Sandals with socks? Voice and Style in Writing

Style…sandals with socks versus Angela Kelly headwear.

Voice…the light that catches someone’s eyes, when they open up about themselves.

In this blogpost I want to get to grips with something that often foxes writers. What exactly is the difference between style and voice? 

Perhaps the Cambridge Dictionary can help. Here’s their definition of style… a way of doing something, epecially one that is typical of a person, group of people, place or period. 

Basic style is all about the nuts and bolts of doing a decent writing job. A journal essay, for instance, would be tighter on grammatical accuracy and have a far higher fog index than a standard twist-in-the-tale short story. Science fiction often employs very long paragraphs, while young adult fiction mostly keeps paragraph short.

Voice, on the other hand, is far more subtle. Even the Cambridge Dictionary admits this, with various definitions, including…important quality or opinion,  that someone expresses. Your writing voice is your personality…heart, soul…coming through on the page. 

Here’s Frances Ryan in the Guardian; Sandra’s lost her mum, dad and brother over the years, and with them a place she could go for help. When her mum was here,
 she says, if she was struggling with the bills, she’d know she could ask her mum for money and she wouldn’t have to pay it back. “Though I’d want to,” she adds. Her sister bought her fleece pyjamas for Christmas…

Here’s Jeremy Clarkson in the Sunday Times; Having established that it’s jolly good at mending broken legs and even better at getting mildly political songs to No 1 in the hit parade, the NHS has decided it would like to start designing towns…

Both of these columnists have broadsheet journalistic styles, but their voices are instantly recognisable, which is maybe why the emphasis in recent years has been on cultivating and celebrating voice rather than style. Voice is the overarching spark that editors and agents are desperate to find. Voice is what readers respond to on the first page, long before they’ve been sucked into the plot. Through voice, readers are connecting to a writer’s mind. 

When I read certain authors, their voice is like a song in my head. That is because it feels as if they are speaking to me, straight out of their heart into mine. As a reader, you probably can recognise this phenomenon, that of feeling the ‘song’ of a writer’s voice.

Style can be taught – it has some rules, which echo things such as wearing socks with sandals or how to dress for Ascot’s royal box. On the other hand, personal voice needs no rules whatsoever. It’s the lines on a writer’s face, the stories inside them.

It is useful to understand the differences between style and voice. But in the end,

We can choose style, but our voices 
are within us. 

Writers talk about ‘finding’ their voice. often saying that you just have to search for it. Personal voice is gained with writing experience, and no one should expect it to be perfectly present from the beginning. You  can demonstrate a  style by thinking about form and genre, but only you can ‘find’ your own voice.  You can do this using a very simple method...just write! Write about lots of different things and in lots of different styles, straight from the start and all the time.

Writing practise is the only way to become assured about your voice, I think. The more you write – and, as important – the more you think about writing – the clearer your voice will shine through, from your thoughts, from your heart, from your soul.