Probably the most frequently asked question of an editor by an aspiring writer is this: What kind of book are you looking for? Inevitably, the answer goes something like this: “I’m looking for a compelling story, told with a fresh, appealing voice.” So what is voice? I think of it as the personality that resonates with the telling of a story. Voice is created with a variety of elements: vocabulary, syntax (the order of the words in the sentence), grammar, idiom (expressions whose meaning might not be understood outside of a particular group or region), and the rhythms of the sentences. … [Read more...]