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I've been looking at putting out a single-short-story ebook of The Bear Girl, so today I read through it for the first time in a long time.
Now, with short stories, it's not hard to do a voice. Especially with shorter stories, since they're only a few thousand words. I imagine it would be hard to keep up over a very long manuscript. In my novel-length work, I never do a 'voice'.
Bear Girl has the narrator speaking in a child's voice, more or less. Not because she's a child any longer, but because she has neither education nor social skills (living on her own for 15 years does that.) There are things for which she just doesn't know a name or understand the consequences.
I kept wanting to rewrite lines in a more 'mature' (normal for me) voice. I resisted that for the most part, but I always wonder what the reader thinks when they come across a story that's different from the author's normal voice.
So as a reader, do that bother you? A short story by an author you like, but it sounds very different?
Now, with short stories, it's not hard to do a voice. Especially with shorter stories, since they're only a few thousand words. I imagine it would be hard to keep up over a very long manuscript. In my novel-length work, I never do a 'voice'.
Bear Girl has the narrator speaking in a child's voice, more or less. Not because she's a child any longer, but because she has neither education nor social skills (living on her own for 15 years does that.) There are things for which she just doesn't know a name or understand the consequences.
I kept wanting to rewrite lines in a more 'mature' (normal for me) voice. I resisted that for the most part, but I always wonder what the reader thinks when they come across a story that's different from the author's normal voice.
So as a reader, do that bother you? A short story by an author you like, but it sounds very different?
