In the first two parts of this series we looked at what voice is and all the different types of voice. In this part, we’re going to dive into the elements of writer’s voice.
As you can imagine, there are tons of things that either make up or inform an author’s voice. Things that we can point at to identify one author from another, to say “they did that here” or “she said this because”…
These are all the crayons in your writer’s toolbox that you will use to express your unique voice.
Some of these things we, as writers, have a lot of control over. Some of them are practically out of our hands. But it’s still helpful to know what all the elements are so you can identify them in your own writing—and in the writing of others.
Let’s get started.
Intended Audience
Depending on the genre and age group you’re writing for, you will express certain things differently.
A romance writer will talk about love and relationships differently than a thriller or a literary novelist. There probably won’t be a lot of swearing or sarcasm in middle grades books. A jaded detective story isn’t likely to use grammatically perfect language.
These are just some examples of how what you’re writing and who you’re writing for can affect the voice of your story.
This is probably the element you have the most control over. When you choose your genre and audience, you’re also making a voice choice.
Tone
Every book can be categorized not only by genre and audience (how they might be labeled in a bookstore or library) but also by tone.
Stories in the same genre and for the same audience can vary widely depending on the overall tone. I write YA mermaid romances. There are several other authors who write that same kind of story. But where theirs might be dark and angsty or melodic and mystical, mine are bright and sparkly.
The words I choose to use in my bright and sparkly mermaid books will vary drastically from those of other tones.
Think of the kinds of books you like to read. Do you like historical romances with more humor or more danger? Are you drawn to YA fantasy books that feel epic and otherworldly or like a gritty version of our world with a twist? Will you pick up a new author because the book looks fun or because you’re hoping it will be the heartfelt, emotional, movie-of-the-week kind or the dirty, gritty, realistic kind of read.
Your personal taste in story will reflect strongly in your writing, especially in regards to tone.
Word Choices
You can tell a lot about an author (or what they are trying to convey) from some of the words they choose to or instinctively use.
- Possibly their age — Would anyone but a Gen Xer say cool beans? How they use the word extra can show if they’re a Millennial or not.
- Where they grew up or places they’ve lived — I say y’all because I’ve lived in Texas. I can’t decide between soda and pop because I’ve lived too many places to choose. Check out one of the dialect quizzes online and see if you have a regional accent. (If you’re geographically generic like me, it will probably say you’re from California.)
- Level of education — My grad school professor with a PhD in architecture from MIT is the only person I have ever known to use the word bureaucratization.
Of course, oftentimes these choices are consciously made by the author, to evoke a tone, inform a character, or speak to a reader, but sometimes… just sometimes, they slip in with little clues about the who behind the words.
Personal Beliefs and Opinions
These play a huge part in author voice.
Take me, for example. You will never read a book of mine that promotes gun use, disparages minorities or members of the LGBTQ+ community, or disregards environmental concerns. Growing up in a theatre household, I have very strong and specific thoughts on the performing arts. Religion has never been part of my life, so it is never part of my books.
Expressing your core beliefs in your writing will mean using specific language, addressing issues in certain ways, and (at times) avoiding some topics, all of which affects your author voice.
Unless you have a very good reason for doing so, violating your core beliefs in your writing will probably come across as inauthentic to your readers.
Note: This doesn’t mean you should be preachy. It just means that your characters—at least the protagonists—should probably act in accordance with your personal philosophy. Because if you don’t like, believe in, and trust your main character, how can you expect a reader to?
Themes
Collective groan.
I always hated talking about themes in high school. It was among the most painful things I ever had to do. (Although, to be fair, pretty much everything I had to do in English/Language Arts was painful in high school.)
But once I understood that a theme is basically an exploration, then I learned how to embrace it in my writing.
I always point to the Harry Potter series as the strongest example of themes in recent literature. The exploration of death, friendship, choices, gray areas, and the absolute power of love are some of the most universal and resonant themes in all of art. This is just one factor in why the series was such a huge success.
The themes you choose to explore, and how you choose to paint them, are a major part of your author voice.
Tropes
A trope, by this definition, is a commonly used plot convention. A kind of common set up in a story.
Spend some time down the rabbit hole at tvtropes.com if you want to read about more tropes than you ever imagined could possibly exist.
We all have favorite tropes and ones that we would rather not read. If you’ve read any of my books, you’ll notice some of my favorite tropes in there. I’m a sucker for the friends-to-lovers and enemies-to-lovers scenarios. I love crushes from afar and relationships of convenience. The only child in me loves a good separated-at-birth tale. And, as a theatre brat who moved frequently growing up, fish out of water stories are my jam.
Those are the kinds of stories I love to read and, therefore, love to write.
I probably wouldn’t write stories where a divorced couple reunites or the boss seduces the secretary, and I don’t enjoy reading them either.
How an author employs and twists a trope, as well as the particular tropes they choose to use, is part of their voice.
Personal Experience
Just like where you’ve lived affects your word choice, it also affects your understanding of a place.
Think about things that you know about your hometown that anyone who hasn’t lived there wouldn’t.
For example, many (most?) people think Las Vegas is The Strip. The Strip is Las Vegas. People who live in Las Vegas must live and work on The Strip. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Locals know that only tourists (and residents with friends or family in town) go to The Strip and there is actually a thriving city of over 2 million people in the valley, most of whom have nothing to do with casinos.
The same goes for sports, activities, or industries that you may have experienced.
- An athlete is going to write about a sporting event differently than someone who’s never played anything more rigorous than a video game.
- A theatre brat is going to understand what happens backstage better than someone who’s only ever been in the audience.
- A doctor with ER experience has a different perspective on a medical emergency than a mom of five who’s been to the urgent care so often they know her name.
All of those experiences combine to give you a unique author perspective that can’t help but affect your voice.
Technical Choices
Make your English teachers proud. Syntax, grammar, punctuation, sentence patterns, point of view, chapter length all contribute to a unique style.
You will (probably) never see me use a colon or a semicolon (because, honestly, I still don’t know how). I will, however, use em dashes so extensively that my copyeditor sobs into her Chicago Manual of Style.
Some authors use a lot of sentence fragments, others none.
Some will split an infinitive, use adverbs generously, and leave out the Oxford comma. Others are sticklers for by-the-book grammar rules.
Again, these technical choices (or oblivion to them) make each and every author voice unique.
So that’s it. That’s the list of the elements that make up a writer’s voice.
It may seem really overwhelming. That’s a pretty long list of things that affect every word on every page in everything you ever write.
The good (and maybe frustrating) news is that these are mostly not things you can (or maybe even should) control. Most of them are innate to who you are and the experiences you have had.
They definitely aren’t things you should be worrying about in a first draft. Maybe, if language is an especially important element to you (see Nancy Pearl’s Four Doors to Reading) or if you’ve received feedback that the voice isn’t strong enough, you might want to revisit this list before you dig in on a revision.
So for now, just know that those are the elements of your author voice.
And rest assured that, YES, you have an author voice (we’re going to talk about that in the next installment in this series) and, YES, you can make it stronger (we’ll get to that one in the fifth and final post).
In case you missed them, check out the first two posts in this series:
Comments