It’s All in the Voice
“Looking for an author with a unique voice.”
“Interested in clients with a strong, fresh voice.”
Statements like these tormented the snot out of me when I first started writing. Agents and just about everyone who is anyone in the industry speaks of the “writer’s voice” like it is some sacred, special, magical, individualized thing. You know what I discovered? It is.
What is the writer’s voice?
Your voice is more than just your style of writing. It is present in your sentence structure, your diction—in the flow of your writing. Voice is evident in your choice of words, in character development, in your use of punctuation, and in how you write dialogue. A strong, original writer’s voice is as unique as your thumbprint.
Identifying a writer’s voice.
The best way I can explain identifying a writer’s voice is to offer you examples of a few of my favorite authors' voices. Of course, I have to mention Twain, Austen and Hemingway. Read any of their works and you will hear the distinct voice in each of their writings.
In addition, listed below are a few of my favorite authors. Each has a really solid, unique writing voices.
FAULKNER, As I Lay Dying
"I realized that I had been tricked by words older than Anse or love, and that the same word had tricked Anse too, and that my revenge would be that he would never know I was taking revenge. And when Darl was born I asked Anse to promise to take me back to Jefferson when I died, because I knew that father had been right, even when he couldn't have known he was right anymore than I could have known I was wrong."
CHARLAINE HARRIS, Definitely Dead
I was draped over the arm of one of the most beautiful men I'd ever seen, and he was staring into my eyes. "Think ... Brad Pitt," I whispered. The dark brown eyes still regarded me with remote interest.
Okay, I was on the wrong track.
I pictured Claude's last lover, a bouncer at a strip joint.
"Think about Charles Bronson," I suggested. "Or, um, Edward James Olmos." I was rewarded by the beginnings of a hot glow in those long-lashed eyes.
In a jiffy, you would've thought Claude was going to hike up my long rustling skirt and yank down my low-cut push-up bodice and ravish me until I begged for mercy. Unfortunately for me - and all the other women of Louisiana - Claude batted for another team. Bosomy and blond was not Claude's ideal; tough, rough, and brooding, with maybe a little whisker stubble, was what lit his fire.
JOHN GREEN, Paper Towns
The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightning, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. Bit if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us. I could have seen it in rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the queen of England or survived months at sea. But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.
SUZANNE COLLINS, The Hunger Games
Scrawny kitten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas. The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed. But Prim begged so hard, cried even, I had to let him stay. It turned out okay. My mother got rid of the vermin and he’s a born mouser. Even catches the occasional rat. Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.
Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.
Can you hear it? More than just a cadence or a technique or some dialogue. It is in the flow of the writing. It beckons you. Pulls you in. Lets you feel the writer’s personality through his or her words. It is more than just a style. The writer’s voice is the soul of their novel. It is an extension of themselves.
Finding your voice.
There is no easy fix-all answer to the question of finding your voice. Obviously, the more you write, the more confidence you develop and the more likely you are to recognize your own writer’s voice.
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