Writers are told to study successful books, and there's a lot you can learn from them. But the most important element of a book's success is the writer's unique voice. No matter the plot or subject matter, what makes the writing leap off the page is the author's voice. Here are some ideas about what "voice" is and how to find your unique voice. (This is a sample chapter I wrote for a book I was thinking about writing.)
1. What is a Writer’s “Voice?”
Your writer’s voice is the expression of YOU on the page. It’s that simple—and that complicated. Your voice is all about honesty. It’s the unfettered, non-derivative, unique conglomeration of your thoughts, feelings, passions, dreams, beliefs, fears and attitudes,
coming through in every word you write. Voice is all about your originality and having the courage to express it.
— Rachelle Gardner
A writer’s voice is not only like their personality in that it’s a combination of many different elements of their beingness, but it’s also as unique. You can read a dozen different books on the same subject or in the same genre, and they’ll all be completely different. Because each of the authors have approached the subject (or story) from their own unique viewpoint—from their personal experience, their values and priorities, their unique perspective on life, and their distinct way of expressing themselves. That’s why people read many books on the same subject, to explore different perspectives and to see which author’s voice and writing style most resonates with them. So, don’t be afraid to be yourself—your unique voice is what makes your writing compelling, and has a major influence on your writing’s ultimate success.
It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
— George Orwell
This seems to be the exact opposite of the idea that what you write is an expression of your personality and perspective, and that very quality is what makes your writing unique and special. Yet, I’ve included it here because writing, like life, is complicated and multi-layered. You don’t have to choose whether you’re going to turn your “voice” on or off in a particular piece of writing—whether you’re going to make your prose be more like a mirror or a windowpane. Because the truth is your writing should always reflect both principles.
While your voice naturally inhabits your writing, expressed through the many choices you make in every aspect of the creative process, it’s important to remember there’s a difference between expressing your personality and perspective in your writing and imposing them—especially in fiction. Although your story arises from within you and is intimately involved with the things you care about and want to say, your characters have to be true to themselves, and the story needs to evolve organically. Yet, even when the characters are telling you what they want to say or are showing you what should happen next, it’s all still coming from the depths of your being—from you. So, however your creative process unfolds, your voice will always be heard.
While an author’s style relates to words and the way he puts them together, an author’s voice is the way the author looks at the world,
a unique sensibility that pertains to that particular author. An author’s voice comes from deep within the soul and heart of that author.
— Mayra Calvani
In talking about writing, voice and style are often linked together or used interchangeably—I did it myself in the first paragraph of this chapter. Yet, they’re not the same. The difference between voice and style is similar to the relationship between who you are and what you do. In the same way that our actions are inspired by our beliefs, our desires and fears, and even our woundedness, what we choose to write about and what we want to say is born out of who we are. But how we use language to shape our ideas and inspirations into prose is the handiwork of style. Voice and style are inextricably bound together like soul and body, motivation and action, meaning and message. Although style is what the reader sees, your voice will be felt, heard, and known by the traces it leaves—in the words you’ve used, the tone you’ve taken, and the choices you’ve made regarding your subject or story.
If you have a connection through your voice with the reader, the reader will go with you from sentence to sentence, page to page and follow you through.
— Gay Talese
In the same way that when you’re attracted to someone’s energy (whether it’s their enthusiasm or kindness) or discover things you have in common, and you’d like to spend time getting to know them better, a writer’s voice has that same appeal. The sensibility that the words on the page are imbued with makes you want to spend time with the author, to get to know them, find out if a friendship is possible.
2. Searching Within for Your Voice
Every writer's difficult journey is a movement from silence to speech. We must be intensely private and interior in order to find a vision and a voice.
— Sara Paretsky
In the same way that silence and meditation help us to connect with our deepest and truest self, silence, along with a sense of openness and receptivity help us to connect with our creative vision and voice. Once you become comfortable with the silence that comes before the words begin to flow, inspiration will start to surprise you with ideas that not only show you what comes next on the page, but also reveals who you are. Once you begin to trust that inner voice, you develop an ability to connect with it at will by becoming silent. You don’t have to meditate or do anything formal, although you certainly can. Often, simply sitting at the keyboard, closing my eyes and relaxing for a moment is enough to open the flow of creativity and inspiration. Much of what is called our writer’s voice is an outward reflection of our inner voice, which is at the heart of our creative process.
So how do you find your voice? You can’t learn it. You can’t copy it. Voice isn’t a matter of studying. You have to find it. And the only place to find it is within you.
— Rachelle Gardner
While it’s true that you can’t find your voice in any teaching because it’s essentially an expression of who you are, the inner journey you must undertake to discover your voice can only be fulfilled through the act of writing. It goes something like this:
- Get quiet
- Open your mind to creativity and inspiration
- Pour your heart onto the page
- Feel into the process and the results
* Which aspects of the creative process felt open and flowing, and which felt sluggish or strained?
* Which words and ideas felt true and in alignment with who you are, and which felt forced or written to impress or sell?
3. Finding Your Voice in Other People’s Writing
The first step to cultivating your voice is to read. A lot. Read within your genre and read outside your genre. Read pretty much everything you can get your hands on. Reading is how you tune your ear, how you learn
what makes a book. It’s also how you’ll learn, over time, the styles and voices that speak to you. It’s how you begin homing in on your voice. Of course, I figure if you want to write, you must already love to read…but life is busy. Sometimes reading time suffers. You need to make it a priority.
— Kim Foster
Stephen King calls reading “the creative center of a writer’s life.” He believes that “you cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.” The advice to read, “A lot,” is at the heart of a writer’s education for many reasons. In this case, discerning other authors voices as a reader, helps you to viscerally understand what voice is and its power to hook you as a reader, draw you into a book, and keep you reading until the last page.
One’s true voice flows from writing the words that come, just as they come. That said, I do learn a lot about craftsmanship from other writers, by both positive and negative example. But craftsmanship is not about figuring out your voice, it’s just training the voice you already have. The way to figure out your voice is to stop trying and just write the words that come.
— Athol Dickson
Where a book falls on the level of craftsmanship can, at times, be difficult to discern. Just because you don’t like a book doesn’t mean it’s poorly written. All it means is that it didn’t resonate with you for some reason. And knowing that is a good thing. Because gauging your personal reaction to a book is easier and also more instructive when it comes to finding and developing your voice. When you’re reading a book, take time to reflect on what you’re reading. Does the language sing to you or seem to sink? Does the story pull you in or put you to sleep? Does what you’re reading make you want to pick up more books by this author, or abandon the book you’re reading, unfinished—and why? These questions will help you to discern the author’s voice as well as inform your own. It will make you more aware of and sensitive to your own voice, as you’re “writing the words that come.”
4. Experiment, Practice, and Play
(In other words: Write, Write, Write!)
Letting your voice flow the first time out, without writhing on the floor looking for the perfect word, is one way to develop a voice. When you click off that internal editor and let the words come out, you sometimes write things you never would have if you were more purposeful about it.
— James Scott Bell
When you’re discovering your voice—what you have to say and your natural way of saying it—whether you’ve just started writing or are writing in a new and unfamiliar genre, you have to be free to let the words tumble out of you without any kind of censorship. That means not only benching your internal editor and closet perfectionist; but your internal critic – who loves to sow self-doubt and discord; external critics – such as family, teachers, or well-meaning friends who think they’re protecting you by discouraging your writing dreams; as well as the demands of the market – what’s currently selling and the expected norms and limitations of books in your genre. Like writing in a journal, you have to feel free to tell the unvarnished truth and write whatever comes to mind. To explore, experiment, and play.
Less is more. Even when you’re shooting for more. Just keep trying things, checking in with how it works, and listening to the feedback. Allow your writing voice to evolve, unforced but certainly subject to the highest standards you can bring to it.
— Larry Brooks
Finding your voice happens over time. Little by little, you find out what feels right and true to you. After writing for years about the craft of writing, I spent nine months on the first draft of a personal development book. I wrote about 21 positive qualities, and chapter by chapter, month by month, what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it got clearer and clearer. The last chapters were so vastly different from the first ones that I wrote that some of those early chapters are going to have to be completely rewritten. But that’s okay, because that’s the process. I learned so much, and I found my voice in a new writing genre.
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
— Ernest Hemingway
In relationship to a writer’s voice, a true sentence is one that’s in alignment with the author’s deepest values and being. However, truth has multiple layers. So, to write the truest sentence that you know would not only reveal the truth about who you are, it would also articulate the truth about life and human nature, whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction. When we hear or read something true, we feel it. The more profound the truth, the more deeply it resonates within us. Although Hemingway said all you have to do is write one true sentence, a great book is composed of one true sentence after another, page after page, chapter after chapter.
5. Write What You Know OR Who You Are?
The writer’s genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer’s only stuff for sale.
— James Gunn
Writers are often encouraged to “write what you know” by well-meaning writing teachers. This advice is meant to encourage you to write from your strengths. The more knowledge and experience you have related to a particular subject or genre, the better able you are to write in those true sentences Hemingway talked about. Your experience adds depth, nuance, and honesty to your writing. Yet don’t let this advice discourage you from exploring, imagining, or diving into something completely new. When you bring the fullness of you to whatever you write, you are writing what you know because what you know best is you, and that knowledge is what makes your writing unique and valuable. Because of this, I think it would be more accurate and helpful to tell writers to “write who you are.”
I write to discover what I know.
— Flannery O'Connor
As a coach, I love being asked questions because they often draw bits of wisdom out of me that I didn’t know I knew. This sense of discovery comes from answering a question based upon a particular person’s needs. The individual’s situation inspires me to look at what I know from a new perspective. Often, I not only apply what I know in a new way to meet their needs, but I’ll experience an inspiration along with it that will take me to a completely new place. And the same is true about writing. While everything in this book is based upon decades of studying writing, working with writers, and writing myself, when I would look at a quote I’d chosen, I’d often have no clue what to say about it. And I’d wait in that place of openness and not knowing until all that I’ve experienced, and all that I am, inspires me to start writing.
In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.
— Junot Diaz
Writing a book is challenging. But it’s not just a creative challenge—what thought/scene/word should come next? It’s a personal challenge, as well, requiring you to stretch and grow in many ways. Sometimes the book writing journey asks you to grow in knowledge or to expand your creativity. Sometimes it asks you to be more courageous—to open your heart, explore new perspectives, or face your fears. It’s often as much a journey of self-discovery as it is an opportunity to reveal who you are on the page. When you begin the book writing journey you don’t always know what you’ll discover or how the process will challenge and change you. But if you open to the experience, you can learn as much from writing your book as your audience does by reading it. What you learn won’t be the same, but will be just as valuable.
6. Trust Yourself
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
— William Wordsworth
The heart is a metaphor for many positive and powerful qualities. So the advice to fill the blank page before you with the breathings of your heart isn’t simply meant to guide you to “sit down and write.” It’s encouraging you to bring the fullness of who you are to your writing. It’s asking you to be: present, real, passionate, discerning, honest, and courageous—to write fearlessly from your heart. To do this requires a foundation of trust.
You must:
- Trust your creative impulses, and be willing to follow wherever they lead.
- Trust in your ability to clearly translate the fleeting and often incomplete wisps of inspiration into a meaningful narrative that others can follow and understand.
- Trust that writing has value and is worthy of your time and effort.
- Trust yourself enough to write honestly and then be brave enough to send it out into the world.
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
— Franz Kafka
It’s important to be fiercely true to your creative vision (which can, at times, feel like taking dictation from your soul), and even fight for it, when necessary. But never put what you’ve created on such a high pedestal that you’re unwilling to see it from your readers’ perspective. Your book isn’t being written for an audience of one. Writing is a balancing act—trusting and being true to the creative energy pouring through you, while making sure that you’re expressing your vision clearly enough for your readers to understand.
There’s a fundamental difference between expression and communication. It only takes one to express, but it takes two to communicate. There’s also a difference between making your writing clearer and watering it down. So, in addition to trusting your vision, it’s important to trust yourself and your ability to find a way to communicate what you have to say clearly without compromising it.
We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
— Kurt Vonnegut
Writing a book is the art of making something out of nothing. Even if you’ve created an outline or know the basic story you want to tell, each step forward brings with it many choices to make, with a dozen different options for each one. At times it can feel overwhelming, more like you’re being thrown off a cliff rather than choosing to jump. The good news is that once you learn to lean into the not knowing and begin to trust that you’ll catch a wave of inspiration on the way down, stepping off of that cliff’s edge begins to feel more exciting than scary, like you’re hang gliding rather than falling.
7. Offer Something New, By Being Absolutely YOU!
One of my many college majors was literature, and for several years I doubted I could write a novel because I'd never be a Tolstoy. It finally dawned on me that the world already had a Tolstoy, and it didn't need another one. Which is when I decided to tell my stories my way.
— JoAnn Ross
I think—at this point—you can handle the truth. Every story has already been told. Every subject has already been addressed from many angles. There’s already a Leo Tolstoy, a J.K. Rowling, a Stephen King, a Marie Kondo, a Deepak Chopra, a Rachel Hollis, a Steven R. Covey, and one of every other amazing author who’s already traveled this path and become successful.
But there has NEVER been another YOU! No story has ever been told the way YOU would tell it. No subject has ever been addressed the way YOU would address it. YOU are what makes your writing special and will make your book different from all of the other books that already address your topic or genre. What will stand out is YOUR voice, YOUR way of looking at the world, YOUR way of expressing yourself. There’s much to learn from other authors, but the most important advice of all is to BE YOURSELF.
The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.
— Robertson Davies
Discovering your own voice isn’t as easy as it sounds. So much of our communication is transactional. In talking to different people about the same general topic, I’m likely to say different things to each of them. I’ll tailor what I have to say based upon what I know about their experiences and issues with the subject, what our relationship is like, how I think they’ll best be able to digest the information, and how confident I am (or not) in the moment.
So, when I’m faced with a blank page and it’s just me, it can take a while to discover what I truly think or feel about something and how I want to express that outside of my relationship with others. This is one of the reasons why writing is such a powerful tool of self-discovery. It may also be the reason it’s helpful for nonfiction authors to create a reader avatar—an imaginary ideal reader—to “talk” the contents of your book to. This imaginary relationship with our ideal reader helps shape how we write about the subject based upon what we know about their needs. It also helps us be more conversational.
Write about what makes you different.
— Sandra Cisneros
Your writer’s voice doesn’t come from writing about what makes you different but from what makes you different. And the beauty of that is, the only thing you have to do is be yourself. Yet, as I’ve already said, that’s not as easy as it sounds. First, you have to let go of trying to please other people, even your audience. Then, you have to let go of the voices in your head that say you aren’t good enough, but if you could be more like (fill in the blank) then you might be. To write from yourself, you need to… get quiet, and centered, and open, and receptive, and then trust what comes. And if you’re not quite there yet, then trust that it’s possible and you’re on your way.
Figure out who you are and then do it on purpose.
— Dolly Parton
The beauty of finding your voice as an author is that you don’t have to have everything figured out before you can start writing. Self-expression is merely the outer layer of writing. Beneath that is self-discovery, and beyond that is self-actualization. So, if you’re not ready yet to do you on purpose, as Dolly suggests, just sit down and write, while paying close attention to all that’s going on inside of you. Track the journey of your feelings, thoughts, and creative process. And as you write, who you are will become clearer and clearer, until who you are flows naturally onto the page, and effort is no longer required.
Author’s Voice Exercises:
READING:
- When you read a book, try to discern the author’s voice—what makes the writing uniquely their own.
Notice and describe:
- the author’s attitude or tone
- the author’s approach to the subject
- the author’s style—use of language and grammar
- who the author is writing to and how that seems to affect their writing
- in what ways, if any, does the author seem to be bringing his or her personal experience into their writing
- anything else about the author’s writing that makes it unique
- what you like or don’t like about the author’s writing, and why
- Take two or three books you’ve read on the same subject or in the same genre and try to describe how each of the author’s voices are different and unique. What do you most remember about each book—what stood out to you as particularly appealing or disappointing, and in what way, if any, does that relate to their voice?
WRITING:
Give yourself permission to experiment and play with your writing. Let loose and see if how you normally write is your true voice or simply habit. As you write from different perspectives, see how each one feels.
Nonfiction Authors
- Write from different personas: journalist, expert, companion, student, memoirist
- Experiment with different levels of including your own personal experiences—from hardly at all to way too much. What helps you to know what lines not to cross, or when you’ve shared too much?
- Try adding other people’s stories, if you don’t already. Case studies, news items, success stories, or simply how applying what you’re teaching might look like in someone’s life or business. See what kinds of stories feel right to you.
- Play with attitude and perspective—from authority figure to friend, from serious to light-hearted or humorous.
Novelists
- Write the first few paragraphs of your novel several times giving different characters (both major and minor ones) a turn as the narrator. What does this tell you about their voices and who they are? What does this tell you about your voice?
- If you usually write your novel from a third person point of view, try writing in first person, instead. And vice, versa.
- Take a pivotal scene, and brainstorm other choices you could make. Go wild and have some fun with this. See what happens when you try something new. If it feels uncomfortable, is that because you’re exploring something that’s untrue to you or your characters, or merely unfamiliar?
- Sometimes it’s easy to see yourself in your story, and sometimes not. If there’s something you’ve written that was sparked by an issue you care about or something you’ve read, and you think it’s inspired more by your ideas than your life, I encourage you to look again, and find your heart and life in there. Use your story or book to see yourself anew.
For more writing tips go to The 11 Essential (and Sometimes Misguided) Rules of Editing and Rewriting
