Singled Out

Today's topic over at PBW's is voice and style.

It brought to mind working in England. Eh? How does that connect?

Well, one of my jobs was to pack herbs into plastic bags. Being a chatty kind of person, I conversed with the other slaves around my table. During a ten hour shift, you've got to do something to take your mind off the tedium.

Throughout the day, a supervisor kept wandering over, a scowl painted on her pale face. She kept instructing us to keep it down, even though other tables created more laughter. Eventually, she decided to tell us not to talk at all. (Not that I could; people cannot keep it zipped in a crowd, and when spoken too directly, I answered, drawing the supervisor over again.)

At the end of the day, she said I would not be invited back to work. Surprised, I asked her why and she said: you are too noisy, you disrupt the work. You, I hear all day.

How, I wondered, could she hear me over all the others chatting? How did she identify me in the crowd of thirty or so?

Turns out, when I asked how she knew it was me, I had a unique aspect: my accent. I was the only Australian in the room and she identified that accent, zeroed in on it and decided it was too out of tune with the more familiar English and South African accents.

Now you see where it connects: You have to have something different about your writing to stand out and be noticed. The best way to do that is to have something unique.

If you compare your work with others, what stands out as different? Word choice? Plot? Your characters? Have you taken a cliched plot and twisted it? What makes your voice stand out?