THE PUMPKIN'S VOICE

As I have likely said here before (I could check, but the heart quails), voice is one of the least understood but most powerful aspects of writing.

It's easier to tinker with plot, character, dialogue...all the things that are both more local and more concrete. Voice is more elusive, and hence harder to address. Yet it's truly significant to a book's power and memorability. If the voice is bland or uninteresting, it will often feel flat even when the other elements are strong.

With Halloween coming up, let me use one of my favorite books ever, Extreme Pumpkins: Diabolical Do-It-Yourself Designs to Amuse Your Friends and Scare the Neighbors, as an example.

Now, you wouldn't think a childless middle-age psedo-intellectual like Working Writer would get all tingly about a book that explains how to decorate seasonal squash. (I was going to say "seasonal vegetables," but like its sneaky little cousin the tomato, the pumpkin is a fruit.)

Nevertheless, I find Extreme Pumpkins utterly delicious. One reason, admittedly, is that the pumpkin designs appeal to my dark and perhaps deranged sense of humor. It gives directions for a Carrie pumpkin, a brain surgery pumpkin, a worm-infested pumpkin, a mooning pumpkin (think two tall pumpkins in a pair of drooping pants), a conjoined twins pumpkin, and a variety of other equally gross, twisted and/or funny themes.

But even better is author Tom Nardone's voice, which is witty, entertaining, and unapologetically irreverent. It's also much more sophisticated than one might expect. Nardone clearly writes to appeal to his core audience of, say, eleven year old boys, but his text is also designed to make adults laugh. A wise move, given the inability of most eleven year old boys to drive to the bookstore themselves.

Nardone's step by step instructions are written in a wonderfully mischevous voice. So too are his general remarks. So, even, is his index, which includes page citations for "carnge," "electrocution," "poetry corner," "roadkill statistics," and "self-analysis." Now, that's what I call going above and beyond, and also an element clearly designed for grown-ups. (Did you refer to indices as an eleven year old? Me neither. However, you'll note that somewhere along the line I did look up the plural for "index.")

I'm not saying that the voice for your next book needs to be infantile, snarky, or gross. I am saying that it should be something. Warm and sensible, clever and amusing, dark and deceptive. Witty, plainspoken, elaborate, simple, all-American, Eurotrash, introspective, aggressive...I could go on, but you get the idea.

Look for a post on some of my favorite author voices later this week, along with a reprise of my favorite pumpkin-themed-mini-film ever.

P.S. Creating and sustaining a wonderful and distinctive voice does not absolve you of the requirement to produce a great story (fiction, narrative nonfiction) or useful information (general nonfiction). Tom Nardone's pumpkin designs actually have to work. In that regard, let me say that after I recommended the book to writer Lily Hamrick at the Atlantic Center for the Arts last fall, her family won a First Prize for their giant hamburger pumpkin. (The pumpkin becomes the bun, if you're wondering). Which was good, because manipulating the ground meat for the filling is apparently not fun.