Finding your Writing Voice–Part One

I was pulled out with forceps

left a gash down my left cheek

four months inside a glass cot

but she came faithful 

from Glasgow to Edinbrough

and peered through the glass

I must have felt somebody willing me

  to survive 

she would not pick another baby

                Jackie Kay, the Adoption Papers 

The voice you speak with is unique and can be used to identify you, rather like fingerprints. The voice you write with should also be unique so that your readers will recognise it and grow to love it. A good  personal voice helps seduce your reader. It allows them to feel a certain familiarity that brings them back to a particular writer time and time again.

Some people say that ‘voice’ on the page can be defined as ‘the author writing as they would converse’. I think a better definition is that ‘voice’ is ‘the author writing as they would think’.  When a writer pours their mind…their thoughts…onto their page, the voice sings out – driven by something that not even the writer fully understands. 

Your writing ‘voice’ is as valid as anyone’s, so long it has sufficient flow to hold a reader’s attention. It does not have to be cultured, or even grammatical...clarity, vision and personality count for a lot more. So, don’t be inhibited by other people’s writing style; you have a great style of your own, which, when left to emerge, is unique to you.

The poet Jackie Kay has written about her earlier life, including Red Dust Road (2010), described in review as a fine antidote to the misery memoir, and The Adoption Papers (1991) She says this of voice: I wrote in three different voices: the birth mother, the adoptive mother, and the daughter. It was interesting when I was writing it, talking about inventing yourself, because the daughter’s voice was, in fact, the most difficult to write. Both the mothers were comparatively easy to find a voice for; the daughter I found more difficult – and this was because she was, in a way, trying to tell the factual story. I realised I found that aspect less imaginative and therefore less easy to create – this was a surprising part of the project.

If you are a writer of fiction, you will also need to find the voice of each of your narrators. This might feel a tall order at first, while you are still developing your own writing voice. In fact, it's imperative that you do find your own voice before anything else. Finding your own writing voice is the foundation stone of all good writing. This blogpost deals with helping you develop your own voice. We will return to look at character voices in Part Two.

Exercise: Find your voice

Take a characterless piece of writing to work with. You can write one of your own, or use this example here:

We reached the stile and looked over it. More fields. My legs were tired. The stile was wooden and you had to climb up then down. There was mud on the other side, and cows. I said, 'Let's go back the way we came.'

Such a faceless account gives you scope to reimagine the scene. We've probably all had an experience fairly like this one. Whether you work with this scene, or one you've created, you start by thinking about the dull, lifeless components (a walk, a view, a conversation, a challenge). Allow these to become images and words inside your mind. In other words you… pour your mind…yourr thoughts…onto the page, and let your voice sing out.

Breaking down your writing and divesting it of any individual voice will enable you to see what happens when you introduce your writing personality from scratch. Spend some time now looking at the the difference between the first, dull draft and the second, infused with your voice.  What do these reveal about the way your mind works?  Is there a certain tone of voice, a detectable style? Did you go for the challenges (for instance, did you focus on getting through the mud, or facing the cows)? Did you concentrate on adding description? Did you focus on dialogue, getting the 'we' chatting?' Was your goal to inspire a reader, make them smile, make them understand, give them reading pleasure? 

Try to analyse the changes you made. 

The reader over your shoulder

Now’s the time to think more deeply about those ‘influential personas’ that continue to speak internally and accompany the writer. (In fact they accompany everyone, but they’re of most use to writers.)

Robert Graves, author of I Claudius, with his researcher, Alan Hodge, took this idea and ran with. At the start of the 2nd WW, they produced a handbook for writers called The Reader Over Your Shoulder. They began with, “…whenever anyone sits down to write he should imagine a crowd of his prospective readers…looking over his shoulder.” They outlined forty-one principles for writing, devoted to clarity, and grace of expression. 

Robert Graves’s desk in his home in Majorca, where he lived from 1929 until his death.

 Photo: © Emily Benet

Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian philosopher and literary theorist, talked about the personas we all internalise as we move from childhood into adulthood – the people we respect, whose own voices remain in our minds. These begin with the authority and love we experience from parents, teachers and older or wiser friends. But they widen as we progress to include other significant influences – your priest, your boss, your financial advisor, a particular politician, even your driving instructor. Their voices may be reassuring, awe-inspiring or heart-warming, but we have these people in our heads and often address our thoughts towards them, creating imagined discourses.

You might feel this phenomenon would get in the way of developing your own voice but, rather than fighting it, allow yourself to address these invisible listeners––or rather, one chosen listener––as you write, as well as think. Using a relevant influence as the reader over your shoulder may encourage aspects of your own voice to grow.

 Exercise: Who is over your shoulder?

Take your time over this exercise and work on it in stages:

First, identify just one influential persona who may have an authoritative significance for you. Try not to go for writers; choose someone who influenced your life in the past. Choose a presence that you feel really comfortable with.

Take some time to create a list of the ways in which this voice has influenced (and maybe still influences) your thoughts. What messages come out of any imagined conversations or discourses with this person? Try to isolate the consequences – practical or emotional – that they have on your life.

You may discover that the original persona has developed into someone slightly different over the years they’ve been inside your head, to become a semi-imaginary figure.

Write a series of imaginative sketches that involves discussions between you and this other person. If you like, you can give both of you new names to shift the perspective slightly away from yourself. Imagine both of you taking a walk where you 

comfortably chat (if you like, think of the Socratic dialogues).

In your sketches, allow yourself to gain the upper hand in any disagreements. After all, it’s your writing. Even if this persona is actually your old professor, you’re allowed to win the argument!

Let two voices emerge – yours and the voice of the person who will be 'reading over your shoulder'. Read through your work, analysing the two voices and pondering on your own writer’s voice.

Rework the sketches as much as you like, to enhance the discussions or put new points across, to add some action, description or introspection. Feel free to repeat the exercise, especially if you find it helps reinforce your own emerging voice.

Keep practising! Develop your voice through the two exercises above and by writing copiously in the voice that is emerging. Part Two will be with you in a couple of weeks.