Writer Voice: Developing Your Own Style

We previously talked about character voice or what is known as “dialogue” in a previous post. In that post, I mentioned that, when it comes to voice, we could be talking about one of two things: either the voices of the characters in your story, or the voice of the author telling the story. Today, I want to talk about author voice.

Author voice is the “you” that shines through in your writing. It’s the reason you can read a few pages of prose and just know Stephen King wrote them, or just know they were penned by Hemingway, or by Dean Koontz, or Kurt Vonnegut. Or by Jeffery Deaver. All of these authors have one thing in common: they all have very distinct authorial voices. Does it mean their stories all sound the same? Well, the answer to that is tricky. It’s sort of a yes and no thing.

Developing your authorial voice is the best thing you can do for your career, especially if your voice is unique and compelling. When you first start writing, it’s actually beneficial from a voice development point of view to try and emulate other authors. This little exercise will help you learn what it means to write with a voice. Then, once you leave the nest and write with your own voice, you’ll know what you’re doing. At least that’s the theory.

The key to developing your voice is to not try too hard. Relax, and write almost as though you were talking to your readers. Especially on initial drafts, don’t even worry about grammar or syntax or punctuation, just tell your story as though you were sitting around a campfire trying to enthrall a bunch of friends on a cozy summer’s night. See, the thing is, you already have a voice. The key is trying to find it. And it’s not very hard to find, because you use it every day. The hard part is learning how to let go and just write with it.

This is not to say you can’t wax poetic from time to time. You won’t always write with the same words you use when you normally speak, but you should still write in the same manner you speak. Or maybe, to be more precise, I should be telling you to write in the same manner in which you normally think. When you think to yourself using words, what do those words sound like? They are probably slightly different than the ones that come out when you open your mouth and actually talk. They probably have a more eloquent quality to them. It’s that voice that is yours and yours alone. It’s that voice that’s going to make you stand out from the rest of the crowd of writers floundering to put down sentences any way they can.

Once you’ve started finding your voice, there are some qualities you should work on perfecting. It must be confident and strong. It should not be transparent in the writing. Your characters should all sound different, and each of your stories should have their own tone, depending on how they’re set, but the voice behind that tone and those characters should be unarguably yours. You will find, as you develop this voice, that it might change as it grows stronger and gains conviction. As long as you like the changes you’re experiencing, roll with them.

What do you do if you absolutely hate the voice you find yourself naturally writing in? Well, this is where the exercise of trying to copy other author voices comes in handy. Find authors who have strong voices that you admire and teach yourself to write in a voice style similar to theirs. Do not take their style verbatim, though. You do not want to be seen as a copycat of any particular writer. This will do your career no good.

You may have the opposite problem. You may find your natural voice is very similar to a well-known published author. If this is the case, I wouldn’t fret too much, providing you’re not actively trying to simulate that writer. My advice would be to stop reading his work, though. The more you read of a single writer’s work, the more your own voice will naturally get pulled in the direction of that writer’s voice.

The biggest problem facing you while finding your authorial voice is that it takes courage because you have to let go of the handrails and walk across the tightrope without a net. Once you start writing with your own voice, you are truly out on your own. Your writing suddenly belongs to you in a way it never did before. It’s like giving up your last vestige of security because now it’s all you and nobody else. And when you get critiqued (and of course, you’re still going to get critiqued just as badly as you were before), it’s going to feel even more personal because, especially at first, it will feel like you’ve put yourself all over those pages. There will be a strong temptation to feel personally attacked.

Don’t let yourself be. Try to keep an emotional distance from your writing. Always. You will write better, you will be able to see your own flaws better, and you will take criticism better.

Even after all this, the trade off for writing with your own voice are by far worth it. Your writing skill will begin to progress much more quickly, and soon your work will take on a much more professional form than it ever had before.

You will have made much progress along the road toward publishing your first book because editors are looking for new, original voices. Original voices sell books.

And we all want to sell books.

Michael out.