I remember when I first started writing articles and opinion pieces, back in high school (humpty-something years ago), I would actually brace myself before putting a single word down. I pretty much adopted an alter ego, took on another personality through my writing that would give me the confidence to be assertive, persuasive, authoritative on the page. I felt I had to, otherwise it’d never happen. The words wouldn’t come. The big opinions I wanted to share would shrink back, quaking behind a wall of self-doubt and an unwillingness to put my true self out there.
I hid my own author voice under the assumption that people wouldn’t want to read me. My quirks, my expressions, my way of doing things.
Reading those pieces back to myself, they didn’t sound like me. And the problem with not sounding like yourself on the page comes down to connection. Or lack of connection. A lack of connection not only between you the writer, the conveyor of ideas and thoughts, and your readers, the ones receiving them, but also on a deeper level, between you and your words. That lack of connection creates a disjunct that makes it difficult to feel the person behind the writing and engage with what’s being written. At best it can manifest as boring. At worst it can feel disingenuous.
So, how do we as writers push past the self-doubt, or the assumption we must sound a certain way to be credible, to find ourselves in a place we can write truthfully, from the soul, baring our writing personality to the reading world?
3 ways to find and retain your writer voice
- Embrace the hallmarks of your writing style
Even if you’re new to understanding what author voice is, I feel sure you can identify in your favourite authors’ works the hallmark characteristics of their writing style and use that knowledge to help you spot your own. Do you like to use jokes, plays on words, literary devices like similes and metaphors? Do you tend to have lots of asides in your sentences that carry additional or tangential information or thoughts? Or maybe you like to directly address the reader and ‘break the fourth wall’? Whatever you do, celebrate it, and lean into it. Own it, it’s yours.
- Be your whole self
Some days you might be feeling less jovial, more pensive, a little cheekier, perhaps? Our personality isn’t a fixed schema when we talk in person, so why would our writing persona be fixed as one particular character trait too? You might be known for writing in a playful style, but if you’re not feeling it, there’s no need to fake it. Your reader will know and disengage. As long as the tone and style fit the subject you’re writing about, you can be your whole self on the page, as much as you are in real life. Readers want multifaceted writing personalities, with depth and variety. Don’t be scared to give it to them.
- Go with the flow with punctuation and grammar
I can’t believe I’m saying this (after decades agonising over other people’s grammar and punctuation with my copy editor hat on) but don’t sweat about writing proper like! Getting wrapped up in writing ‘correctly’ risks stunting your flow and causing your natural voice to sound stilted and hollow. Your writer voice will be much more genuine and captivating if you give into it without consciousness of verb and subject agreement or the correct spelling of broccoli. And don’t forget you can tweak and polish up the linguistic hiccups in the second draft.
For more writing tips and tricks, check out our other blogs here.