Everyday Canvas

Our "Writer's Voice"

Prompt: Saw an interesting blog today about finding your authentic writing voice. The author suggests a writer list the first three things that come to mind when you're asked to describe yourself/your writing. Read something you wrote recently. Do you hear any of those descriptors? You should, if you're writing openly. What do you think of her advice?
http://www.blogher.com/how-find-your-authentic-voice?

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According to all that I’ve read so far on the subject of Voice, I found that there are as many opinions on a writer’s voice as there are writing-advice givers. In general, a writer’s voice is uniquely his own. It makes his and her writing jump up the page and enables the readers to distinguish who the writer is or at least to which style or section of writing his work belongs.

As to the said blog piece, it is as good as any, but because it emphasizes the person and the soul inside the writer, its advice is golden. Of everything the blog's writer says on her list, I like the authenticity item the most, which is, when put in a different way, being yourself. Still, as this can be done more quickly with non-fiction, it is more difficult to achieve with fiction. Case in point, a couple of days ago, there was a quiz on FB called, Who Do You Write Like? http://iwl.me

Although this wasn’t exactly a voice quiz, it came close to it. After I pasted a few paragraphs from a novel, the quiz said my writing was like Raymond Chandler’s. I took the test again with a short story; this time, I became J.D.Salinger. I put in a satirical piece, and I was Kurt Vonnegut. I don’t know where that quiz gets its information, but I believe, it points to the fact that the subject and the mood a writer is what affects her writing.

What then is voice? The literary agent Donald Maass, in his book Writing the Breakout Novel, describes it as:

“What the heck is “voice”? By this, do editors mean “style”? I do not think so. By voice, I think they mean not only a unique way of putting words together, but a unique sensibility, a distinctive way of looking at the world, an outlook that enriches an author’s oeuvre. They want to read an author who is like no other. An original. A standout. A voice.

How can you develop your voice? To some extent it happens all by itself. Stories come from the subconscious. What drives you to write, to some extent, are your own unresolved inner conflicts. Have you noticed your favorite authors have character types that recur? Plot turns that feel familiar? Descriptive details that you would swear you have read before (a yellow bowl, a slant of light, an inch of cigarette ash)? That is the subconscious at work.

You can facilitate voice by giving yourself the freedom to say things in your own unique way. You do not talk exactly like anyone else, right? Why should you write like everyone else?”

From where I stand, Voice is what Donald Maas describes and then some. For me, as well as content, it also includes word choices, good grammar, and the way a writer constructs his sentences and how he or she doesn’t get stuck inside one style or way of handling a subject. To achieve a special voice, developing good grammatical sense is a must. If the writing lacks acceptable grammar and word choices, it will confuse the readers as to their understanding of the writer’s style and voice.

Then I thought of another point. Don't people change? Didn't I change? For the younger ones of us, I bet you'll change and greatly, over the years. The way I have changed surprises even me. So why shouldn't my writer's voice change as well? This is a good point, but to change something, we have to establish it first, don't we!

For that end, another helpful advice in the blog is, “Figure out who you are.” This is so true, and figuring out who we are will be possible through keeping diaries and blogs, which most of us in Blog City are doing anyhow.

I believe the best practice for developing Voice is free writing and writing as much as we can, so we can gain fluency, which will enable us to develop our own unique writer’s voice.