100 Things You Should Know About Writing (Part 1)

16) Developing Voice and Style

If you're a writer who has taken an active interest in landing a publishing deal, you'll know that almost every agent and editor out there has "something with a great voice" in their wish list. 

This, unfortunately has led to some (I daresay most) writers I know (and I know many) to say and do things like: "Oh no. I can't finish this story! I need to find my writerly voice!" 

Yup. They stop working on their works in progress in order to work on anything else in an attempt to solidify this nebulous thing called voice. 

"No," they say. "I'm not submitting. I haven't found my voice yet."

Sound familiar? 

Usually, the same writers will also say things like: "My style hasn't yet been determined." Or worse, when you critique them. "No man, that's just my style. I can't change it any more than I can make the world stop turning." 

Now I'm going to say something that a lot of people won't like, because it's time for me to give some tough love, and for those of you who write fiction and make these utterances to put on your big-writer pants. 

Take a deep breath and re-read this until it sets in:

IF YOU CLING TO YOUR HUNT FOR YOUR OWN WRITERLY VOICE AND STYLE, YOU WON'T FINISH A BOOK. 

Why? Because you're looking for voice and style in the wrong place. 

Think that over for a moment. I'll wait. 

All done? Okay. Let me expand on what I said a little more. 

You know the many writers I know who say things like "I need to find my voice!", usually they find that their voice never tells the story they wanted to. A lot of them, broken and discouraged, give up on writing altogether. The rest of them are still out there chasing after the elusive. 

They might as well be chasing unicorns. Because a single voice and style that fits everything they write does not exist. 

Think about it. Fiction is incredibly varied. Every story is unique. Every character should be unique. Trying to force these unique stories and characters into this incredibly limited mold of your voice and your style is bound to make the story feel wrong. 

So just to clear things up, let me define voice and style in a way that won't result in people giving up on writing because they just couldn't pin them down. 

Style in fiction means the technical elements chosen by the writer in order to tell a specific story in the best way possible. Choices like whether you write past or present tense, with or without a narrator, long or short chapters... Those are all what determines style. And what determines those choices is the following question: What is the best way I can tell this story I'm writing right now? 

Voice is basically the way your point of view character or narrator puts his/her point across to the reader. This brings me to the following two points: 1) Objective narrators, who have no voice of their own (in the sense we're working with), are highly unpopular in the industry. (Which is why they're very rare in modern stories.) 2) Unless you write cardboard cutouts, all of your characters are different from each other. As such, no two separate books you ever write should ever have the exact same voice. 

All this basically comes down to one truth I hope you'll carry away with you when you're done reading this. 

You should be more concerned about how the style fits the story and how the character or voiced narrator sounds, than how you sound, or how much something deviates from your style.