Develop Your Own Style of Writing

 

Today's quote is attributed to Susana Kearsley, a Canadian author of Historical Fiction and Romance. I beleive her experience as a published author leads us to put some thought into what she's telling writers. It all boils down to two little words--Be yourself. 

Her suggestion that we tell a story, whether it be fiction or personal essay or memoir, as if we were sitting across the table from a friend and relating the story to her. We'd use our conversational voice, not a stilted, formal voice that might not appeal to readers. Tell the stroy as you would to a friend, and you'll draw your readers in quite soon after the opening paragraphs. 

Never try to be another writer. Don't make attempts to write as Hemingay did, or as John Grisham does, or as Louise Penny. Write as the person you are. Write with your own voice, not that of another writer, even though you may admire that person.

Think back to your high school days when you had something exciting to tell your best friend. You called her on your family phone, or you cornered her in the school hallway by your lockers, to inform her of the latest happening. Did you speak in formal language? Of course not. You used contractions, abbreviations, and slang., even sentence fragmaents. The formal language was saved for writing essays or term papers in your English class.

Write like the person you are. If you do, your writing will stand out because it is not formal and stiff but more to the warm and welcoming side. 

Think about this. If you read four books a month (lots of us do!), every one of them has a different voice telling you the story. The four authors are individuals which makes what they write different from the other writers. 

Develop your own voice, which can also be termed 'writing style.' Your aim is to have a reader think, or say, "I like the way she/he writes.' Be your own writer, one who offers what she/he has to her/his readers in their own style.

Tell the story with enthusiasm and excitement. If you do, your reader will feel that, too. 

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection
or reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×

A Writer's Voice

 

Our poster today is one I've liked for a long time. The soft pastels the artist used are pleasing to the eye, and the quote makes me nod my head and smile. "Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."

I think it is much the same with another group of artists--writers. We also dip our metaphorical brush into our soul, and the words that emerge are from deep within us. Those words we write become our 'voice.' 

Every beginning writer is perplexed when the term 'a writer's voice' is used. Huh? What do they mean? 

The writer's voice is your style of writing, your way with words. It is unique to you. It should not be exactly like any other writer's voice. They have their own, and you have one all your own. A reader cannot see your hand gestures or facial expressions. All he has to know you by is your writing voice.

At least, you should have your own voice. A common mistake that new writers make is to write 'just like.____" writes. Big, bad mistake. You don't want to be a derivative of someone who is a roaring success, even though you may greatly admire them. What you should strive for is to be yourself. Be yourself from the first step on through your writing journey. 

Are you crazy about the way John Grisham writes? Do you want to emulate the writing style of Barbara Taylor Bradford? Go ahead and be crazy about Grisham's style. Like Bradford's way of writing a novel, but do not copy them. They have established their own voice, and they want to keep it. 

It's up to you to come up with a voice that is all your own. Will it happen right away? Probably not. You will need to dip into writing over and over before your own voice becomes visible. You'll need to stop writing exactly as the reference book tells you. It's quite simple. Write like yourself and keep your style in all that you write.

Can you come up with your own voice by reading articles about the subject? It certainly can't hurt, and it might help. Use your favorite search engine and the keywords 'voice in writing' and read as few or as many articles as you like. 

Most writers end up developing their own writing voice merely by writing and writing and writing. The more pieces you write, the more of 'you' is going to come through. You'll be 'painting your own nature into your word pictures."

Your Own Writing Style

 

Today's quote says "I think new writers are too worried that it has all been said before. Sure it has, but not by you."  I agree, but I also feel that experienced writers can have the same kind of feeling. 

You come up with a story idea, and before long realize that someone else has already used that idea. According to many experts, there are only seven plots for stories, so, considering that, you are bound to be writing something similar to someone else. Use a search engine to find more about story plots. There are numerous articles addressing this topic and are well worth reading.

Even with a limited number of story plots, no one else will write it exactly as you do. Each one of those plots has variations. If you put each story plot in the middle of a circle, then started drawing lines from it showing where the idea can go, you'd have a great many lines to draw. 

Consider a grandmother in a story. Many times a writer will create a character based on a person they actually know. If you were fortunate enough to grow up with access to two grandmothers, you might take the best traits of each to form the one you are writing about. In the same manner, you could use the things you disliked about either or both and develop your character. Not all grandmothers are the stereotypical soft, kind, and loving person we want them to be. The point is that no one but you will create a character like yours because those other writers didn't have your grandmothers. 

Moving to nonfiction--personal essays allow you a great deal of room to be an individual in what you write. You're writing an essay based on something that happened to you, but your aim is to let readers know what you learned or to illustrate some universal truth. It's all yours.

The way you use words, or your style, is most likely going to be all yours, as well. Your writer's voice belongs to you alone. It shouldn't sound like mine or six other writers. The longer you write, the sooner your voice will be apparent. Don't ever try to write like someone else. Be yourself.

Many writing contests are divided into categories. Quite often, there will be a theme category. It might be the theme of a convention or of a certain year in a conference. If the theme category gets hundreds of entries, they are all going to be like in that the writers are all starting out with the same idea, but each one will veer onto different paths. If the theme is Wilderness Trails, what you write and what others write will be all yours. No two will be exactly alike. 

The worst thing you can do is to copy another writer's style, even if you admire that person a great deal. Be an individual with your own way of writing. Lots of people write on the same topic but they do it in their own way. Even if a topic has been written about over and over, don't shy away from it. Give the readers a different viewpoint--yours.

Writers and Voice

The other day as Ken drove us home from vacation, I was reading an article about writing. I couldn't tell you much about the content except for one small bit that stood out like a star-filled night. The topic was using cliches in writing. The author of the article said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that 'If you use a lot of cliches when you write, you'll never find your own voice.' 

This eye-opening observation made me sit back and reflect a moment, then read it again. I wish I could reference the article, but it popped up on my phone and I passed on by when finished. Even so, I thought about that statement as we rolled by newly planted fields and small towns. 

Writers who overuse cliches (there is room for them in writing if only done very occasionally) are relying on the words of others instead of forming their own words which transform into their writing voice. Every writer needs to find his/her voice. It's not there when you first put words on paper or screen. It's something that a writer develops as she/he moves down the path in their writing journey. 

Susanna Kearsley, a best-selling Canadian historical fiction author, expands on the acquisition of voice in today's quote. She tells us, and rightly so, that we don't want to imitate others. While we all have writers whom we admire, we don't want to sound like them. We must sound like ourself in order to develop our writing voice, something distinctly us.

Ms. Kearsley also mentions that there is no need to attempt perfect sentences. If that is not how you talk, maybe you shouldn't write that way. It's possible that your writing would then come out far too formal, maybe even stilted. I'm not saying to write crummy, ungrammatical sentences. Not at all. Instead, I take her point that I (and you) should write sentences that sound like us, that use our own voice. 

One way to know what your writing voice is would be to equate voice to style. It's the way you write. Each writer should have his/her own voice, something unique to them 

Ms. Kearsley's first point in the poster quote is worth a second look. She advises that we learn to tell a story on paper the same way we might tell it out loud to a friend, perhaps over a cup of coffee. Take a moment to consider how you tell your best friend what happened to you in a terrible storm. Would you write about it in the same way, using the same phrases? Or would you think you needed to make it more formal since you're writing for others to read? If you do, it's possible you could lose something in the translation. 

Give some thought to your own writing voice today. Have you discovered it yet? Still working on it? Or have it working great for you?

When Writers Read

Writers are doubly blessed if they're also readers. I have always urged writers to be voracious readers as well as pursuing writing projects. Each one benefits the other. 

When writers read, they subconsciously are learning more about writing. And, when I read a book, I am sometimes stopped by a particularly nice bit of prose. You know the kind, the poetic phrases that are so visual and appeal to all your senses. I know that I absorb the many ways to use dialogue, the pace of the story, the plot itself, characterization and more. Does it lessen the enjoyment I get out of reading the book? Not at all. As I said, much of the learning is subconscious. 

The mind stores those little lessons and lets them surface when we are writing our own stories. The one thing we don't want to imitate is another writer's style. That is something that is individual and should be. I don't want to sound like you wrote my story, and you don't want to sound like I wrote yours. In that, we must each maintain our unique style or voice. If you have a favorite author, maybe the stories he/she writes is only part of the reason you try to read all the books that person wrote. You may respond positively to the way the books are written. 

The poster above made me smile but it has a certain amount of truth to it. Given a choice of housework or reading a book, I have no doubt which I'd choose. Right now, I'm deep into a WWII novel that has me wanting to put off mundane household tasks and keep reading. The book is Letters to the Lost by Ilona Grey. I remember long ago that I was near the end of a Louis L'amour novel that had me captivated. I stood at the stove stirring pudding with a wooden spoon in my right hand and the book in my right. I don't remember which I finished first--the book or the pudding. I am a serious reader, as you have probably figured out long ago. 

It was reading so many books in my growing up years and beyond that gave me the desire to also be a writer. There is one problem being both writer and reader. My reading time is considerably less than before I started writing. Thus, I treasure my reading moments. I am a fast reader and that's probably a good thing since I try to squeeze both writing and reading into my life. Housework gets done but I don't devote any more time to it than is absolutely necessary. 

One negative aspect of a writer also being an avid reader is that I also mentally edit or critique as I read. We aren't always going to find everything 100% positive when we read someone else's work. I note poor word choices, awkward sentences, incorrect capitalization or punctuation and just plain boring sections. Can't help it. I do it all the time but, if the story is good, I can get past the mechanical problems. Am I going to write the author a letter and point out all the things I found that bothered me? Of course not. But once again, I may file them away in my subconscious and try not to repeat same in my own writing. Of course, I will not succeed all of the time but even if I do so some of the time, it's a benefit. 

How about you? Do you think about the writing part of a novel when you read it or do you just simply enjoy the story and forget the rest? I'd love to know how other writers read. 

Finding Your Writer's Voice

Are you confused about the meaning of using your writer's voice? You're not alone. I remember the first time I head the term. It was the early days of my writing world. I'd met a children's book writer just by chance. She agreed to do some back and forth critiquing and before long, she became my mentor. I respect and admire her to this very day. Barb and I were sitting at my kitchen table one afternoon. She had critted a story of mine and was explaining some of her remarks. At one point, she said, There's no doubt that you've found your voice. It comes through clearly in all that you write.

I knew it was a compliment but I really did not understand what she was telling me. I was glad I had it, but the bigger question for me was what was it?I didn't want to admit my ignorance by asking her to define the term. Little by little, I figured it out through reading books on the craft of writing, listening to others at my critique groups and using the brain God gave me. Voice in writing is an abstract and I tend to deal much better with concretes so it did take me awhile. 

A writer's voice is his/her style of writing. It's what is unique to your own writing. It's the way you put words together to form sentences and thoughts. It comes from within you. You can't buy it. You can't sew it together. You can't paint it. Your life experiences create some of it. Your personality creates some of it. You create it unconsciously. 

Have you ever heard someone say that they loved the way a certain author writes? They meant that the author's voice spoke volumes to them. Sometimes writers emulate the voice of an author they like especially well. It happens a lot in the beginning stages of your writing life, I think. Oh, I'd love to write like Maeve Binchy is what your subconscious might tell you, or you might even be well aware that you are striving to sound just like this prolific Irish author. But you are not Maeve Binchy. You're you! And it's your voice that you want to come through to the reader. 

Are there ways to find your writing voice? You'll find plenty of articles on the subject if you google. It would be worthwhile to read several of them. Some do more than define it, they give you tips on how to find it. If you've ever been told that you haven't found your voice yet, it's nothing to worry about. If you let it come naturally, it will happen. 

My suggestion is to be yourself when you write. Don't try to be Ernest Hemingway. Don't try to be John Grisham or Barbara Taylor Bradford or Patricia Cornwell. Don't try to be the woman who teaches a writing course you're taking. Don't try to be the one who leads your critique group. Let your own personality and experiences shine through your writing and you'll have your voice. Once you've got it, never let it go.