Finding Your Voice

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ldlago

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How difficult is it to find your own voice? Do you feel as if you have? As if you haven't? How much like yourself should your protagonist be? I feel as if I'm still searching for mine, and, that when I do inevitably find it, something magical will happen. How many of you are still searching? How many feel as if they've found it? How much better is your writing for having found the thing that makes your voice unique and unmistakably yours?
 

lizmonster

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"Voice" is an elusive concept. It's one of those "you know it when you see it" things. As a reader, the author's "voice" is, to me, how good they are at getting out of the way of their own storytelling. I don't like to read something thinking "Wow, there's the author with their great voice telling me a story." I like to be in the story.

I don't think similarities between the author and their characters has much to do with voice, honestly. That's an entirely different thing, although I'll admit I've rarely found writing that lacks voice with well-drawn characters, so maybe they're related, at least in terms of skill level.

I can't say how difficult it is. IMHO it's an issue of practice, and it's going to take every writer a different amount of practice to get there. Reading helps as well; we internalize rhythms and phrasing when we read, and those go into our own writer's toolbox.

And I can't say my voice is unique. I tell stories the way I tell them. I've found other authors I think are stylistically similar, but their work is very much not the same as mine.

I tend to think voice is an eye-of-the-beholder thing.
 

Woollybear

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(I feel that I draw on myself for all of my characters... like the idea in one of the later Star Trek TNG episodes that there are multitudes within each of us.)

Voice... I think by reading both published novels and excerpts, I identify what I like and dislike, and then I steer my writing in the direction I like, and that becomes my voice. It still takes lots of drafts to get the rhythm, pacing, and balance right. I only started 3.5 years ago and I'm at this full-time.

I like an equal balance of narrative, dialog, and action. I like a little telling. I like slow burns. I like evocative language and complex sentences, within reason. I like investing in characters and their relationships. I don't know 100% that this defines voice, but to me it's a big part of it.

Some agents, when they talk about a voicey piece, are talking about a viewpoint character with strong opinions front and center. When a piece feels like it lacks voice, injecting opinionated commentary can make a big difference. A line from Barbara Kingsolver that shows this is: The neighborhood tomcat, all muscle and slide, is creeping along the top of the trellis where Alice’s sweetpeas have spent themselves all spring.’ And, also from Kingsolver: His voice was thin, and he held his fierce lunatic head at an angle of bizarre arrogance.

The voice in those is, IMO, down to the opinionated slant each is given, but also unusual word choice. ...all muscle and slide, and fierce lunatic head.

I think i could write a voicey character who is nothing like me, by injecting opinions that I do not hold. The opinions would add the voice.

But I also think you can have multiple voices. Like a singer trained to sing pop might occasionally sing in a different mode. I doubt Kingsolver always writes like that. In fact, I know she doesn't.

Curious what others have to say--interesting topic.
 

Chris P

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Yeah, this is a tough thing to define. By voice do we mean style? Such as how we know a Mark Twain piece when we see an excerpt? Or do we mean central themes, ideas or points the writer tries to make with an entire body of work? Or do we mean a unifying set of tools, POVs, ways of describing scenes, pace, allusions and metaphors that make any particular piece come together?

This last one is where I devote the most of my attention as a writer. If an individual work doesn't gel, then the higher-level ideas of "voice" won't matter.
 

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Voice is the specific, distinctive style of an author. It is sometimes the style traits that an author doesn't control, that they engage in unconsciously.

See: 8. The distinctive style or manner of expression of an author or of a character in a book.

Where it gets tricky is that some writers control their style so carefully that they don't have a voice; their characters do. (Actually, a lot of writers do this.)

Hemingway is the opposite extreme; all his books, and most of his characters, use the stylistic traits we think of as Hemingway's style. It is terse, the vocabulary is restrictive, and is very objective. It is very journalistic; it is also very artificial in the sense that it is a deliberate series of artistic choices made by Hemingway as we can see by looking at his drafts, and his other prose.

You can learn to modify your style by reading widely and noticing how others write; pay attention and try deliberately imitating a paragraph or two.

In terms of finding your voice, write a lot. Read a lot. Revise a lot. Write some more.
 

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Voice isn't like a lot of people make it sound. "Aha, I found my voice, it was in a drawer!" It's just a distinctive way that you write, such that anyone familiar with your voice knows it came from you. It is a common feel that you develop over time that is specific to your style. It's why J.K. Rowling was outed as Robert Galbraith. Some people think the BBC was responsible, but it's really a form of forensic linguistics. J.K. Rowling just writes like J.K. Rowling and those paying attention just have to piece the clues together.
 

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ap123

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I'm reading this as several questions.

1) How do you find your authorial (?) voice? As stated above by other posters, by writing.

2) How do you find your narrator's voice? By deciding style of mss, and writing.*

3) How do your find your MC's voice? By shaping your MC, making decisions about who they are, what their central dilemma is*

4) How much of you should be in your MC? That's up to you and the story you're writing. My characters are never me, but there are bits of real feelings and experiences stretched and shaped to create the characters and stories.

*For myself, I don't consider any of the process magic, but I never begin writing until the MC's voice is clear in my head, and the narrative voice usually goes along with that. It isn't magic, it's time; letting my imagination work on this character until I know them--though I often don't know more than the very opening of the story, the initial "what if" when I start.
 

ldlago

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I recently received feedback on a story I entered into Screencraft's Cinematic Book Contest. They gave me "average" scores on dialogue and concept. As far as theme, characters and voice, they felt I needed to improve. I'm taking the areas that need improvement and addressing them one at a time. The story was written in the third person from multiple points of view. I'm wondering if I try to write in the first person, something I've never done other than in journals, would it be a better approach, at least as far as voice? Keep in mind that the contest looks for fiction that is suited for adaptation to screen.
 

lizmonster

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Have you run your story past the folks here in Share Your Work? I'd suggest that as your next step.

It's not clear to me you're using "voice" the same way I do, so I'd be loath to offer you any advice without seeing what you've written.
 

ldlago

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I'd be loath to offer you any advice without seeing what you've written.

You can read the whole thing. It's relatively short, 169 pages, double spaced, Times New Roman. Just tell me where to send it. Read your profile by the way. My mother's birthday was July 31. She passed away on August 1, 2006.
 

Woollybear

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First person can be more immersive, but that doesn't mean it has more voice.

Maybe another way to think of voice is to think of cohesion and richness. Like AP123 and Chris are saying above. Pieces in various critique groups that tend to sound flat, to me, are pieces that are too two-dimensional. The characters (all of the main and secondary characters) are not yet 'real' enough, the theme is not clear, there is no struggle, the setting is not imagined (or does not suit the theme), and the writing is not up to snuff. There are probably other areas, like plot advancement and inner and outer journeys.

When a piece in critique group is weak in a few areas, the piece feels lacking, flat, then one way this might be described is as having a weak overall voice.

I'd bet if you took the single hardest life struggle you've ever endured and built a well-written and well-structured story around it, you'd see your voice. This is not meant to imply that only such harrowing stories are suited to that voice, merely that it seems, to me, a possible way for you to try to identify how you tell stories best. Because it would be a deeply personal story.

Last thing--that contest looks really cool, but FWIW Hollywood sometimes works toward commercial and 'larger than life' scenes, in my experience. Some types of voice are not as suited to that part of our collective storytelling experience as others. It's entirely possible you have a great voice that simply isn't suited for that contest
 
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lizmonster

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Share Your Work is an AW forum. :) Password is vista. Head to the appropriate genre subforum, read the stickies, and post. Explain the context of the sub and the feedback you got. Let people know how blunt you want them to be.

There are a lot of people here who are very good at ferreting out why a piece does/doesn't work.
 

Marissa D

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I used to be an administrator on a different writing forum where we allowed posters to post anonymously in one specific area if they had a sensitive question or matter they wanted to discuss...and in many cases, it was easy (at least for me) to tell who the anonymous poster was because of the way they constructed sentences and strung them into paragraphs, their word choice, etc. Their voice, in other words.
 

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How difficult is it to find your own voice?

Not sure how to answer this. To the extent that I have one, it’s not something I consciously developed. It’s just the way I tend to story-tell. It’s a product, I guess, of decades of writing letters, emails, social-media posts, and eventually fiction?

I don’t think every author or work they’ve done has or must have an immediately recognizable style. How could they? Millions of authors can’t all sound totally unique.

When people say that something “lacks voice”, I suspect they sometimes mean that it’s not engaging them? Or the characters aren’t defined well on the page?
 

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I used to get so jealous of other writers and think "Why can't I write like them? Why can't I write like her?" I would almost try to mimic their style, but this always felt uncomfortable and forceful. I would always default back to certain sayings, certain ways of formatting, certain lengths of sentences, if I used curse words...and it took me a while before I realized that was my voice.


As for my characters' voices vs mine, your characters' voices are how they view things. If they find certain hobbies fun, if they get scared of everything, if they have a certain motto they repeat to themselves...Your voice is how you put that on paper. It's an abstract concept. I think what really helped me discover mine was writing two books (my published and my current wip). My two main characters are so different from each other. They couldn't be more opposite if I tried. But there were certain patterns in the way I wrote. How much description, how much dialogue, how often I summed up scenes verses writing them out in detail.

As an exercise write from the viewpoint of two very different people and see what things remain the same. That's your voice.


Don't try to hard on finding it. I'm not sure if anyone really has a certain "voice."
 

ldlago

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in many cases, it was easy (at least for me) to tell who the anonymous poster was because of the way they constructed sentences and strung them into paragraphs, their word choice, etc. Their voice, in other words.

I believe my writing has voice. It may not be distinctive enough. It's probably something I need to work on and refine. I write slowly, rewriting the work many times over. I wonder if a writer can over edit and lose their voice in the process. I read somewhere (I can't remember), that a good exercise to develop your voice is to write stream of consciousness. It sounds reasonable. How else could you be more you? I'm not advising you submit that way, but what comes out could be useful.
 

ldlago

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I used to get so jealous of other writers and think "Why can't I write like them? Why can't I write like her?"

That's a question I never ask. Certain writers are simply a cut above. In a million years, I could never come close to being as good. I admire their work, and go on in my own small way. Something will come of it eventually.
 

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Using language well can be learned. :)

I've seen various authors and teachers recommend a practice of patterning off the masters to learn.

As an example, take something like painting. A student might try to imitate a great work ... and learn something about color and composition and form. Similarly, patterning a passage of your own writing off of a passage you like (as practice to learn the skills--how language can work--not as plagiarism) can create a certain 'muscle memory' of flourishes and efficiencies and progression and so on in writing. Or it might simply reveal your own voice more clearly, as starry storm found when she imitated other writers. :)

Good luck! :)
 

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Here's my theory, feel free to disagree: Voice comes with decisiveness and confidence, and is built around what you observe that other people do not.

I've definitely had times where I was trying to mimic the "tone" of the people around me. This is embarrassing, but noting improvement is important so I'll share, as a teen I wanted to be feminist, so I echoed a lot of the "yas queen" aesthetic of let's say "Buzzfeed" writing (I'd have characters directly call out other characters for being "sexist" in very plain language, it was not subtle). There's nothing inherently wrong with that aesthetic if that's genuinely what your aesthetic is, but it wasn't ME. I wanted to be reassured that I wasn't a bad person (on a subconscious level, I didn't realize that's why I did it at the time because teenagers are stupid), which is a weak weak weak motivation for writing. It was obviously posturing, and I rightly got called out for it because I was being a worse version of someone that already existed instead of being the best version of myself. I was wearing clothing that quite clearly didn't fit on me. Kierkegaard would have seen me as a case study of inauthenticity. My observations were obvious, making me useless as an "observer".

It's not necessarily "be yourself" so much as it is "find a version of yourself that is confident and use that." Voice comes with conviction. Voice comes with writing something you love, internally, and having the confidence to know that what you love will shine through to the audience.

My advice is to start with a few little things that make you love writing, and cling onto them. For me, I love dialogue. I love writing whole chapters that are almost nothing but dialogue. I just enjoy it. That might seem simple, but that is a stylistic choice. I think there are correct and incorrect ways to write something (i.e. you can have someone with a unique voice but no one knows what they are trying to communicate, and writing is essentially the art of effective communication), but I think what distinguishes voice is what is important to you. What do you notice that other people don't.

Flannery O'Conner was an amazing writer, but she rarely focused on the details of a setting. That wasn't what was internally important to her. Other writers could write a trilogy about a chair in the dining room of a scene they write. Both writers are valid, so long as they communicate clearly and effectively what they focus on, but the focuses are different, making them have different "voices."

To summarize, a big part of writing is "what do you as a writer observe that other people do not?" For me, I notice the cadence and patterns of how people talk, so an emphasis on rhetoric is a huge part of my style. Other people might focus on something else that no one notices. Stephen King talks about how he notices people's physical movements, like chewing on nails.

To summarize, what do you notice that no one else does (what makes you useful as an "observer"), and how can you effectively and confidently communicate that? Find that, and you will find your voice. From there, be authentic.
 

ldlago

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I love writing whole chapters that are almost nothing but dialogue.

a big part of writing is "what do you as a writer observe that other people do not?"

what do you notice that no one else does (what makes you useful as an "observer"). Find that, and you will find your voice.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I googled your name. Are you the ConnorMuldowney Michigan State journalism guy? I have a Michigan State bucket hat by the way.

I never thought of trying to notice or observe things other people do not. I'm going to take your advice and try to do that. Is it the same as having a unique way of looking at the world?

I also love writing dialogue. I probably watch too much Sports and too many movies, and it may influence the way I write, not necessarily in a positive way. My male characters may come off as overly virile. I've heard it said that men need to get more in touch with their feminine side. Maybe, maybe not.
 

ConnorMuldowney

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I love writing whole chapters that are almost nothing but dialogue.

a big part of writing is "what do you as a writer observe that other people do not?"

what do you notice that no one else does (what makes you useful as an "observer"). Find that, and you will find your voice.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I googled your name. Are you the ConnorMuldowney Michigan State journalism guy? I have a Michigan State bucket hat by the way.

I never thought of trying to notice or observe things other people do not. I'm going to take your advice and try to do that. Is it the same as having a unique way of looking at the world?

I also love writing dialogue. I probably watch too much Sports and too many movies, and it may influence the way I write, not necessarily in a positive way. My male characters may come off as overly virile. I've heard it said that men need to get more in touch with their feminine side. Maybe, maybe not.

I am not haha, but I am a journalist (https://connormuldowneydigitalshowcase.wordpress.com/), but I'm from Washington, D.C. Glad you found my advice helpful! And I wouldn't worry about how your "male characters" come off, as long as it's not completely sexist. That's the sort of thing I would have overly stressed about as a teenager, and again, I was not a good writer at the time hahaha

It's a bit like having a unique way of looking at the world, but that is a pretty broad concept, though it fits under the umbrella I would say.
 
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