The Paradox of Voice, Plot and Prose in Fiction

Writers may have a unique voice, an imaginative storyline and distinctive prose and still find that the sum of the parts doesn’t equal a cohesive whole. Why? One reason is the writing.

The writer who aims to present a well-developed voice and story is a writer who aims high. Aiming high is good. The paradox is that unless the prose, the actual writing, effectively conveys these and all the other elements needed for quality fiction, the individual elements won’t matter much.

So how does a writer skillfully create prose robust enough to convey all the elements of craft? By starting with a right perspective and a critical eye.

Perspective in art is the ability to draw something on a two-dimensional surface in a way that accurately depicts the object’s proportions and position. To achieve perspective, the artist must step back and ask questions of the work. Does it look like the intended object? Does it occupy the proper space in the overall drawing? Does it tell the viewer something more than just the object's identity? In short, the artist—and the writer—must view a work with a critical eye.

The last thing we may want in life these days is criticism. But this isn’t criticism in the pejorative sense. It’s critique in the analytical sense. And it’s a skill that finds its most effective use after a first or an early draft. In a first draft, the writer is still telling himself what he thinks is the story. In later drafts, the writer is discovering the story. And attentive writing—intentional writing—actually helps this process.

The additional paradox is that it's usually when writers create beauty, lovely writing, that they most often have trouble figuring out how to sculpt the prose—the actual writing. But lovely can easily get in the way of clarity and character development, and that can’t be allowed.

So what steps can a writer take to avoid this trap? Here is a list of steps writers can use to strengthen their prose:

• First, put the first or early draft aside for at least a week, and work on other things.
• When you return to the work, enter a mindset that is aware of and expects the need for changes.
• Read a small section of the work, just the first paragraph, and look for ways to tinker.
• Remove every unnecessary word.
• Remove all unclear words and phrases, and replace them all with precise words. Use a thesaurus or Word's synonym feature.
• Restructure what’s left for the greatest impact.
• Reorder paragraphs for the order in which events happen.

The key to this process is to take each step individually. This means going through a paragraph or section once per step. This will enable you to see the "before and after" of a sentence, paragraph, scene or section. Then the better you get at editing, the more steps you can combine at the same time. For particularly natty sections or chapters, revert to the one-step-per-read approach.

For added help, trying printing the section and reading the hardcopy, preferably somewhere you don't usually read it. Or imagine having to present the work to someone else for review. You might select a beta reader to do just that. Additionally, you can read the work aloud, for example, over Zoom, to a trusted audience of one—yourself. You can even record the reading and play it back.

Admittedly, this is a process that requires determination. But remember the caveat of Noah Lukeman in the classic The First Five Pages: The art of writing can’t be taught, but the craft of writing can.