Voice, the Novel’s Secret Sauce

We have to admit, novelists envy filmmakers, and for good reason. Film and television are the primary means of story consumption; a picture is worth a thousand words, and a moving picture is more accessible than a million words. Every novelist and their dog wants their book adapted to film, because then people would know who they are and actually pay them some mind (and money.)

This film envy leads to a lot of problems with modern fiction — overdone descriptions, hard-to-follow fight scenes, and dull, lifeless narration, among other things. Emperor Ponders goes into much greater detail about this issue here.

However, novels have a secret sauce that no visual medium could hope to match: VOICE.

Novels tell stories with words, so putting those words together in an entertaining way is essential. No one is entertained by dry descriptions and over-complicated passages. If you’ve ever wondered how a street thug would describe a typical high fantasy, or how a conservative housewife would describe a space war, you have an idea of what I mean by “voice.” The entertainment comes not only from what the narrator talks about, but how the narrator talks about it.

Voice is best seen with first-person narratives. For example, take this passage from the first page of the novel Kamikaze Girls (emphasis in original):

A true Lolita must nurture a Rococo spirit and live a Rococo lifestyle.

Rococo is the name of that supremely elegant and sumptuous era that dominated la France in the latter part of the eighteenth century. In art history terms, Rococo refers to the period that appeared after Baroque — which lasted from around 1715 to 1770 or so and possessed a stateliness and majesty based on Catholic beliefs — and without giving it any deep thought whatsoever, started using curves for no other reason than, hey, round is cuter than square! and, just because the solemn, masculine dynamism of Baroque was sort of oppressive, plus all serious and boring, came up with a decorative style that was fancy, ornate, and feminine — which sounds very nice, but actually it’s just terribly frivolous.

From this passage, you can assume that the narrator is both intelligent and casual, both analytical and silly. While she does describe things, she also inserts her opinion into it rather brazenly, which is what you want. In whatever situation she is involved in, she will go on about what is cute and what is not cute. The film version, on the other hand, has to use voice-over narration to accomplish the same effect — because images cannot do what narrative voice does effortlessly.

Detailed descriptions become less important because the written word is not film and doesn’t have to be. The narrator’s opinions and biases matter far more, since that’s what makes the story entertaining to read in the first place. Here’s an excerpt from a prison story written by blogger Bobby Dino (emphasis in original):

Truth of the matter was, I was a dumb 24 year-old, who’d never been a man, much less been in a men’s prison. Ernie knew to be aware of his surroundings, because the next bad thing to happen to someone could be happening to him. He knew to keep his eyes open. Keep his body ready. Always be on the lookout, so you’d see what was coming, and have time to react. I didn’t know any of this then, although, I was about to get a glimpse of what being prepared really meant.

This is a serious-minded man, one who was once unwise and is now wise. Detailed descriptions of the cell and blow-by-blow accounts of the pinochle games he played with his cellie can’t evoke what this paragraph does. Just like this, you learn this man’s mindset.

Yes, it’s true that visual media have more reach than the written word. However, those of us who value the written word have to use every advantage that it gives us — especially if that advantage is something filmmakers cannot do.