I apologize for taking so long to respond.
What kind of voice do you enjoy? Have you developed for yourself? What are your dissecting and by who? Care to name any works and your honest thoughts?
I’m the opposite to you, I think, in terms of preference for voice. I like a voice that is interesting and adds personality to the narration. It’s like a splash of color that makes the story more memorable for me. I’m drawn to the voices of Robert W. Chambers, Jane Austen, and Angela Carter. I have a soft spot for the styles of Edward Gorey and Lemony Snicket.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind strikes my ideal in terms of humor, darkness, narrative distance, and the disclosure of characters’ inner workings.
For my own voice, I was trying to blend a distant, poetic style of narration with a more immediate and emotional contemporary style. I realize now that I was going for fiction with clarity, urgency, and a touch of poetic sensibility. The detachment of the first style didn't mix with the melodrama of the second, and I couldn't seamlessly weave humor into either one. I still need more practice, but my goal is clear to me.
Here’s a sample of my reading list. It’s the entire horror section. I intend to add more contemporary horror novels at some point. The overrepresentation of vampires isn’t deliberate and some of these are miscategorized. Sorry about the caps.
As for my own literary responses, they’re longish, and they’re meant for my own use. I focus on summarizing the book and writing my take on the characters, setting themes, and style. If there’s something special, like an unusual structure or an undercurrent of social commentary, I’ll write about it and how it impacts the story.
Before this, the only thing that mattered was whether I liked a book or not. Having to gather my thoughts and go beyond simple reactions of like/dislike helps me understand literary concepts better. I get to see theories in practice or "in the wild." I loved
House of Leaves and
Perfume, enjoyed
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and had a lukewarm reaction to
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and
Erasure by Percival Everett. If you want to know more, I can discuss them. Perhaps after I've worked my way through a few dozen books my impressions and opinions will be easier to summarize.
And I have the same complaint about mileu, where it's historical, fantasy or whatever fiction. So often you get the idea the characters are running around a studio prop instead of a real world. Oh look, there's a Welsh word....must be a fantasy world. She lives in a country manor must be Victorian times. For some reason the modern world only ever happens in New York.
People underestimate the power of a well-drawn setting. It bolsters characterization and themes. When it’s detailed and cohesive, imagining yourself there becomes that much easier. I’m not talking about pages of exposition about clothing or the types of grass in the plains, but a sense of an entire world that lies beyond those pages. As a kid, I used to get lost in books. I'd like to provide the same experience for others, that sense of immersion and becoming lost in another world. The use of generic settings and flat backgrounds doesn't allow for that.
Although I have to confess I had the biggest shock one day. I'd been working on a desert world, with a moorish glittering city at the centre of trade I had called Samarkand. Turns out this city actually exists in the middle east and was on the silk road. Google Samarkand,
I guess originality is harder to come by than we think. No matter how hard we try our minds reference things we don't even know are in there. Such is the paucity of the human brain we cannot even distinguish between imagination and memory.
Nothing I’m doing is innovative or startlingly unique. My expectation is that the way I put things together and my particular take on it all will help differentiate my work, that it’s not so much the concepts themselves that matter as it is the perspective and execution.
Still, I’m astounded when I encounter a concept that’s very similar to mine. I had an rough idea for a story about an old man who gets new dentures. (Earth-shattering, I know.) The story was going to be about the man’s thoughts and reactions to this object meant to replace part of his body and how h. Eventually, he waxes poetic as he begins to appreciate them. While reading a book about writing fiction, I came across an excerpt from Nabokov’s
Pnin. In it, there’s a man who gets new dentures and grows fond of them. It’s done better than I would’ve done it and all in a single paragraph. I can change stuff around, make adjustments. My core idea can still come across with different dressing. It was surprising to read that excerpt, though. It was good for me because it taught me not to rely too the concept alone.
Whenever I have an idea that seems too good to be mine, especially names and story titles, I google the hell out of it. It's reassuring when there are few results or none at all.
Not sure if billions is ever my goal, I would be happy with a small retirement income and a regular fan base
Same here. I’d like for my work to achieve some kind of recognition, but a small following that lasts throughout my career seems honorable and less stressful.
I think as a writer I really have to accept that my tastes are niche, being a blockbuster writer like Rowling probably isn't ever going to happen for me because I don't subscribe to universally popular themes like cinderella's, soulmates, undying love etc. But there are plenty of niche writers who carve out a great life for themselves. That's what I'm aiming for.
I think I might be writing myself into a niche as well, not because of the themes but because of my aesthetic and the psychological bent of my stories. I also like eerie, surreal secondary worlds with outsiders for main characters and some horror or weirdness on top. Every artistic choice you make limits your audience, anyway. Might as well go all out.