Podcast Blog Post - Voice, Tone & Style

Voice is defined as the author's fingerprints. By the voice you can narrow down who wrote the book without even looking at the front cover. Things that make up your voice include: word choice, sentence length, use of prepositional phrases and adjectives, and beat and rhythm of the story. 

While your style and voice will just come, there are also ways to work on it. However, you should not worry about it extensively until you have some experience. When you are first starting to write you should first be focusing on the character, plot, and setting.

"The people paying you to write should be focusing on your voice."

Said Bookisms: Anything you write instead of said. Some people say that you should never use said or asked. THIS IS FALSE. Said and asked are invisible when you use them and your attributions should be the least interesting part of the dialogue. 

Advice: Choose a few things about your voice you want to change and try tweaking your writing. Then keep doing it until you master what you were trying to accomplish. Only then can you take on a couple more items you want to try and tweak. 

Finally...PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. 

10 Twitter Handles and Response to Questions

3. One form of social capital is official membership in volunteer organizations. According to Putnam, there are three main types of volunteer organizations in American society: (1) Community-based organizations, (2) church-based organizations and (3) work-based organizations. Which of these types of organizations do you get most involved with? 

I personally am most involved in church-based organizations. I think that this is because the Mormon church is such a high involvement church and so many people in Provo are Mormon that there is not a lot of community events as everything is run through church events. The job I have is just a part time job that does not really have an organization because I do not spend very many hours there. 

 5. Putnam gives a few examples of informal social connections in his book and characterizes two different types of people: Machers and Schmoozers. Machers are people who make things happen in the community and are all around "good citizens." They follow current trends, follow politics and work on community projects. Schmoozers are people who spend time in informal conversation and communion. They tend to host dinner parties, play cards and throw barbecues. Are you a Macher or a schmoozer? What characterizes you as such? 

I am a schmoozer. I love socializing and spending time with my friends. I am not very involved in the community and I will admit I am not involved politically. I am not one to have big debates with my friends. Instead we talk about what is currently going on and what our future plans are. 
6. Self-help groups (i.e. A.A., Weight Watchers, etc.) have grown in recent years. What are people finding from these groups that they aren't finding elsewhere? How are these groups similar to online chat forums or apps such as My Secret App, Tell My Secret or Whisper? 

I think they are finding support. When I personally was on a diet my friends got sick of hearing about my diet and what I was doing. I did not turn to other forums but I can understand how people would need support and eventually turn to some of those online groups where they can find others who are in the same boat as them.

Here are the ten Twitter handles of people that I thought might be useful. Some have a ton of followers while others are smaller. The people with fewer followers might be easier to work with.
@AprilynnePike
@robinhobb
@DrewKarpyshyn
@BrianTMcClellan
@drhastings
@monsterhunter45
@paolini
@FantasyFaction
@JessDayGeorge
@robisonwells