Finding Your Voice as a Writer
How do you find your voice?
Finding your voice as a writer is about embracing your unique version of artistic expression. Rather than something that can be quickly identified, your voice unfolds and reveals itself to you, which takes time and cannot be forced. I’ve developed an exercise to help you discover your voice as a writer.
What is voice?
A writer’s voice develops over time and may change based on new influences and insights. Voice is the unique blend of these influences with a writer’s natural tendencies of expression: vocabulary, sentence length and structure, tone or mood, level of exposition, perspectives, recurring themes, etc.
Where do you start?
It’s natural to emulate writers whom you admire. Deconstructing your preferences may help you move away from literal emulation and blossom into your unique style. Below is an exercise to help you identify what you like about other writers’ voices.
Identify What You Like
List a few writers whose writing resonates with you. Note that they may be different from writers you simply admire.
Read a few passages by the first writer. Take some notes on what you like about their writing style and be as specific as you can.
Repeat step 2 for each writer you’ve listed.
Review and compare your lists. What trends do you notice? Are there similarities that show strong preferences? Are there vast differences?
Think about your findings in relation to your writing. Do you already incorporate some of these elements? If so, which of these feel natural as you write and sing when you reread them? And which feel and sound forced?
What have you learned about yourself through this exercise? You may want to journal about this.
Next Steps
Rather than setting out to incorporate everything from these exercises, allow yourself time to notice what comes up for you during a writing session or when you reread something you’ve written.
Reading your work aloud is a great way to gain insights and identify which passages flow and which don’t.
You may want to keep a journal of your reflections or a list of passages that feel good.
Getting feedback from a trusted reader, critique partner, editor, or writing coach may reveal insights you could not discover on your own.
As in life, be yourself. Readers will connect with your writing when you drop the façade and allow the beauty and authenticity of your unique voice to shine through.