Reading Time: 3 minutes

Lately I’ve been pondering the big questions in life: When a book has “it” – what does it mean? What hooks me faster in some books compared to others? Such questions can keep a person up at night. 

I’ve always told people that they’ll just know when a book is for them. But how do I quantify that? Well, luckily for me, I think I’ve finally landed on one potential answer that makes some sense. The answer is narrative voice. 

What is narrative voice? 

Narrative voice isn’t just the dialogue. It’s the way the story is told by our POV character. It’s the way that person describes the world and other people; it’s the things they notice and their interpretations of events. 

Put simply, it’s the word choices a character makes and what those word choices tell us about them as a person. 

Here’s a simple example. Read the following three sentences: 

• “He was drunk.” 
• “He was shitfaced.” 
• “He was three sheets to the wind.” 

One can imagine that these sentences were all narrated by three different characters. They each have a distinctive way of speaking – and knowing nothing else about them, we can already start creating a mental image of them and their background. 

Why does this matter? 

In asking myself why some seemingly interesting stories fail to hook me, I’ve discovered that the narrative voice is likely the most important thing to me when diving into a book. 

Narrative voice is sometimes the only thing that can make a story feel fresh. Even if I feel I know where the story is going, if it’s particularly trope-y and predictable, sometimes the way the story is told keeps me interested instead. If I find their way of storytelling unique, it can make the whole story feel unique. 

A strong narrative voice can make me feel connected to the character and help me understand their personality.

The problem with a bland narrative voice

Even if the story itself is very interesting, I quickly lose interest when I feel I can breeze over sentences and grasp their meaning without really needing to soak in the words. In some cases, I can even read the first sentence of a paragraph, know intuitively where the rest of the paragraph is going, and skip to the next without losing any meaning. (I’ve checked my work here – going back to reread a chapter after doing this to see if I missed anything important. I didn’t). 

Don’t take that to heart. I’ve read fifty books in the last seven months – a large amount, even for me – so I’ve read enough stories with similar writing styles, word choices, or plot devices to notice the trends. 

But it’s true that once I see a sentence like: 

• “The cool air pebbled my skin” 
• “She padded across the room” 
• “The delicious food suddenly tasted like ash” 
• “My throat dried out” 

…then I know what’s happening. I don’t need to read in minute detail when every sentence feels like the sentences I’ve read a million times over in the last few months. But alternatively, if those same ideas were conveyed differently, perhaps with a distinctly southern twang, an irreverent or profane tone, or even with stronger emotion – I’d be intrigued. 

One of the books I’m currently reading is Twisted Lies by Ana Huang; it’s one of those fake-dating-a-billionaire-CEO type of romances. It’s fun. But I do have the tendency to skim while reading it for this exact reason (not that that’s why I’m reading it, but I digress).

What does this mean to you as a reader? 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The better you understand your preferences, the less time you’ll waste on books you probably won’t like. 

If you might be a narrative voice person like me, then before you commit to a book, don’t hesitate to just read the first chapter, weigh your opinion on the narrative voice and writing style, and then decide if you want to continue reading.