In a new post, Mary Carroll Moore talks about developing your writer’s voice. “I believe each of us has a unique writing voice, dormant inside,” she writes. “It’s been smothered and silenced by schooling and years of criticism and self-doubt. But if you believe you have a voice, waiting to come forth, and you are willing to put in your time to uncover it and develop it, you’ll win.”
One way Moore defines her voice is by the elements she refuses to drop from her writing. When an MFA advisor tried to get her to reduce the amount of lyrical imagery and description in her stories, Moore’s writing suffered. “Which told me that yes, this is one aspect of my writing voice,” she says. “Sometimes it’s easiest to find your writing voice if you look carefully at your life–how you are, your values, your way of presenting your truth to the world off the page. That’s why my lyricism made sense to me; I lived it in my writing and in my painting.”
Moore encourages writers to cultivate their core qualities as a method for developing voice. She offers a few concrete steps you can try:
- Read. “Like learning any skill, it’s best to study those who are better writers than you, who strong voice in their work,” Moore writes.
- Model. Like artists, writers can copy the masters to create muscle memory. “Modeling is a great technique for learning rhythm and voice,” Moore says. “Why is a certain word used, why a paragraph break just there? Find a passage in a work you love and type it out (labeling it as the author’s, not yours). See what your hand and eye and brain learn.”
- Study structure. “Voice and most writing skills are built on solid understanding of structure, how a piece is built from the ground up,” Moore writes. Read your work aloud. Notice where you use white space. “This teaches about voice, when it’s present–clear uniqueness and surprise–and when it’s not,” Moore explains.
- Put in your 10,000 hours. Experts say that mastering a skill takes about 10,000 hours. “Have you put in your time?” Moore asks.
