Ask the editor: 8 tips for finding your voice
Q : I know that agents and editors look for writers who have strong voices, but I’m having trouble finding mine. Any advice?
A : It’s true. Editors, agents, publishers and, above all, readers do respond most to a writer with a great voice.
Voice is what gives writing energy, authenticity, it animates the narrator and characters with a unique personality. It grabs your attention and keeps you turning the page.
I remember the first time I read Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land, and Lenore Skenazy’s Free Range Kids. What knockouts! Visit the links to see my notes on working with each of these writers.
Other writers I’ve worked with didn’t always start with a fully developed voice, but were able to grow and improve greatly.
All good writers have a voice. Most writers have many voices – their narrative voice and the voices of their characters.
Here are some suggestions for finding yours.
Eight tips for finding your voice
1. Start talking
Before putting any of your story on the page, tell it to yourself, then to friends and relatives, deliver it out loud, or make a recording.
2. Listen carefully
Does it sound real? Will people understand what you’re saying?
Don’t be surprised if at first it sounds self-conscious, stiff and stuffy or halting, even incoherent. Many of us tighten up when we try to tell a story, and begin to sound rushed, sloppy, bumbling, or dry, dull, and academic.
If you don’t like what you hear, do it again, until you begin to sound authentic.
3. Be yourself
Few of us are English lords or Russian poets, as much as we may admire them. Your narrative voice must be authentic and comfortable for you, whether you’re from midwest, the American south, or New York City.
Beyond the regional, each of us has our own idiosyncratic accent, cadence, choice of words, and other mannerisms. It’s fascinating to realize how much we sound like our parents, siblings, even peer group models we admire and unconsciously imitate. Listen and study these aspects of your own speech and see which can work and which should be discarded.
4. Use the vernacular
It’s the way people talk. Use contractions. Similarly don’t be afraid to employ the judicious use of slang or discreet profanity.
5. Distinguish between your narrative voice and your characterizations
If you’re using a first person “I” narrative or an omniscient narrator with individual characters talking, it’s crucial to delineate the various voices in your story.
Many first drafts have people who all talk the same (like you!) So start by talking our loud the way you imagine your characters to sound. Listen carefully. Be sure each has a separate, real personality and style, then start writing and do it all over again.
6. Picture your reader
Imagine one or two people leaning toward you while sitting in comfortable chairs or across the table. Hear yourself speaking to them or reading a scene on the page before you.
7. Find voice models
Not in other books but from real life. Listen to the way people around you are speaking and pick out specific characteristics that will work for your voice or one of your character’s.
8. Listen to your favorite authors
Each of us has writers we admire for their unique distinctive voices. Some of mine include Jane Austen, George Elliot, Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Fitzgerald, Phillip Roth, Timothy O’Brien, Junot Diaz.
In each case as you read, notice that you can hear a powerful and distinct voice in the silence of your mind.
New scanning technology, incidentally, shows how reading lights up different parts of our brain, including the visual, olfactory, and aural centers of neurological response. It’s mysterious, but real.
We do listen as we read, simultaneously, and every writer has his or her own special way of – literally — turning us on.
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Please share any techniques you’ve found to develop or improve your voice. And feel free to post questions you may have about this very important aspect of writing.
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:06 pm
I completely agree that writers need to start talking aloud to really understand their voice. My writing improved exponentially once I started performing spoken word poetry - before that point, reading my aloud really sounded awkward.
I think that once I felt confident reading aloud, I found more that I was writing with more confidence.
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:30 pm
To find the voices of my characters I talk with people that are traveling on the same buss as I do. (In Sweden it’s really common for everyone to take the buss) There I find the different voices! I do this because all of my friends, including me, talks the same, so, to find what your locking for: ask strangers!!
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:45 am
I am blessed with 1,500 acres of woods and lakes behind my house. I take long (daily) walks or rides with a mini-cassette recorder and dictate to myself through each of my character’s voice. It didn’t take me long to figure out how to distinguish each individual character and find the proper slang or mannerisms to make them different and unique to the story.
Morgan
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:22 am
Alan, I’ve never had a problem with finding my voice. It’s distinctive. Having said that, I will say that I’ve always done #1. When I’m doing a new story, or working on a problem with the current one, I talk it while driving or walking, or to one of my Great Danes while we walk–they think I’m wonderful. I come from a long line of family oral storytellers, which helps. Talking to others about my story, yes you do feel somewhat self-conscious, but you get over it.
I enjoy your blog.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:21 am
What a great blog to stumble across from Angie GUmbo Writer’s site!
Some people say I have a “unique voice” - well, I think we all do — it’s just until we really write without over thinking it or trying to write like someone else or worrying about the “editor on our shoulder” watching us - when we write what we’d like to read, or what gives us joy…well, all the cliches and etcetera! I “found” my voice by writing and writing and as I wrote and wrote, I became more confident in my own words and how I strung them together and how they were ME and Mine….the clouds cleared, a path was opened — it is quite a beautiful thing.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
This is incredible! I really do appreciate this information.
March 31st, 2009 at 5:51 am
I had the experience recently where a girlfriend read one of my stories, for which I had just received recognition for, aloud. I was expecting a glorifying experience, but got something quite different. My words, carefully chosen as they were, sounded foreign coming from someone else. The reader wasn’t replicating the tempo that was in my head, she didn’t emphasize the passages correctly, my words became something else entirely. It stunned me. I had read aloud to myself before, so was able to fix any false sounding passages, but apparently that is not enough. Now I get my girlfriend to read whole pages for me. I make her a margarita or bowl of brownies, and she’s willing to give me her time. It’s quite the deal for both of us.
April 28th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Hi. Just checking in. I like what you say about not being afraid to write dialogue the way people really speak.
I have also heard a lot of argument about that from other “editors.”
Can you speak to the argument a bit just so we all have a little more perspective on your point.
September 10th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
[…] Be passionate about your genre. The last thing you need to do is pick a ‘popular’ genre that you really could care less about and try to write that genre. Readers can sniff out ignorance and apathy from a mile away. Especially if it’s nonfiction, but most certainly in fiction as well. If science-fiction or paranormal romance or political thrillers aren’t your cup of tea, don’t try to write them because they’re ‘hot’ or selling well. Read Alan Rinzler’s “Finding Your Voice”: http://www.alanrinzler.com/blog/2009/03/22/ask-the-editor-8-tips-for-finding-your-voice/ […]
November 11th, 2009 at 5:55 am
This is great advice, Alan. I’m currently working on my debut novel and I find that listening to music helps me develop the voices of my characters. I never fail to be fascinated by the writing process!
November 14th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Wonderful advice for someone who can’t grasp the voice concept. I’ve always written as if I were talking. Knowing your voice and loving your voice is so very important if you want publishers to love your voice