Ask any agent or editor what quality they're looking for from a new writer and the chances are they will reply "a distinctive voice". But what exactly is “voice” and what does it actually mean to find your voice as a writer?
How do you make your voice distinctive? What's the difference between the voices of your characters and the voice of your narrative? And how do you set about writing a narrative with multiple voices?
Following on from their first successful event in October 2019, South East London Authors – an informal group of local published authors set up just over a year ago – are hosting a 90-minute Q&A session to explore all these absorbing issues. Whether you’re an enthusiastic reader, a creative writing student, or someone who’s already getting to grips with narrative in fiction or non-fiction (short stories, a novel, a memoir, family history), come along and discuss your thoughts and ideas with three working novelists keen to share their experience and offer advice.
Doors open at 7.15pm for a 7.30pm start.
Tickets cost £10, or £5 for those 25 or under. As with all Bell House events, bursary tickets are available: please email info@bellhouse.co.uk for more information.
About the Panel
Clare Chambers was born in Croydon and lives in Bromley. She has written seven novels for adults and two YA novels in a variety of genres. Learning to Swim won the Romantic Novelists’ Association Best Novel Award, and In a Good Light was longlisted for the Whitbread Best Novel Award. Her ninth book Small Pleasures, set in south-east London in 1957, will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in July 2020.
Tamsin Grey grew up in England, Scotland and Zambia. She now lives in south London. She has worked as a cucumber picker, yoga teacher, oral historian, and as speechwriter to a secretary of state. Her debut novel She's Not There, described by Ian McEwan as 'wonderful and artfully addictive', is published by Borough Press. Tamsin's short story My Beautiful Millennial was shortlisted in the BBC National Short Story Award 2019.
Brian Keaney was the author of twenty books for young people before writing his first adult novel, The Alphabet of Heart's Desire. To make that change, he had to find a different voice from the one he had used for more than thirty years. It wasn't easy but it taught him a great deal about the defining characteristics of voice.
The event will be chaired by Antonia Senior, Times reviewer (and author of historical fiction, most recently The Tyrant’s Shadow).