SciFi Writing Craft III: Finding Your Voice

Sunday September 28, 2014

There is a lot of wonderful information out on the web and in books on how to be a good writer. There are also university courses, workshops, magazines, newsletters, pamphlets, and blogs that will teach you how to be a better writer and how to develop your own style. The frustrating part about most of these sources is that they all seem to say the same thing when it comes to developing your own voice: practice doing things the right way before you develop your writing voice. What the hell is the right way to write, and why is it different from having your own style of writing? Those are the questions I often asked myself when I was exposed to that sort of instruction.

Let’s tease out the real lesson though. Voice, style, and usage are not the same things. I think that a number of instructional sources believe student writers (and really, what writer is not a student?) are incapable of telling the difference between these devices and so simplify them into the same thing. “You’ll understand when you get older.” I believe in you though, so let’s sort this out.

Usage. This is what writing instructors and references do not want you to neglect while you search for your style and voice. Good grammar, correct spelling, and accepted syntax are all elements of usage that need to stay in place for your writing to be considered good - shut up, I like the passive voice. If you use poor grammar, have typos and incorrect spellings all over the place, and use syntax that is difficult to read through, well then dear friends, your writing is no good. Many people struggle with these things and small wonder! If you try writing without a voice then all of the confusing rules in our language make no sense.

Style. This is the flair of your words, or as in my case, the simplicity. I’ve already done a piece about omitting needless words. Your style will benefit from this one technique.

Alright, voice. The point of this post. I understand all of this is long winded, especially when you find out my technique for developing your writing voice, which is pretty darn simple. Your voice is what makes your writing yours. It is the quality in your writing that identifies you as the author. Think to your favorite author. If you were to read some of their work and did not know it was theirs, would you be able to tell it’s them? You might! That’s because excellent writers have a strong voice - you may argue that they have an easily recognized style, and this may certainly be the case as well - but the best writers have a well developed voice.

How do you develop this quality in your writing? Well, what worked for me, and what has dramatically changed the way I write, is using my real voice for my written voice. That’s right! I write the same way I speak, or near enough to it. What you will find if you decide to use this technique is that any tendency to use run-on sentences, weird syntax, or funky grammar will largely disappear. If you can read your writing out loud and have it sound like something you would say, congratulations! Your work is now written in your voice. Now, this can be tailored of course to the needs of what you are writing. This is an informal instructional blog piece, so I’ve got a more conversational tone than if I were writing, say, a university paper, a news article, or even a novel. Think about how you speak in different settings though, and from there adapt that to your writing. Chances are good that your spoken voice, the words that come out of your mouth in different settings, will shine through on a written page in the appropriate contexts.

So that’s it! Either read your work out loud, speak as you’re typing, or develop a good inner monologue while you write to improve your voice in your written words. You’ll find that the desire to develop a personal style after that seems redundant, since the words on the page are YOU - that is unless you choose to write using a deliberately artistic style in order to reinforce the message you are sending, e.g. short bursts of small words to convey a frenetic pace. That will be the subject of another post.

-Addendum-

I don’t really feel like I’m ready to start endorsing products on this blog, but I will make a single exception: if you do not have a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style I would highly recommend buying a copy, or at the very minimum reading it. It’s more of a reference though, and I keep my copy on my desk. 100 pages of dry wit and writing instruction. They made famous the phrase “Omit needless words.”