After I posted my last blog about revising my novel as if it were a memoir, two readers asked me to expand on what I meant by the “voice” of my first novel being “flat” and how a writer can fix a flat voice. Apparently they had looked at their own works-in-progress and suspected they may have the same problem.

That same week, Toy Story 5 came out, and when I heard that once again Tom Hanks and Tim Allen would be voicing Woody and Buzz Lightyear I thought, Of course–there would be no movie without them. And then I realized how interesting that was. In animated films, as well as my favorite novels and films, the voices of the characters–not what they say but how they say it–in addition to the voice of the narrator of course, shapes our experience of the story more than the actual words the writer uses, especially in dialogue. Think of John Travolta’s voice in Saturday Night Fever. Think of how different Shawshank Redemption would be were it not for Morgan Freeman’s narrative voice; he speaks so sympathetically–with tenderness, really–about the new convict that we are immediately on his side, even though he’s been convicted of murder. Think of the difference between the voices of the two Sweet Home survivors, Paul D and Sethe, in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, or the various and distinct delivery of lines we get from Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, and John Turturro n The Big Lebowski (to say nothing of Sam Elliot’s iconic Western voice-over), or the way the innocent, illiterate Celie speaks versus the voice of the sexually experienced, wordly Shug in The Color Purple . . . I could go on and on, right?

So I guess when I wrote about the “voice” of my novel being “flat,” I was referring not only to the narration, but also to some of the characters’ dialogue. Their “voices” were too expository, too characterless, and thus were flat as well. And the narration was too neutral, too diplomatic, so to speak, separate from the point of view, which was third-person limited to the main character, who was based on me.

That would seem like two or three different problems, but in fact I see them as having nearly the same problem: a lack of “energy.”

Too often, when writers pen their first books, the main characters seem to be speaking in the same voice–that of the writer. And too often, the narrator is indistinguishable from the writer. And then we get the writer’s point of view–we get the story from their perspective. Not very interesting.

This was true of me as well. When I wrote that first novel almost thirty years ago–a story loosely based on an experience I had while in Italy when I was a teenager–I didn’t focus on voice in my revision process. To be clear, I did read the whole thing out loud, and I did pay attention to the narration as well as what the characters said. But I didn’t pay close attention to how they said what they said, nor did I pay close attention to how the story was told. Every time I revised it, I was distracted by smaller matters: word choice, punctuation, and so on. But voice should come first and last, I would say–it should be the first thing to attend when you’re drafting it, and it should be the last thing you nuance/revise/perfect during your final revisions, for consistency and energy. And when your characters speak, consider how they say their words as much as what words they’re speaking.

We know from experience that the way a story is told is more important than the story itself. We know this from sitting on the floor in elementary school as our teacher reads us a book, from listening to our favorite aunt or uncle during a family get-together, or from laughing at a comedian’s jokes, knowing that if a different person told the same jokes they wouldn’t be as funny. We know this from seeing a performance or reading and thinking   I could have listened to them read from a cereal box and it would have been interesting! Or I’m sure the writing is beautiful but my god, that was boring.

That’s voice.

But it’s hard to teach voice, or practice voice, or to develop it in your own writing. I was once given a good formula by the writer Michael Kimball, something like Voice is how you tell a story, to whom, and why. When I heard him say that, I simultaneously knew he was right and that I hadn’t a clue how to do that. Most of us know how to tell a story, but to inject into the telling of that story not only a distinct style or tone but also a sense of an invisible listener and a sense of purpose in the telling of it? That seemed like way too much to ask. But it also rang true–and I realized it was true of all the great novels I had read.

So I kept working on it, and when my last novel, The Gospel According to Danny, came out, and one of the first reviewers, a novelist I greatly admire named Matt Bell, called me a “motor-mouth Philip Roth,” I thought, Maybe I’m finally getting a “voice.”

Then came this new challenge: rewriting The Ruins, my unsuccessful first novel, told with a neutral narrative voice, so that it would come to life through voice. I played around with it–trying out an angsty teen-aged voice, a nostalgic voice, an ex-pat’s voice, but then I remembered Michael’s formula. On the first page of the novel I wrote, “I’m telling you this because you’re the only one who understands me,” and I knew I had it: a distinct narrative voice. And a sense of purpose–I was telling this story in order to figure out how I became the person I am now–along with an unseen listener: my deceased sister, because it was there, in Italy, a long time ago, that I came to terms with her death.

In other words, I am now writing this novel as if it’s a memoir.

And that has immediately brought me joy. What was originally a revision project, a huge task I was willing to undertake, has become a completely re-envisioned work of art that is bringing a sense of wonder and meaning to my life.

And it’s all about voice. As I rewrite it chapter by chapter, the novel is starting to “sound” less like someone talking at you and more like someone confessing something to you, or murmuring a memory into your ear. And I’m enjoying it so much that after working on a chapter, I’m pausing (before starting the next chapter) to read it out loud. In a soft, loving voice. To my sister. Just to see what she thinks.