I read an interesting article today: Writing with Authority: A Primer It said that the most important thing about writing with authority is to be believable. As a writer, are you a credible source? Do you instill trust in your reader? Authority as a writer is demonstrated in the voice you use and its consistency, the expertise you employ, the specificity in your descriptions, and the trust you place in your reader to figure out some things for themselves. Have you thought of writing this way? How are writers authorities?
Hi Louanne, I'm not sure about the word authority though what it described as: I actually agree. I recall a comment I received from a story I had in a workshop. The member wrote some positive words but was quite forthright in their views about the lack of assertiveness to my character. I portrayed my MC as an indecisive person and they said that this is okay on the odd occasion but overly done, it creates an inconsistent and not very believable character. I thought about this alot and have trimmed away that bad habit. This didn't mean I altered the character because I feel there are many ways to create an overly thinking, unsure character by the use of setting and inner thoughts. I put a lot of time in placing description to break dialogue and insert certain characteristics of a character because of what that writer initially highlighted. My stories are always character centered thus it is vital that a character is believable. A writer i really admire, wrote that when they write, their characters tell them what to say or what actions they perform and I completely agree and do this when writing a new story. I consider many reasons as to why a character would react in a certain way and their dialogue and mannerisms (as an eg) are built around their character. In many ways, the characters hold the authority over what i write. At times, writing this way is taxing and progress is not as fluent as it should, but views from readers have been very kind towards my characters which is very pleasing and reinforced my belief in this process of giving a character the authority to tell me what to write.
I can write using a strong voice and a weak voice, but I have to make an active decision to do so. My default for horror is weak, for fantasy it's usually strong. It comes down to the role of the main character. My fantasy MCs are usually well defined and have an active agency and role, while my horror MCs tend to be passive characters to whom things happen.
I wonder if we can add to that that the writer needs to be an authority on both plot and characters. If we get stuck while writing, if we don't know how to proceed with characterization, or what should happen next, maybe it's because we haven't got a story well enough defined in our head. This makes me think of the importance of character decisions in a story. They kind of drive the story, don't they? I remember one article I read that went so far as saying "start the story with a decision - for good or bad." Interesting! The character is a creation of your mind, and it's your own intuition that creates their motivations, dialogue, behavior, etc., so turning over your authority to that character can only happen, I think, if that character is very well-defined. This reminds me of the thread "Do you feel a responsibility to your characters?" Lots of interesting comments in it: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/do-you-feel-a-responsibility-to-your-characters.173427/
I will reply in kind. The thread looks very interesting but I'm currently on the school run so will read and comment later! But I do believe a writer has responsibility to their characters and 100% agree on starting a story with the character having to make a good or bad decision. I think this why when I start a new story, I have the beginning and the ending in place. What goes in between, I can create.
Interesting. If I understand, you are associating fantasy-active MC-strong voice, and horror-passive MC-weak voice. How would you describe a weak voice?
I think this is critical to all good stories, whether you are a pantser or a plotter. I am a huge pantser but somewhere along the way, I 'find' an ending and I work towards that. It is this 'knowing' the yes or no aspect that ties all the loose parts of a story together, though I am a firm believer of setting goals as you have a direction of which you work towards. In the many chats I've eavesdropped in, many writers have used 'real' people as templates to their characters because it is easier to copy the reactions of a person they know. I've always believed that this is why many published authors tell new writers that they need to go to the world and 'see,' to 'experience life' away from the table and keyboard... and this makes a lot of sense. Mimicking is a great way to find well crafted and 'real' characters, though the main characters in my stories are all creations, based on no one I've met and a fabric of the imagination. Interesting indeed. Is a weak voice one that lacks the decisiveness in decision making? Thus showing a lack of authority? I can understand that in horror, having these traits amplifies the tensions in the story building.
Yes, but it's not an active decision for the horror MCs - it's an artifact of how I tend to write horror stories. My MCs bumble around while weird things happen to them and they try and figure out (or not) what's going on. A weak voice would be one (to me) that has no real defining characteristics. It's almost like a narrator's voice - they're relating their experiences and feelings. A lot of my horror characters are blank canvases and vehicles for the story - the antagonists in those stories are much more interesting! This also makes the MCs come across as having weak personalities, which they often do. My fantasy MCs are often more interesting, confident and like to make themselves known. In terms of being an expert in plot and details, I like to kid myself that I'm decisive enough to at least fake it. But as I've previously mentioned, I regard the characters as my creations - they do what I want them to do. I don't turn over any authority to them in that sense, but sometimes what I have written for them will suggest a course of action or reaction to me. If it fits in the story, I'll use it, if not, I won't. That's just how I do things - other people will do it differently.
By making the events and other characters interesting. I was going to add something else but I deleted it because, well, it would have given unsuspecting readers completely the wrong idea about what I write!
I hope @Mogador will forgive me for bringing up a 2+ year old workshop piece, but the subject of writing with authority made me think about it. Even after all this time! That's got to count for something. https://www.writingforums.org/threads/the-kraken-326-words.170280/#post-1978623 In particular, it's this paragraph: "Every great lake has a kraken. Kraken are not fond of moving water; it alarms and upsets them. They dislike, too, clear water; this they find distasteful and bitter. The kraken prefers gloom. In the absence of gloom it will retreat as far as it can into some cave of its own making and hibernate, maybe for hundreds of years. Those kraken in the legends of seamen had been washed out to the ocean when young and small, where, if they were unable to descend into some hundred fathom trench, they would be demented by the thrashing of the currents." This narrator speaks with authority, and the reader cannot resist believing every word that they say. It's hard for me to articulate what exactly makes writing authoritative, so I thought I'd provide an example that to me clearly is.
Nothing from published works come immediately to mind. I wouldn't pull an example from the forum of course
There's a famous saying that it's better to be confident (authoritative) in your answer than to actually be right. People will believe anything--literally anything--if the source sounds authoritative. Effective fiction works the same way. It's all lies and make-belief anyway, largely unburdened from the rules and restrictions of real life. You can tell by the first page how confident an author is in what they are saying, be it a professional or an amateur in the Workshop. I'd say the key trigger is how much the author feels the need to explain. The famous book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, which was (and might still be) the definitive work on editing before blogs and internet articles took the fast food approach, had an expression called R.U.E. Resist the Urge to Explain. Their hypothesis was that explanation weakens an idea rather than strengthening it. Just like in real life, explaining a certain decision weakens the authority of the decision if/when it sounds apologetic. Or if the explanation sounds like a justification. That's the opposite of authority in my opinion.
That was amazing Homer, thanks for pearl of wisdom. This is, strangely, what I have been keeping to with my writing, but a common criticism from some readers are that my stories are too vague. This has lead me to expand on certain points rather than explain them.
Let me see, a weak voice... This, probably: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/siren-red-4314-words.167435/ and this is a rewrite of a scene from the story in a stronger voice: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/siren-red-rewrite-811-words.175892/ and this: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/zashiki-warashi-2998-words.164026/ (I'm allowed to say it, because I wrote them)
You achieve this through concrete details, yes? I just saw that you mentioned "specificity in descriptions." I think that's the same thing. That's the main thing I aim for. You touch the scene with precision and then you move away. That's important, and that last point too, trusting the reader, which is kind of the "moving away" part. The reader cannot possibly see the same story you described. You give them enough so that they go in the right direction, and you have to know which details to leave out for them to complete themselves. Your voice changes through the story, so I'm not too sure about that one. I had an excellent book on varying voice. I'd have to search to find it again. I can't remember the title . . . The premise was that you moved through 4 different voices in a story. Of course, both books might be defining voice in a different way.
I think I would say "illustrations" rather than "descriptions", by which I mean how you put the scene into the head of the reader, which isn't always through descriptions, per se. It could be through dialogue, although I suppose that could be characterised as description as well.
