š Honing (or Harnessing) Your Writing Voice
Hard-won (or, perhaps, hardly-won š) advice for the stymied or stumped
Let me level with you. I donāt do many writerly things naturally, or often even well. When drafting, I tend to emphasize wordplay, ābits,ā and plot (vs. character, which is pretty much what everyone and I mean EVERYONE, correctly says is the most crucial aspect). I love the words ājust,ā āactual,ā āown,ā and ādefinitelyā so much that I might as well have married them instead of my sweet partner. I am prone to pomposity and opinionated, and I tend to treat my ideas like my childrenāmeaning I think they are the bees' knees, even when they are just lazing around and contributing nothing. I say all this to let you know: there is SO MUCH I donāt know.
Butā¦I do get positive comments on my writing voice and writing style? (For whatever reason in the great googly moogly that might beāIāll take it! Donāt we all grasp gratefully at *any* positive writing feedback?) Iām definitely not the best at it! Still, and maybe itās hubris, Iād like to think I have learned a few things that, just maybe, might help you out if you are struggling with honing (or perhaps even identifying) your writing voice.
STYLE. Though itās a part of voice, style is also its own <waves hands> āthingā that encompasses what words an author chooses and how an author chooses to string them togetherāincluding punctuation and line breaks. All the tools a poet would use? THOSE are style.
Think of your writing as a conversation with the reader(s). I donāt mean write informally (unless the piece would benefit from it, somehow); being sloppy is not the same as being conversational. But consider: how would you tell this story to a stranger with high āpotential BFFā energy? How would you try to convey your creative perspective by relying not only on the words you choose, but also the way you wield them?
Donāt read* and write. Hereās an unpopular principle I have for when I sit down to write: I do not read othersā work immediately beforehand. That may mean I donāt read any texts at all before that dayās work sessionāor, sometimes, it means I wonāt read anyone elseās comp texts that may relate until I feel secure in my own story being in a shareable stage. Talk and think and think and talkādraw, paint, do *anything* that isnāt just reactive to othersā writingāand then write. This is important because we donāt need more echo chambersāsocial media has that covered. What we need from you, creator, is ORIGINALITY. What have you NOT read, but think? Thatās a much better place to start! Of course, do readā¦at the end of the day, or after youāre done writing. And ideally, read randomly and widely, in addition to your chosen genre(s).
* unless itās your own writing; thatās always a good idea.Consider your tone. Outside of word choice (which is a huge part of style), what does what youāre working on sound like? Or, even better, what do you WANT it to sound like? WaCkY? P!-E!-P!-P!-Y!? Sly? deadpan? eerie?
Donāt ignore formatting and punctuation. Line breaks. Italics. Bolding. Parentheses (if you swing that way). And even betterāwell-placed dashes,
strikethroughs, and even ellipsesā¦ all these things are like the pauses and inflections you naturally make when you talk with good friends. Likewise, using a mix of short and long sentences often feels more dynamic. And who doesnāt love our thoughtful pal, the rhetorical question?Ponder delivery. In stand-up comedy, delivery is crucial, and writing is no different. Example: this joke by the late (RIP) Mitch Hedberg: "I don't have a girlfriend; I just know a girl who would be real mad if she heard me say that." Funny! But, instead of just sharing Mitchās words, if I wanted to share his style of humor, I might approximate it with something like:
āI donāt have a girlfriendā¦
I just know a girl
who would be real mad
if she heard me say that.ā
Whether that captures it fully (or not), Iām hopeful you can see how even a bit of formatting can add stylistic flavor. Even if we took the line breaks out, the ellipses and the italics help emphasize the logical breaks that make the whole thing funny.Read it out loud. Thereās no better way to test if your style is coming through. And I mean: really read it aloud. Don't just pretend you are doing it, in your head. (Donāt ask me how I know you may be doing that. šš¶)
VOICE. Here, I mean authorial voice. Itās the āZHÉ nÉ sÄ ĖkwƤā that showcases the authorās perspectives on the topic at hand; the more you read of a āvoiceyā author, the more you begin to āfeelā their specific writing sensibility. Voice also relates to the slant and tone they utilize throughout the piece: the arched eyebrow of a snarky essay or the wonder imbued in, perhaps, a poem. Therefore, while style feeds into voice, and voice can feel a little different piece-to-piece, voice also feeds into the learned expectations a reader might reasonably hold of what sorts of topics an author might write about, and how the author might handle them. Itās the parts and the sum.
Example: Once, in a webinar, I was asked to write one sentence in another author's voice. When I mentioned Raleigh, NC, and āmy sisterā in a sentence laced with a wry-sounding āoutsider observation,ā everyone correctly identified me as attempting David Sedaris's voice.
The simplest way to showcase your voice (in a āsimple meaning the opposite of easyā way) is to make your writing personal by writing about things that stem from your own lived experiences (like Davidās well-referenced upbringing in Raleigh) or values you hold dear, like Davidās frequent stories about his beloved siblings and his tendency to, if heās describing anyone in an unflattering way, to make sure he describes himself in an EVEN MORE unflattering way. You have your own writing tics and peccadillos, and I say: learn to love them instead of training them out of yourself. Which brings me toā¦
Be selective with Grammarly and other grammar editors. Listen, we all use them (wellā¦.I hope)! We need to (often, desperately!) check our grammar! Butā¦ donāt āacceptā all the Grammarly changes willy-nilly. Go through them, one by one, and consider each as thoughtfully as you would a critique partnerās notes. The last thing we need is for your voice to be slowly drained, accepted change by accepted change, from your work. Make sure the tools are there to help you tell your story, not the most generic version of it.
In short, tell the story; donāt just āprocess and presentā your writing like an A. I. program would. āMEEP, boop, beeeeeep, ker-BLONK!ā beats ābip. bip. bip. bip.ā any day.
Let me close out this post with a quote I read on Jane Friedmanās blog in a guest post by Jennifer Louden (which I recommend you also check out). āDeveloping your writer's voice requires you to know yourself and reveal that self in your writing: this is who I am and this is what I care most about.ā
Amen, Jennifer! The corollary to that is that itās an ongoing process, and you are probably already doing better at it than you think. Just let yourself be āa little more you,ā and you will have nailed this.
Your friend in making oneās voice heard,
Elayne
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I can't tell you how encouraging it is to hear that someone besides me overemphasizes wordplay in early drafts - I literally just alliterated myself to death - why? Um....because I enjoyed it and it helped me get to the end? ;) Okay...draft done, now on to your other helpful suggestions...