Finding Your Voice
Voice is the distinct personality, style or point of view created by a piece of writing. Writing faithfully to your voice is writing with emotion, with your feelings, passions and dislikes, beliefs, dreams, wishes, fears, and attitudes. The reader wants that connection: she wants to feel what the character feels, to see through his eyes. Only your voice will be able to give her that. Good writing is a conversation with your reader. You sneak into her mind because you want to answer her questions, help her want to continue this conversation. A strong voice uses the reader’s language, uses the phrases the reader recognizes and understands. No jargon. No complex words if a simpler one will suffice. However, sometimes you need to use more words to make an emotional connection. To touch, engage, and feel. Make your words more sensory and emotional. There is also a need for rhythm. Long sentences, shorter sentences, intentional fragments, dialogue, even.
photo by israel palacio
How did I find my voice? Reading and writing. Reading the gothic novels written with extravagant sentences and drama like Wuthering Heights. Reading short stories with short, simple, yet emotionally riveting prose that forced me to infer and imagine more than what was on the page. Writing down lines from poetry, speeches, lyrics, and novels. Writing them down because they made me laugh or cry or just because they were so beautiful.
Here are some ways to access your individual, authentic, engaging voice, essential for all writers but especially crucial when you are submitting an essay or a story or a novel that needs to stand out, to force the reader to read to the last punctuation mark.
1. Think of five adjectives that define your personality. Mine might be kind, direct, funny, and dramatic. With those adjectives in mind, write about one of your favorite activities, and infuse those personality traits into your words.
2. Try on different moods. Everyone writes differently depending on the emotional state they’re in at the time of writing. So, pen down 200 words for each mood you can think of, from happy to mad to wistful to wishful and everything in between. You’ll hit on a mood that’s you, in the moment, and you’ll notice your words suddenly start to flow more easily.
3. Write a letter to yourself. Talk to the person inside and let that person know something important.
Finally, follow these simple guidelines offered by George Orwell:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach