I recently attended a seminar on writing during which the instructor, a novelist and short story writer, talked about wrestling with a particular character’s voice
because voice would ultimately determine the feel of the story she was attempting to write.
This brought to mind a recent New Yorker author interview in which George
Saunders said that when he sat down to write the story entitled "Mother's Day," he at first envisioned a
rather elegant woman as the main character, but when he gave her a
voice, she came out grouchy “so the story took a swerve there.”
