Voice is what imbues a novel with the feeling that it communicates. And no two novels ever share the exact same voice. For example, The Gunslinger, by Stephen King, communicates a feeling of wanderlust and adventure through a rather uncharacteristic character. With highly elevated language that is strangely easy to understand, the blunt, direct voice helps draw the reader in to the epic story of the gunslinger. Similarly, Geist, by Philippa Ballantine, uses sophisticated language to convey her professional voice. However, her forays into language have rendered her writing slightly more difficult to understand, but not too difficult that even a well-read individual can’t make sense of a paragraph. Ballantine also uses direct language that isn’t necessarily poetic, but instead has its own tone of pleasantry. Lastly, Kissed by an Angel, by Elizabeth Chandler, differs from the previous two novels. While she shares the usage of sophisticated word choice, her voice lends a rather poetic tone to itself, and the writing seems to flow from the pages like the strewn pebbles in a stream.
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