How do writers find their voices?

Survey of Edinburgh books festival authors reveals that 'hearing a character' means different things over course of a writing career

 Hearing voices? What's your experience when reading?

The idea that writers can somehow "hear" the voice of their characters is a familiar one, as is the notion that characters seem to write themselves: that the author is merely a kind of conduit for voices that seem to have lives all of their own.

However, describing where that voice comes from, what it sounds like and how it feels to experience a character so intimately is a much more difficult and more fascinating matter, as a team of Durham University researchers have been discovering at the Edinburgh international book festival.

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