Someone recently asked me to read the first chapter of a novel written by a young man who has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (an autism spectrum disorder). As I read through the pages, I kept thinking about “voice.” This writer was obviously quite talented, had a good grasp of the language, but had a tendency to include the entire back story of each of the characters, both minor and major. I am sure that the attention to minute, and seemingly irrelevant information was due to the writer’s autism, but I had to wonder about how to take out that detail without changing the voice of the writer.
Writer’s voice, according to Wikipedia, is the term used to describe the writing style of an author. Most of the pundits out there maintain that voice is a critical element of writing. But how, exactly do we find our “voice?” And, maybe even more importantly, does our voice change depending on what we are writing?
Some say to write as if you are talking to your family and friends, but is that the voice you want to use when writing a non-fiction, technical article? Voice is not something you can learn from a book, a blog, or a self-help writer’s class. It is not something that you can copy from someone else; but it is something you can find. But, where?
Well, that’s a great question. Our voice, as writers, is within ourselves. Not the self we present to the world through the screens of “this is what is expected of me, or this is how I want to be perceived,” but our real, true selves. OK. So, how do we peel away the external selves to find this inner self?
The voice of the author is what drives the story. The personality, the thoughts, the convictions of the writer will come out in the development of the written work. We all find our voices differently, and we all use them differently. The key here is to not attempt to write the way we think someone else wants us to write, but to write the way we truly feel. Not everyone will agree with our voice, but we can’t please everyone so we need to stop trying.
The young writer I referred to at the beginning of this post has a voice, not one that I would want to emulate, but certainly not one I would want to squash with a red editor’s pencil, either.
How do you find your voice?
