thinking critically about it. Like...clearly the word vomit on the page didn't look like word vomit to him, even in the present day.

...Is it possible that he's one of those people who never learned to read? Like, that weird program where kids were just taught to recognize words and their proximity to each other and guess what they were looking at, instead of full sentences...?
I think his age matches up with that phenomenon, as well as the frequency with which I see that kind of writing...I have no real proof of this, but it would definitely make for an interesting thesis.

Thank you for being brave enough to share, truly ^^;

Although I still think the issue I described in the OP is worse than that...Like, there's a difference between

"I realized immediately what was wrong and ran quickly outside, hoping fervently, with all my heart and soul, that it wasn't too late"
and
"I realized what was wrong with understanding, and ran outside with steps that hoped it wasn't too desperate"

One of those is just verbose, the other one sounds like the author got hit in the head. :T A writer should be able to add an excessive amount of words without necessarily forgetting what grammar is...unless, as I suspect, something else is at play.

That's...actually a really good point. '_' Piracy has its place, for sure, but our energy might be better spent lifting up creators who need support, rather than finding a way to give the absolute minimum amount of support to creators who don't. Something to think about...

Mm...sounds like oversimplified advice based on faulty logic ("many writers need to learn not to over-embellish their writing"=> "less words good, more words bad")...unfortunately, you get a lot of that in the writing sphere. ^^;
Even when I was looking up definitions for this topic, that's pretty much all I found: definitions, along with simple directions that weren't really helpful. Which is why I wanted to talk about it.

jwabeasley 2025-12-13 01:31:48 UTC #5

I know that drama. That author should go into marketing, they clearly know how to market effectively and can build on that skill to a lucrative and long career. As to the quality of their prose - I haven't read it myself, but I know what my prose sounded like when I was a teen and I'm glad none of my story work from that time period is public. As to their concept, there's no shortage of neurodivergent people who imagine a private fictional world to spend time in...as this website will attest. The struggle is that most of the time those worlds are best kept private, perhaps only shared with family or close friends, as their meaning and value is so much stronger to the author than they will ever be to the general public. There is just a huge gap between a fantasy world for yourself and a fictional story setting for other people.

And for that author, it's a combination of the above with just a lack of fundamental skills.

As to the question, I think of narrative voice like I think of the artstyle of a comic artist. Every author will have one no matter what, but an effective creator will adapt their voice/artstyle to suit their project. The method I use is to center the story on the emotions of the lead character - the setting and style reflect how the MC sees things, how they feel about them. You don't have to go as far as being an unreliable narrator, but the overall goal is to allow the readers to feel the story with the MC - and not necessarily the MC now, but perhaps the MC after the story is over. The thug looks scary to highlight how scared the MC feels, the romantic interest is attractive to reflect how the MC feels about them, and so forth. A noir detective gets a dark gritty city that is in a perpetual downpour, that sort of thing.

Most good or great authors do this with their work. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen's narrative voice is witty and skirts propriety frequently, much like Elizabeth when she is at her best. in LOTR, Tolkien's lyrical style heightens the mythic feeling of the story and echoes the education, feelings, and sensibilities of Frodo and Bilbo (and also Sam) but in the Hobbit the story is much more comical and straightforward, highlighting Bilbo's fish-out-of-water experience. In Narnia, Lewis often makes asides as if he is an uncle telling a very interesting story that he has constructed from notes he gathered himself from interviewing the characters, but in the Space trilogy he is much more serious and straightforward, not mincing words and expecting the adult readers to catch his inferences. Most of the comedy would disappear from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy without Douglas Adams' narrative voice highlighting the ridiculous and incomprehensible world around Arthur.

I totally agree with you on having every sentence be overwrought. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind a little more lyricism from modern professional writers. It's all in what suits the story best!

NickRowler 2025-12-13 02:52:18 UTC #6

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vapidink 2025-12-13 03:24:06 UTC #7

I'm sure the author read over his work, but he clearly is very attached to this work as it is. Sometimes that fondness for something we've worked on for so long can blind us to its defects. I don't think what the author did with this work is really unusual because I've seen it happen a lot. The issue is that in his efforts to get his work out there he focused on bringing his vision to life through art and not enough on making sure the story could stan on its own,

I've read the first chapter a while back, it was bad but not the worst I've read. The problem is that it still very much reads like a very young writer is behind it. I think the author understands perfectly what his writing is trying to convey, but doesn't understand that to the reader the story might not be as clear. Honestly, I don't see it as a problem with the narrative voice so much as them not having a good grasp on writing in general. The story reads like something written by someone who is very young who wants to sound more mature, to me.

Is this what that "sight words" thing is about? That, er, that explains why people struggle with reading. He seems to read just fine, though. I really think it's a simple issue of a writer who thinks their work is fine as is, just a sort of stunted growth in their writing. Hopefully he can learn from all of this. He's definitely young enough to improve if he listens to the criticism and hasn't been scared away from writing, lol.

ShidoDraws 2025-12-13 06:09:21 UTC #8

The first line to me sounds like the writer just wants to put one of their rare words that one wouldn't use as often and forced it into a sentence; hence, the weird word choices. Of course, I'm referring to the word "fervently".

The second line sounds like something I would write. Haha! I'd say that if I read my own story, and stumble upon a sentence like that, which I do from time to time, I'd realized that I wasn't translating my thoughts into words accurately. xD However, this only happens when I'm experiencing brain fog. For example, I'll write something like, "He hopped over the fence, and ran quickly to avoid the cops that were in pursuit of him and his friends." But a day or two later, I'll reread that sentence and it'll look like, "He hopped over to fence, and ran quickly avoid cops were in pursuit of him and his friends." It's something I can fix myself, but unfortunately the meaning gets lost in the process, so remembering what I intend on writing is tough.

Something I find helpful when it comes to fixing these mistakes and possibly preventing as much brain fog as possible is taking breaks and being with people who encourage me to improve. When I get to read stories that are way better than my own and socialize with some of those people, it gives me a better understanding of my own flaws and blind spot. Understanding other people's flaws is different from understanding your own flaws.

In short, it's easy for one to convey their thoughts into a sentence or a paragraph, but when you're writing a lengthy novel, word salad is inevitable. And honestly, a thesaurus can't help if you don't know what those words actually mean, because context always matters. It's why I don't depend on it. The advice, "avoid using repetitive words" is a good advice until you put it into practice. You end up with sentences that doesn't mean anything. I believe that there's a balance you can strike between repetitive words and words that changes the meaning of a sentence.

About the brain fog part. So, I accidentally did some anecdotical discovery on something. For a week straight I was writing my story, I didn't have many grammars, and the story made sense, quite literally. The week after, I didn't have internet for a week, so I proceeded with writing on google doc offline. Admittedly, my writing was readable but somewhat horrendous. Grammar errors were everywhere, even spell check was confused. Lmao This whole situation made me realize how bad my typing game has gone, like I used to know how to spell certain words and relying on these spell checks have made me a worst writer.

Since then, I have been writing with a notebook whenever I can. Even if I'm just writing one word that day. It's helped me learn how to appreciate traditional mediums again. And with that discovery, I'm beginning to believe that we will see more and more people who can't write traditionally. Not just gen x or alpha, but everyone else too.

DokiDokiTsuna 2025-12-13 19:02:49 UTC #9

That's honestly what made me madder than everything else...forget the bad book; forget the gaslighting and inadvertent scamming of their fans-- the idea that so much money and effort was WASTED on that single trash-fire when it could have helped dozens of beginner authors launch books they actually worked on is what really gets me.

They have the skills and the resources to be a great book promoter (they got THOUSANDS of pre-orders !!! ); they could easily just partner with some actual writers and build the giant mega-fantasy-world franchise-corp that they clearly actually want...but that isn't going to happen anytime soon (if ever) because they're so focused on their own non-starter of a project. Rich people's egos suck up so much money and attention in the art sphere that would be better spent on artists who actually want to try...it makes me want to rip my teeth out DX

...All I can do is just try not to be that person, I guess. ╯︿╰ I mean, I'm not rich, but I do try to use what little notoriety I have to support people more talented than myself wherever needed. Which makes stuff like this even more maddening, tbh, but if I keep on ranting about this I'll never stop ^^;

Yeah, that was definitely the weirdest part of the discourse...I'm almost confused on why this person was so successful (before his book launched...) because most of his selling points seemed to be "I...have an imagination" and "I...THINK about my characters" and "I wrote thousands of words as a child...THOUSANDS. Which basically makes me a prodigy". And let's not forget "I'm your English teacher's worst nightmare"...because English teachers are famously afraid of kids who are legitimately good at writing and enjoy it, apparently...sure...

...To be frank, he sounds like a lolcow. ._. All of these weird non-flexes about fairly common child-nerd experiences, on TIKTOK of all places, and rather than making fun of him people threw money at him in droves. Not only is he rich and out of touch, he's lucky as hell...

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute and say, actually no, there doesn't have to be...if you actually know how to write. ^^;

Because I'd argue that many (if not most) fictional fantasy worlds are deeply personal and important to their authors. If what I'm writing doesn't give me some measure of personal comfort and meaning, I'm not gonna work on it at all, let alone for a potential audience.

I think the real disconnect is what 'for yourself' means to the particular person...for some people, private creative time is 'f*cking around time', where they don't take anything seriously or think about it in detail, they just do stuff and have fun and make memories from those activities. And that's valid...but it's hardly universal.

I was one of those kids who pretended everything I made would be on bookstore shelves or Cartoon Network someday; the professionalism (or my attempts at it, anyway) was part of the fun. I loved to deconstruct my ideas and develop them as much as I could before I got tired of them; I always wanted to strive for better and get closer to the level of whatever anime I was obsessed with at the time. And not only is that fairly common (especially around fandom), but I'd argue it's better for your development into a mature writer.

Your private fantasy world doesn't have to stay in your head; it's possible to learn how to share it and let other people in...you just need practice and good examples and interactions with other new writers who will learn with you. And I think that's the most important thing the author in question was missing...between his resistance to criticism and his 'non-flexing' he seems to have grown up thinking he was the only young writer in existence. That if anyone asked him something he couldn't answer, they "just didn't understand" and could be ignored...all the way up to his adulthood. ^^;;; That is a problem that could have been avoided.

TL;DR, maybe the novel should have stayed in the drafts, maybe it was purely 'f*cking around time' and not worth the effort to revise for a potential audience. But I can't agree that it HAD to be...plenty of commenters suggested easy improvements and plothole fixes; if he had actually tried to get the story to appeal to other people, we might've been able to look beyond the structural issues and see some real potential. But he didn't do that, so we got...what we got.

Believe it or not, I agree with that wholeheartedly; in fact I used to be that kind of 'lyrical' writer (before I started moving more towards first-person/third-person limited). Unfortunately, I just can't in good conscience give that as advice 90% of the time, because most beginner authors barely understand how to use normal English effectively, let alone any kind of poetic, uniquely energetic voice.

I would love to talk about the higher-level techniques more often, but not only is it insanely complicated, most people just can't use that kind of advice, so who am I putting in the effort for? ^^; Just myself, when I have something I'm particularly mad about on a given day...at all other times it's not worth getting into.

Sight words are okay when supplemented by other techniques (that was definitely part of my reading education as a kid); this thing is more like if kids were ONLY taught to sight-read...and then for everything else the teacher said "just guess! You'll get close enough!"

As someone else put it, it's functional illiteracy masquerading as education...and it's made me a lot more forgiving of internet idiocy in recent years...like, literally, there's a sizable percentage of people walking around who don't know they're supposed to understand the words you're typing, let alone HOW to understand them...

I must respectfully disagree; your writing is still better than the phenomenon I was describing. Like, here; let me redline you:

Now let me redline my example word salad:

There's a marked difference in the amount of sense being made, right? I mean, isn't there??

This whole situation makes me feel insane sometimes...Like, to give an analogy: I'll open a book expecting a drawing of an elephant, and instead I get a drawing of an ant. And I'll ask the author "uh...does this look like an elephant to you? Why didn't you draw an elephant?" and get only blank stares in response.
And then I'll ask the general public "why do people draw ants when they're supposed to be drawing elephants; what's not clicking here?" and they'll tell me "yeah, you're right, that's not an elephant...it has too many legs" and I'll be like ಠ_ಠ "well yes...AND it doesn't even remotely resemble an elephant; I think that's the primary issue here??"

And then people will start telling me "well, drawing elephants is complicated, lots of people struggle with that" and I'll be like "yeah, but I'm not seeing a struggle here; this is just straight up NOT an elephant"...it genuinely seems like [insert author] doesn't know what an elephant is, and doesn't realize or care that they don't know despite trying to break into the Elephant Industry...and I'm the only one seeing that as a serious problem. o_O At this point the "some people were never taught to use written language" theory is my best guess, cuz I never get any closer to understanding it ¯_(ツ)_/¯

jwabeasley 2025-12-13 20:50:03 UTC #10

I'm absolutely baffled by it myself, I see tons of functionally identical projects all the time. It looked like a huge collection of red flags to me. If you do understand why this one captured people's attention where so many fail, please explain it to me >.>.

While I agree with you that converting your private fantasy world into sharable, consumable fiction is a just fine thing to do, what I mean to say is there are many autists who lack both the skills and the taste to be able to do that conversion effectively, and I wish people would stop feeling like their imaginary worlds are somehow less than the worlds in their favorite media.

I've read/edited many people's stories that amount to "self insert fantasy in generic setting," with the author feeling very hurt that people aren't interested in their story. Those are the ones I want to feel fine with keeping their fantasies private.

I hear you, it's tough to get critique and advice oriented to capable creators rather than to beginners. I run into the same thing with other fields, too. It's tough when you're actually decent or professional in a field and it seems like the laymen don't understand or value anything - they literally can't understand why the ant and the elephant aren't the same thing, even though subconsciously they'll respond better to the elephant.

ShidoDraws 2025-12-14 03:51:59 UTC #11

The sad thing is, there is a lot more people with English being their first language and not know how to write. It's even worse if those people can easily capitalize in these fields. Sadly, it's not hard to find these people. It's why cancel culture is so commonplace. Lots of petty drama can really drown out real scams.

To me, if someone's been writing for 10 years and their writing hasn't improved one bit, either they really don't care about writing, or they just can't fundamentally understand how to write and everybody up until this point kissed their boots. Though, it's possible to steal someone else's work and sell it as their own as well.