In a post on Resilient Writers, Rhonda Douglas offers tips for finding your voice as a writer. “The quick answer here? You don’t need to do anything special to find it; it’s already there,” she says. “I believe that a writer’s voice just emerges, and it emerges more quickly and clearly the more you write.”
Your voice will emerge with your body of work, in the way you use language, the themes you return to, and the imagery you rely on. “Whether you know it or not, you have a particular way of seeing the world,” Douglas writes. “If you’re struggling to see or articulate what makes up your own writers’ voice, it can become tied up with more essential struggles with self-doubt. The trick really is in relaxing into what comes, rather than trying to force something.”
Douglas also offers some technical advice and exercises for developing a writing language that works for you. She suggests choosing a book you love and copying out several paragraphs of the writing, by hand. Then, read the text out loud. Ask these questions as you study the language:
- Does the author use short sentences, longer sentences, a mix of both?
- What choices is she making at the level of the sentence or the line to carry the reader forward?
- Are there a lot of descriptive words (adverbs and adjectives) or is the writing spare and pared down?
- Do you notice anything interesting about how she uses punctuation? What feelings does this generate in you as a reader?
- Does the author frequently use metaphor or compelling imagery to generate a particular experience in the reader?
- Based on the writing alone in these two-three paragraphs, how do you think this author feel about her characters? Warm or detached? Hopeful or disinterested?
Next, Douglas suggests taking a few paragraphs of your own writing and rewriting them as if you were the author whose work you copied out and studied. Use similar rhythms, word choices, tones, and details. Compare your two selections. How do they match up?
