Beth Kephart: A Voice of Our Own

Early in my writing career I fell in love with the gerund and the participial phrase, with prepositionals and commas. My sentences were long—trademark long—sounding something like this: "Having left the alley before dawn, having run between shadows and sun, having followed the hawk, she understood that everything had changed." For me, back then, the goal was lush. I wanted every single sentence to sound like it had been lifted from a song.

As it turns out, of course, stories need a whole lot more than lush to carry them forward. They need muscle and speed, metaphor, the quick shot of an unexpected word, long and not entirely direct phrases. They need fast and slow. Straightforward and blurred.

UNDERCOVER, my first novel for young adults, features a young aspiring writer who pens love poems on behalf of guys who have their hearts set on other girls. Elisa goes to the woods to hunt down metaphors and similes. She hammers away at her own poems. She searches for a voice that is her own, for stories that she alone owns.

That's the journey we writers are always on. It's the journey I write about daily in my blog (www.beth-kephart.blogspot.com). I'm fascinated by the question: How does a writer's voice evolve? I'd love to hear your stories.

Beth Kephart
Author of Undercover

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