Voice, Choice, Rejoice

The original writing of this notecard read, “Jodi sat across from me at the diner. Smushed in this booth after a two hour drive, we needed food and rest. I wanted nothing more than to engage in adult conversion and discuss anything other than self-diagnosed mental illness. Just after Kristen, our waitress, walked away she drew a sharp breath and began. “I’m really homicidal right now.” I had no idea how to respond. was she looking for support for such a crime? Or was she simply expressing to me the state she was in? Either way, I knew one thing for sure. This Cedar Point trip was not going to go as planned.”

After recording this and hearing it played back, the vocal tone was not as natural as it needed to be to keep readers engaged. This was an interesting lesson for me. Voice. The way a voice sounds when recorded is not the same way it sounds when it is in real time. The writing of this passage above literally sounded like I was reading a novel I had written about this incident, aloud to a kindergarten classroom. It amazed me how the voice alone can be the difference between sincerity and cynicism.

Receiving feedback from my peer, Storm Guitar, helped me even further by hearing the fact that my “pause for dramatic effect” was a nit extreme. The language in the story itself suggests a certain tone. My adding to the melancholy was unnecessary and a bit distracting. After a few more tries, I found a way to make the story flow but it required abandoning the original way I framed the story. Chronology was not the way to go. Choice. Choosing to rearrange the story wasn’t the easiest decision, but it was the best one. Sometimes the original attempt is not the way I works out in the end. Listen to the revised version Here.