All language subtitles for MasterClass Neil Gaiman Teaches The Art of Storytelling - 04Finding Your Voice

When you're a writer starting out,

the idea of your voice, of your style is

huge. Um, you want to know what your

voice is. You don't really know. I once

years ago ran into a quote from Jerry

Garcia where he said, "Style is the

stuff that you get wrong. If you were

actually playing the guitar perfectly,

um, if you were making music perfectly,

there would be no style." And I thought

this was such a great quote and

remembered it and years later went to

find it on the internet and the only

place I could ever find it was me saying

it in interviews. So maybe he never said

it at all. Um, but I do think that a

writer's voice, which is huge, which is

important, which is actually the thing

that the reader responds to more than

anything else, at the end of the day

is a result of getting to the point

where you discover this is what you

sound like. And the problem I think that

a lot of young writers have is they

don't sound like anybody yet.

I know when I was a young writer, I

didn't really sound like anybody. Um,

what I did was sounded like everybody

else. And it it's what you do when

you're starting out. You imitate. You

find voices that you like. You go, "This

person's doing something great." I would

I would look at writers like Ari Lafetty

or Harlon Allison

um Rogers Alasnne, Ursula Leguin. I go I

love this thing that they do. I'll try

and do that. Was very strange. I wrote a

children's book um when I was

what 22. It's the first thing I ever

wrote.

Um, it exists only in my attic and in

manuscript

and uh, it's not pretty good. But when

after after Coraline came out,

I thought, hang on, I have that

children's book in my attic. I wonder if

it's any good. And I went off, I found

it, I read it to my daughter, Maddie,

who at that point was six or seven. And

at the end of the day, I sent it back up

to the attic where it resides and will

reside until the crack of doom.

What really fascinated me about it

was there was about a page and a half

somewhere toward the end that read like

me.

It read like for the rest of it, it read

like Noah Langley and Rald Dah. It read

like every children's author I'd ever

read. And it's all coming back out

again. There's nothing really original.

I haven't figured out how to do

anything. And that's great. And that's

absolutely fine because

you don't have to get it right at the

beginning. You you start out by making

mistakes. You start out by getting it

wrong. The the most important thing you

do is just write, but there was just a

page. And I looked at it. I thought that

that's me. That actually reads like me.

And

seeing that felt wonderful

because it was the idea that yeah, 22

year old Neil actually the voice was

there. I just had to do a whole lot more

writing.

I think mistakes may be the most

important thing for a writer. Um the

question of how do you find your

mistakes is very easy. You do stuff. Um

the process of living, the process of

trying to create, the process of getting

out there and doing something is always

a process in which you are going to

screw up. You are going to break things.

You are going to try things that do not

work.

That's huge. Chuck Jones said, "You have

a million bad drawings in your pencil,

and your job as an artist is to get them

out so the good ones can follow."

And I think as a writer and especially

as a young writer,

your job is to get the bad words out,

the bad sentences out, the the stories

that aren't any good yet. And you don't

ever get them out going, I'm going to

write a really bad story now. I I just

have to get this out. You think it's a

great story. You think it's a great

idea. You think it's good, at least, but

the most important, and it may be, but

the most important thing is just you get

it out. You know, if you you want to

write an award-winning

television episode,

you're gonna write episodes of

television that

the critics don't like. If you want to

write an award-winning movie, you're

going to write movies that the critics

don't like. If you want to write

award-winning short stories, you're

going to write short stories that nobody

reads, that don't really work. That's

okay.

And after you've written

10,000 words, 30,000 words, 60,000

words, 150,000 words, a million words,

you will have your voice because your

voice is the stuff you can't help doing.

And your voice is going to be there if

you decide to write a Philip Marlo style

hard-boiled detective story. Um, your

voice is going to be there if you're

writing a fantasy or a space opera. your

voice is going to be there. If you're

writing um Dr. Nurse romance fiction,

your voice is going to be there because

you will have found it because it's the

stuff that is going to be there anyway.

Everything that you do as a young writer

is going to be important in getting your

voice.

But the most important thing is just

writing. The most important thing that

will teach you who you are

is you write and you finish things if

you can.

I have um up in my attic

probably

100 200

first pages, first two pages, maybe even

the first three pages of things I wrote

between the ages of 16

and 20. And I would just start short

stories

and none of them ever sort of went

anywhere. They I I had a setup. I had

some characters. I I wanted to see what

would happen. And then three pages in

they'd sort of sputter and flame out and

they'd be dead. And that was okay. And

I'd start another one.

It wasn't until I was probably about 20,

maybe 21, that I realized that actually

I had to start finishing them.

And at that point

the the improvement

became to use a word Terry Patchet used

to love using quantum.

Um because as you finish things

you start to learn what it is that you

did. There's a genuine improvement that

you can start to see. You learn more

from finishing a failure than you do

from writing a success. And you

definitely learn more from finishing a

failure than you ever do from beginning

something that is fantastic but stops.

You can take a dozen short stories by

me. You could take half a dozen novels

by me.

And on the one hand, they'd use

absolutely different language. They have

a different feel.

They could almost be written by

different people, except that they're

obviously all written by me.

There is a uniformity there. And it's

not necessarily a uniformity of word

choice. It's not even a uniformity of

voice. It's more about attitude. Each

story has its own voice, but the

attitude, the soul,

the thing you take away from it,

hopefully that's all me and that can be

all you. I think if you're a young

writer, if you're a writer setting out

trying to find the voice of a project,

the most important thing is just take a

stab at it.

Sit down, think before you start

writing, just think what are the most

important things about the project. Does

it feel like it's first person, third

person? Who's telling you the story?

Does it matter who's telling you the

story? American Gods. Um,

I wrote the first chapter in the first

person.

It was told by Shadow.

got to the end of that first chapter and

went,

"That doesn't work."

And then had to stop and think, well,

why doesn't it work? And I thought,

well, it doesn't work because you're

inside his head, yet he is emotionally

closed off

from the reader. And I knew that I

wanted to write something in which right

at the beginning, you know, he's in

prison and is emotionally closed off.

And then he's told that his wife is dead

and everything shuts down and he is

numb. He is dead inside. And now

the book is going to be the slow process

of waking up,

discovering who he is. Um going all the

way down into death and then returning.

I wrote the vast majority of it in a

style that I like to think of as

American transparent.

Um,

it's what Elmore Leonard did so

beautifully. It's what Stephen King when

he flies sometimes does. It's the author

is invisible.

The words are there. The characters are

there. You do nothing as an author to

draw attention to yourself. There is a

narrative voice but a lot of the craft

of the narrative voice comes

in disappearing into the text. Stardust

has a narrative voice. The writer as a

character and

the writer for me of Stardust is a

completely different kind of writer. The

narrative voice in in my head. The

narrator of Stardust is writing Stardust

be long before there's a fantasy genre.

You're not, you don't have any kind of

genre. You are just an adult novelist

who is writing a fairy tale for adults

as people did in the teens, 20s, and

1930s. They they would do that kind of

thing. Um,

so I thought it has to be one of those.

I like the idea that the writer was

possibly even a woman. Um, and again,

you're finding a voice. So, the voice of

Stardust is very formal. It's slightly

stilted.

Um, it's much lusher in some ways and

feels a little bit antique in a way that

the style of, say, Neverear, at least as

far as I'm concerned, is a completely

different thing.

they are all

third person

narratives.

Um, but then you can get into stranger

territory when you do something like the

ocean at the end of the lane which is a

novel which is a first person narrative

and at that point

the important thing becomes the voice of

the narrator.

So, for the ocean at the end of the

lane, I wanted to write something told

to us by a narrator probably in his

mid-40s

about what he remembers

of being seven, of this story coming

back to us. It it needed to be told from

an adult perspective.

Um, but the deeper he goes into memory,

the more it had to be absolutely from a

kid's height and from a kid's eye point

of view. So, at that point, you're

looking for a style that is

not a particularly writerly style.

Um, the important thing about it is that

it is the voice of somebody who is just

holding your hand, looking you in the

eye, and saying, "Let me tell you what

happened to me." Which is a fantastic

kind of narrative voice to use. It's one

I've used over the years. I used it in a

graphic novel called Violent Cases at

the beginning of my career. Used it in

Mr. Punch. I've used it in a bunch of

short stories. It's incredibly dangerous

if done well in that it's

convincing.

Um, you really are just saying to

somebody, "Look, I'm I'm not going to

lie to you. I'm going to tell you true

things.

I'm just hold my hand.

We're going to walk together, you and I,

into a dark place, but I'm here. It's

all safe. I'm holding your hand." And

then you walk them into a dark place and

you let go of their hand and they run

away. and uh

leaving the person just going, "Oh my

gosh, I thought I trusted things. I

thought I knew what was going on and I

really don't." Um, so if somebody were

imitating me, probably that would be

that particular style is a would be a

fun one to go in and imitate.