What Is Writer's Voice and How Do You Find It?
Honestly, "writer's voice" is one of those concepts every publisher and editor talks about, yet rarely defines precisely. Here's a working definition:
Writer's voice = the rhythm of your sentences + your word choices + your particular way of seeing the world + the things you don't write.
How is voice different from style?
Style is largely controllable and imitable: today you can write in short sentences, tomorrow in long ones. But voice can't be imitated. Style is like clothing; voice is like the tone of your voice — the thing we recognize even with our eyes closed.
To illustrate, picture two Persian writers: one with short sentences, bitter humor, and an introspective stance; the other with long, drawn-out sentences, descriptions of rain, and a nostalgic mood. Both may have a "Persian prose style," but they have different "voices."
Where does your voice come from?
- From sensory memory: the five unconsciously absorbed inputs (cinema, the alley, songs, the kitchen).
- From the books of your adolescence: these built the initial texture of your mental prose.
- From your wounds: the thing you keep returning to — without deciding to — is your voice.
Four exercises for developing voice
1) The "picture house" exercise
Write a one-page scene once a week, but each time with one of these constraints: verbs only; nouns only; dialogue only; ambient sound only. Constraints eliminate clichéd follow-ups and draw out your individual voice.
2) Stylistic rewriting
Take a paragraph from a writer you love and rewrite it in "your own voice." An ideal exercise for distinguishing your vision from theirs.
3) The text's phone exercise
Read your text aloud. Wherever the rhythm breaks or you run out of breath, that's where written style has overpowered natural rhythm.
4) Cut decorative adjectives for one week
For one week, remove every decorative adjective (beautiful, very, magnificent, sorrowful) from your text. After this exercise, your word choices will become far more distinct and personal.
What destroys voice?
- Premature editing to please others: it turns your voice into the editor's voice.
- Filling the text with fancy words: market-trend vocabulary drags your voice down into the everyday.
- Turning everything into triads: "beautiful, lovable, and heavenly" — this structure is cold and artificial.
- Dead verbs: clinging to "was" and "had" at the ends of sentences drains the text of life.
The voice you have in mind reveals itself after a thousand pages of writing.
