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Author voice is a concept that is far too often mistaken for other things, so I want to start by defining what voice isn’t. I start there because the majority of times I’ve ever dealt with an issue regarding author voice are situations where an author develops a mistaken idea of what their voice includes. And it’s a very specific thing that keeps coming up.

Author voice isn’t punctuation, adverb use, or over/under-description.

Let me say that again.

Author voice isn’t punctuation, adverb use, or over/under-description.

Why do I focus on that so much? Because I have run across authors over and over again who believe that their author voice is those things to the point where they go out of their way to attempt to create avant garde prose in the poetic style of E.E. Cummings. Or they misuse a particular element of punctuation (or over-use it) and end up crying, “But you’re damaging my voice!” when someone points it out or an editor says it must be fixed.

The good news? That isn’t your voice. Your voice is not so easily altered, damaged, or uprooted. Your author voice permeates every word you write and pours off of every sentence and paragraph you put together. It’s in every idea you have. Short of deleting and rewriting your passages wholesale from the start to the finish, your author voice is not going to change or be damaged.

I recently encountered an author who wrote in the most bizarre “freestyle” manner I’d ever seen. Sentences were… a mess. He didn’t use any punctuation well and what punctuation he did use, he over-used and used improperly. He refused to add paragraph breaks. And he described things in a very surrealistic manner that didn’t make much sense.

When called on these things, he became very upset and offended and claimed it was “art” and we just “didn’t understand him” and how we were criticizing someone wildly successful. Unfortunately, he was sharing this from his author account, so it was simple work to go onto Amazon and find his works and see that they didn’t even have Amazon rankings which means not a single copy had sold. And it’s obvious why.

From Scrubs, S5 E21

My point here isn’t to make fun of someone who is obviously not doing well, but this compulsion to try and break the rules to be “unique” isn’t what creates your voice. Nor is it going to win you favor with readers unless you are one of a very special, very few select individuals who can make it work (and who do so after learning the rules deeply and breaking them in very specific ways).

Okay, so now we’ve gone over what it isn’t. So what is it if it’s not your punctuation or elements of your style? That’s a little harder to define, but it comes down to this: your author voice is the unique way you write that is nearly impossible to emulate. I say “nearly” because there are a few ghostwriters out there who can work that magic, but it’s a very specific skillset and far from common.

Now, I hear you out there, “But E.! You just said it wasn’t my adverbs and descriptions and…” And I stick by that. Your voice isn’t bad writing habits that you are trying to justify by claiming them as your voice. Passive voice isn’t good. Using punctuation incorrectly might be unique to you, but in this case it’s not a good thing. Remember, being unique isn’t always a good thing.

Your voice is a product of your life, your experiences, your dialect, your specific word choice, and how you see the world. It’s the reason why when you ask ten people to describe a sunset, they’ll all describe it a little differently. That is voice. It is the unique word choice you employ and only you employ. It’s not the fact that you described it for an hour straight without stopping, either.

When an editor (or anyone) talks to you about removing things like excess adverbs, adding or removing description that is either too much or not enough, fixing punctuation or pointing out an over-reliance on certain punctuation forms, none of that will damage your voice. In fact, all it does is what a sculptor does: cuts away everything that isn’t an elephant in a block of marble.

I know the temptation is to put up your hackles and hiss when someone suggests your writing isn’t great because it stings. Don’t let that sting result in you rejecting the critique outright and default to the notion that anyone telling you, “Hey, commas don’t work like that,” is somehow attacking you as a human being. Or attacking the core of your voice as a writer.

If you’d like an exercise to help you understand voice, pick a book and look at any scene in it. Take that scene and rewrite it with the events the same, the heart of the dialogue the same, and the basic elements of the setting etc. the same. If they’re in a living room, rewrite it to be in that same living room. Don’t take any particular time to try to be perfect or different, just write. Also, try and write the scene in about the same number of words (within 100) or less.

When you’re finished, go through your piece and clean it up as much as possible. Make the grammar as correct as you know how, don’t use excess adverbs, and so on. Do your best to make it correct. Once you’re finished, compare it to the original and look at the difference between the two.

That? That difference, the way you wrote the sentences, the way you saw the living room and the way you wrote about it? That’s your voice. Try this exercise with several different scenes with different authors and different stories if you want to start understanding how you write and what is uniquely you. But in the end, it’s hard to define in a clear and precise way. Ultimately it’s the thing that will make readers go, “Oh, this was written by ‘author’!” They’ll learn your voice and be able to recognize it.

The nice thing is you don’t actually need to create your voice or spend a lot of time trying to make it special or unique. It already is. You just need to know it and trust that. Have faith in yourself. You don’t need to create something that already exists within you and is already yours.

About the author

E. is a long-time fantasy enthusiast who writes urban fantasy. They knew from a young age that they wanted to be a writer and has worked toward that end with a slow, steady pace their entire life. They have been working as an editor for over a decade while learning the many skills needed to forge their own writing career. Currently, they serve as Insomnia Publishing's creative director.

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