It always seems like voice is the evil in writing. For one it is hard to determine not only when to use voice but what is voice? Is it a paper jam packed with your thoughts and beliefs, or is it the way you structure your sentences, use your words, basically a pattern of your own mechanics? I personally believe that voice is style, the way someone can write and have it show their personality. Through their words, grammar and mechanics the writer can be easily pointed out by their readers. For me and my writing…my words are easy to read nothing to indigestible for my readers, I tend to use long sentences or the short and sweet ones. Any writer can just say what they want to on paper. If I took a couple paragraphs from Frankfurt’s book On Truth and re-wrote it using my style would it have a bigger impact? Or would it defeat the point he was trying to make?
No civilization can afford to hate truth. It is not enough to recognize that the truth and lies are concepts worth grasping but to actually practice it. We all must also encourage those who truly devote themselves to truth. It may be easier to bullshit but it is also the lazy way. Individuals who do bullshit have a lazy sense of what is true and false.
A society that does not care about any of these beliefs is going to eventually make it to where they are incapable of achieving anything, nor will they be able to reach goals. The world cannot get along without the truth. They cannot develop if they constantly have to pursue the truth. In order to make this world better and more advanced we need to avoid stupidity (bullshit). Making productive use of truth is the first step.
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This exercise was interesting. Based on my definition of voice I simply re-wrote this glimpse of Frankfurts book On Truth by first copying his entire two paragraphs word for word. I then changed the words that were either hard to understand or just words that could be changed to simpler synonyms. Here is where I had my first version of imitation. But I still had his sentence structure and mechanics, which I needed to still change in order to have my voice. The only thing that was different is that I added my “digestible” vocabulary. So the next step was that I analyzed each sentence one by one to see what he wanted to say and say that in my own style. I felt that the exercise was very easy to do. As far as the impact, I think that Frankfurt’s voice has may have flowed a little better. When I was imitating his work I left some stuff out and I felt like I just jumped to the next statement. After reading my imitation I felt like I “dumbed” down his paragraph so even a child could understand. I still said what he was wanting to I just put it in my own style.
I think one reason this exercise was so easy for me was that I agree with Frankfurt. If I did not agree with him I may have been tempted to put my own opinion in my imitation. That, however, would defeat what I thought about voice. It is not bad to voice an opinion. I said earlier that it is easy for someone to just state their opinion, yes that is true it is easy, but so was what I just did. I could have easily just said…Liars are bullshit-ers who damper society. So then I just put into my own words and
Posted by vaug9193 on October 19, 2008
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