(For the my review of I’m Glad My Mom Died, click here.)

In my review, I mentioned that one of the things I loved about this book is the way McCurdy manipulated the language to be reflective of the age she was writing about while maintaining her personal voice throughout.

When talking about the “voice” in a book, we can think of it in terms of how it sounds, or how we “hear” it inside our heads when we read. I don’t mean an actual sound so much as what we’d imagine that sound to, well, sound like. Think of someone close to you. Now, imagine them telling you about an event that happened at work or school. In your imagination, you can “hear” the way they talk, right? That’s the kind of thing you hear when reading someone’s work; that’s their voice.

The writer’s voice is what allows their personality to be experienced by the reader—or allows the narrator to have a personality to be experienced by the reader. It’s how we get to know the storyteller in fiction works, especially those written in first person or in deep (or intimate) POV (which I’ll talk about in a later post). In non-fiction, the voice is what allows the reader to feel as if they are getting the information from the author themselves, which makes the reader feel a connection with the author.

In short, the voice is what can make or break a writer’s connection with their reader.

For me, that voice is unflinching honesty.

To get technical, the voice can be broken down into different elements: tone, diction, syntax, detail, and imagery. Here are some definitions of those, and I’ll use a snippet from McCurdy’s book, I’m Glad My Mom Died, to explain why I think she did such a great job. She maintained a voice that I can only call unflinching honesty throughout the whole book. Really, what she did is quite imporessive. (Because I’m trying hard not to write blog posts over a thousand words, I’ll use just one short paragraph to show all five elements at work together.)

From her book:

“Dad’s there, half-asleep like always. Mom keeps nudging him and whispering to him that she’s not really convinced his thyroid is normal, then Dad says “my thyroid’s fine” in an irritated way and goes back to being half-asleep five seconds later. This is their usual dynamic. Either this or an all-out scream-fight. I prefer this.”

Tone

Other words for tone are attitude, temperament, and stance, as directed toward something or someone. And that’s what an author’s tone is: the emotional, ideological, or psychological perspective through which they are viewing whatever it is they’re writing about.

As the sample paragraph above shows us, McCurdy describes her parents in direct, basic prose, with no judgments against either her mother or father. What you see (on the page) is what we can expect to get from them, and that is how we experience her parents throughout the book. While not getting sidetracked by making judgment calls on her parents’ relationship, McCurdy informs the reader how she feels about them, too. There are no extra words or weighty descriptions. This is the situation point blank: her parents have a boring, redundant relationship when they’re not fighting, and McCurdy prefers the banal. Unflinching honesty.

Diction

Diction—kind of like dictionary—is all about words. An author’s word choice is often the strongest element of the voice. Words can belie a person’s education, ethnic background, religious upbringing, and more. Intentional word choice of one word over another can change the emotion of a sentence or scene as well as the undercurrent of meaning. A person can walk, strut, stride, sidle, patrol, tread, or amble through a room. The reader makes a judgment call about the person’s attitude or goals based on which verb is used.

Sometimes word choice means choosing to repeat a word. Note how McCurdy uses “half-asleep” twice within a couple of sentences. She doesn’t use “half-asleep” and “dozing” or “half-asleep” and “nodding off” or any other synonym. By choosing that particular phrase, and pounding it home in repetition, she zeroes in on the fact that her father isn’t just “half-asleep” but also half-present in the scene, the way he’s not quite present in her life throughout the entire book.

Syntax

When we talk about syntax, we are talking about the way words are arranged in a sentence and how they relate to each other. Syntax involves the sentence’s length and focus, word order, and punctuation.

The sentences in McCurdy’s above paragraph go from 5 words to 36 words to 5 to 6 to 3. Sure, she could have broken up that long one into 2, 3, or even 4 sentences. And she could have combined those last three into one (in fact, the second-to-the-last one isn’t a “correct” sentence). But writing it this way conveys much more meaning in that unflinchingly honest voice.

One potential reason for the long sentence: it provides a poignant expression of her parents’ relationship: neither one really cares much about the other; they’re just going through the motions of being together, as always, continually going on and on and on (kind of like that sentence). If her mom were really concerned about the thyroid, she’d be encouraging him to go to the doctor and/or this scene wouldn’t happen “as always.” Likewise, if Dad cared about what Mom thought, he’d interact with the mom or appreciate her concern.

The last three short sentences, in any other order or structure, wouldn’t have had the same impact. Coming off the long, winding sentence, they seem to add punctuation to the dichotomy ruling her parents’ relationship (they’re in a non-relationship or they’re screaming fighting) and to how adamantly McCurdy prefers the boredom.

Detail and Imagery

I’m combining the last two together for the above example, in part because there isn’t much imagery in the short blip that I provided, but also in part because the details McCurdy provides are enough for us to create the imagery.

Her father is physically there—but not present. Her mother is physically there but not focused on anyone else’s cares or concerns. Those details provide great insight into who those people are and the roles they play in McCurdy’s life.

The adjective choice for the kinds of fights they have is a brutal detail—those people don’t just yell when they argue. They scream.

In Total

I took one short paragraph from the book to show McCurdy’s tone as it is on the page. To truly see the masterful way she maintained that voice throughout the book, you’ll just have to read the whole thing for yourself. Because on top of that unflinching honest voice, you’ll see an evolution of word choice as she matures. Swear words creep as she hits her late teens, anger and bitterness do, too, as she becomes an adult. Her mother remains “Mommy,” as part of her remained stuck in a stunted adolescence, until the very end when she’s become adult enough to admit she’s glad her “Mom” died. Brilliant!

Again, I tried to keep this short. I’d love to hear your impressions of the book and how she wrote. Leave a comment below.