One of my favorite things about editing and publishing the LOW DOWN DIRTY VOTE series is the astonishing range of voices the stories present. During submission season, I honestly feel like I’m the richest person in the world because of all the wonderful stories that I get to read before anyone else! That said, every story is edited. Volume 3, whose theme was “The Color of My Vote” attracted a few first-time writers, which presented an interesting challenge: to edit the stories without killing what was unique about the stories—without quashing their voice. No crime seems as bad to me as killing a writer’s voice. Low Down Dirty Vote For example, one story came in full of extremely long paragraphs and used a lot of flowery language, uncommon in crime fiction. But the author writes in a tradition different from my own. His voice is deeply woven into the traditions of a different country and life experience from my own. And his unedited story had moved me deeply, sparked my imagination. So ...

Last time I spoke of character voices . This time, I'd like to look at your voice. After  a presentation I gave for a local book club, one member said she'd read one of my books. Her comment was, "You write the same way you talk." And, after I sent a chapter to my critique partners, one said, "This sounds very Terry." That, I think, sums up "voice." Any author starting out tries to write what she thinks a writer should sound like. She might work hard to make her characters sound unique, and true to their backgrounds, but all the other stuff—the narrative parts where the character isn't speaking—sounds stilted. It sounds "writerly."  But what the characters say isn't the same as "Voice." It's all the other words, the way the sentences are put together, how the paragraphs break. Can anyone confuse Suzanne Brockmann with Lee Child? Janet Evanovich with Michael Connelly? Even Nora Roberts has a distinctive ...