You may have heard the term “writing voice” and wondered what it is and how to find it. Good news: You don’t have to go looking for your writing voice. It’s already in you.
Your writing voice can be heard in the way you talk, think, and tell stories. It’s uniquely yours. You don’t have to change how you communicate to find your writing voice. You just have to write like you.
What Is a Writing Voice?
Your writing voice is the voice that comes through as you put words on paper, just as if you were speaking out loud. It’s the unique way you express yourself in words.
Your writing voice is the rhythm of how you speak when telling a story. It’s your personality shining through your conversations. It’s word choices that reflect what’s important to you.
Your writing voice is you, on paper, eager to share your experiences with your reader in the way only you can express.
The Best Books Sound Just Like Their Author
New writers often think they have to take on a writing persona when they put words on paper. They try to “sound like a writer.” They might try to write like their high school English teacher or model their writing after a famous author. But then they’d be writing in the voice of those other people, not in their own voice.
If you think about the variety of books you love, you can see how each author’s voice is different. There isn’t one specific way to “sound like a writer.” None of those authors sounds the same, but their stories are all wonderful. Why? Because they write in the voice that’s uniquely theirs, as they share the story that’s close to their heart. That’s exactly why you love those books.
Let the books you love encourage you to tell your story your way, in your unique voice.
Trusting Your Voice
New writers often struggle to trust their voice. They’re afraid to get it wrong or not be good enough. They might have been taught in school to write a certain way and are unsure of how to write freely. Their voice gets muted beneath their doubts and insecurities.
When doubt and fear are allowed to trample a writer’s voice, sentences come out stiff. Word choice is awkward. The story sounds dry. Why? Because the writer isn’t telling the story in their own unique voice—a voice filled with life, passion, wisdom, care, a voice that reflects their unique personality and desire to connect with the reader.
Yet even in those awkward and insecure first drafts, new writers can see glimpses of their own voice.
How to Recognize Your Unique Writer’s Voice
Let’s look at some helpful ways to listen for and recognize the voice that’s already in you.
Pay attention to how you share stories with friends. With their permission, you might even record yourself telling them a story that’s on your heart. Then listen to it, so you can hear what makes your storytelling voice unique.
Ask your friends to tell you what your conversational voice is like. What are some qualities that stand out about the way you express yourself? What makes your voice unique to them?
Look over your journals, emails, and texts to see how you phrase ideas. Look for the natural ways you communicate.
Try this Little Writing Exercise
To practice writing in your own voice, try writing a story to a friend. It can be any story, just something interesting that happened to you in recent days. Don’t worry about grammar and structure. Just tell the story from your heart, exactly the way you would say it to a friend. That’s your unique writing voice.
Sometimes we are extra informal when talking to our friends, and we use abbreviated sentences and shared terms that a reader might not understand.
So, to take this exercise one more step, after you’ve written to a friend, go back and tweak that letter as if it’s being sent to a neighbor you’re not quite as familiar with. Keep the same conversational tone, filled with your unique personality. But tweak it just enough so a neighbor could follow along.
That exercise will help you recognize your authentic voice and express it in a way that will connect with any reader.
Growing Comfortable Writing in Your Voice
If you’re new to writing, it may feel uncomfortable at first, writing in your genuine voice. Writing conversationally seems too good to be true. But writing is a conversation—it’s a conversation between you and the reader. Again, think of the books you love. You feel like the author has invited you into the story.
When you start writing in your own voice, it might feel too casual at first, like you’d be afraid to show it to your English teacher. Often, we’re taught in a formal way to learn the nature of written communication. But then we get to break out of that mold and find our unique ways of expression. Your English teacher would be thrilled to see you’re writing in your unique voice.
Keep writing, keep practicing in your voice. Be careful not to overedit yourself and erase your own voice. The best compliment I ever received as a book editor was when good friends of the author told her, “Your book sounds just like you talk.” Let your writing sound like you.
Try reading your writing out loud—record it too—to hear if it sounds like your voice. Ask trusted friends to read it. Do they think it sounds like you? If so, ask them to show you sentences or sections where it sounds most like the way you talk. That’ll help you recognize your authentic voice.
If they think certain places don’t sound like you, why not? Their gentle suggestions are not a criticism, but they are a way to help you see where you’ve muted your voice. Maybe you’ll even recognize why your voice is subdued in those places. That’s how you grow as a writer.
Trust your voice. You don’t have to look for it anywhere else. It’s already in you. You just have to use it. Every step you take—writing in your unique voice—is leading you further along in this amazing journey of writing.
Janet Eriksson 