The voice of the story, the voice of the characters

I've been to a couple of writers' events recently where the issue of 'voice' was explored.  Every editor and agent will tell you that what they're looking for is a story with an original voice.  But when you ask them what they mean by that you get vague phrases like "I know it when I see it."  Excuse me, Ms. Agent, but that doesn't help a writer.  Not one bit.

So it's been interesting to get these two different takes on voice.  The first view came from Simon Nelson, from BBC Writers' Room.  He says that voice is "not just a unique sense of words.  It's a unique way of thinking about and looking at the world."  He went on to admit that voice is "very hard to define," but that it is about "compelling storytelling."  But interestingly, he went on to say that voice is "not about style or tone.  Our job as writers is to free the uniqueness of  our voice."  

In other words, our voice is who we truly are.  And Simon had an interesting exercise for writers to establish voice.  First - describe yourself in three objectives.  Second - look at your  writing.  Does it sound like the objectives that describe you.  Third - it should, or if it doesn't, make it.  

This makes the issue of voice much deeper than the niceties of style.  It is speaking from our hearts, letting our feelings and beliefs out in our writing.  As Simon says: "allow yourself to be exposed in the writing."  Exposed.  Now there's a scary word.  It means showing the world my innermost thoughts, showing people who I really am.  But in Simon's view, this is what sparks uniqueness.

The second view on voice came from novelist Martine McDonagh.  Her take on voice was that it was "a combination of the author"s voice transposed into the character's voice.- a sort of composite voice."  But as she pointed out, voice is broader than that.  Different novels by the same author have different voices.  Each work has its own voice.  The tones of different works, as well as what characters say and how they say it, are different in different books.

"Publishers are looking for the novel to have a strong original voice," she said.  And that overall voice of the work is constructed from the voices of the characters.

I'm still not sure how all these theorising helps me.  I think the answer is to write what I'm passionate about in my own way,  and to let the passion come through.  Now that's the scary bit.