“Find your own voice!” This piece of advice, often given to budding writers, has almost taken on the tone of a command, given how frequently its importance is stressed in writing courses and books. Last summer, I found myself repeating the same line to students in my creative writing class at the Maastricht University Summer School.
I stressed how finding your own voice is both the most important and the most difficult task for a writer. The students nodded seriously, as if what I said made perfect sense. Like me, they’d probably heard this near-mantra multiple times before.
I’ve been teaching creative writing for quite a few years, but this was the first time I taught such an intensive course. As it progressed, I became increasingly bothered by how slippery the idea of voice is.
Authors, writing experts, publishers, and critics rarely define what they mean when they talk about literary voice. And I, too, had been using the term as a catchphrase, without seriously looking into it.
It seemed so obvious that a writer needs to find their own literary voice. But what was I actually telling my students when I asked them to find theirs?
Even though I reassured them that it took time and effort, that it had taken me years, and they wouldn’t be expected to discover it in just a few weeks, the idea seemed to confuse and overwhelm them.
What, after all, makes a voice distinct? And more importantly, how helpful is the advice to find your voice for developing one’s craft, and ultimately, finding a voice of one’s own?
Voice in literary theory
Hoping to find answers to these questions and to offer my students more practical guidance in the future, I spent my summer break after the course exploring literary theory to gain a better understanding of the concept of voice.
It turned out that the term is indeed widely used in literary studies, mostly to refer to the narrator’s voice. The narrator may be clearly distinct from the author, as in stories told by fictional characters.
However, the narrator can also appear closely connected to the real-life author, especially in autobiographical novels narrated by someone who closely resembles the author. There is an ongoing debate about the exact relationship between author and narrator.
Some argue that the narrator is an artistic construct by default and, as a result, should be viewed as separate from the real-life author, also in autobiographical writing. Others contend that even character-based narrators are split-off versions of the author.
Regardless, most theorists agree that stories “project a narrative voice, some more distinct, some less, some to a greater, some to a lesser degree.” (Jahn, 2021, p. 6).
In his handbook on narrative theory, Manfred Jahn (2021) explains this idea of narrative voice through the example of J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye (1951), showing that the projected narrator’s voice is distinctively the voice of a teenage boy.
This voice becomes apparent through what the narrator chooses to tell us and how he tells it in terms of vocabulary, phrasing, and emotional expression.
This more specific understanding of voice gives us concrete tools to develop the right voices for the stories we want to tell. It involves deciding whose voice or perspective will be foregrounded.
Will the story be told by one or more characters? Would an external narrator work better? What kind of person is the chosen narrator? How do they think? How do they speak? Is their voice overtly or more subtly present, as is often the case with a third-person-close narrator?
These are questions about point of view, narration, and discourse, which indeed shape the tone and mood of a story; aspects of writing one can consciously work on.
Still, this theoretical understanding of voice doesn’t fully capture the meaning behind the phrase “find your voice”, which is rather used to refer to what sets one author apart from others, to those aspects of writing that allow us to instantly recognise an Ian McEwan novel as uniquely his, or Sally Rooney’s writing as unmistakably Rooney-ish.
What these qualities are, has however often remained unspecified.
Literary voice in everyday use
In everyday use, the term voice is often linked to the idea of being true to yourself, of writing in a way that is both authentic and unique.
This not only involves telling stories that you feel compelled and uniquely positioned to narrate in terms of content but also doing so in a way that is true to you in terms of form and style.
That’s quite an overwhelming message to take in, especially if you are at the very beginning of your career as a writer.
Looking back on my own early days as a writer, I’m grateful no one told me I needed to find my voice. It might have filled me with self-doubt and stifled me, while now I could enjoy playing with language and stories, letting both my imagination and language run wild.
In hindsight, it is through that play and experimentation, as well as through reading a lot, but also because of age and experience, that I finally figured out what stories I wanted to tell and how I’d like to tell them. I thus developed a voice of my own.
This does, however, not mean that my voice is now fixed forever. Although I do not expect it to change drastically, since I am unlikely to change drastically myself, I continue to gain new experiences and learn more about writing every day.
This will inevitably impact my writing and my voice. I suspect that for many writers, their voice isn’t a finished thing, but rather an ongoing work in progress.
To conclude
So perhaps a more grounded and ultimately more fruitful way to think about how to write authentically is to ask ourselves why we write, which stories we’d like to tell, and what we hope readers will feel or think when engaging with our work.
Moreover, rather than seeking definite answers to these questions, we should remain open to the possibility of changes to our voice, albeit minor, and thus revisit these questions from time to time.
That’s at least what I intend to do from now on, and it’s also what I’ll be encouraging my students to do instead of simply telling them to find their voice.
Further thoughts and tips on how to develop your voice
- Think about why you want to write and what kinds of stories you want to tell
What subjects are important to you? Are there stories you are particularly well-positioned to tell, given your identity, background, knowledge, or experience? What emotions or thoughts do you want to evoke in your readers?
These aren’t easy questions, and answering them takes time, perhaps even years. Your answers might also change over time. That’s perfectly okay. - Finding your voice in terms of a signature style takes time
It helps to read widely and write regularly, to experiment and play. Practice using formal and informal discourse, short and long sentences, first-person and third-person perspectives, inner monologue and external description, etc. In doing so, notice which ways of writing feel right and resonate with you. - Your style may shift depending on the story and that’s ok
Different stories might require different approaches, also in terms of style. Let the story guide your choices. Don’t think you have to stick to one way of writing. Over time, certain aspects of your writing, which will turn out to be typical for you, will find their way into all your stories.
