5 tips for finding your writing voice

by Allison Tait | Aug 10, 2023 | Advice for Writers, Writing

One of the best – and most difficult – things to develop as a writer is your own ‘voice’. That X factor that makes your writing inherently, well, yours.

I’ll be visiting schools up and down the coast over the next few weeks, giving talks and presentations, including my very popular Find Your Writing Superpower workshop. (You can read the basic principles here.)

I always tell kids that the greatest writing superpower of all time is your own writing voice.

Write so that people know that the story is yours – even if they haven’t seen the byline (or, in my case, the cover).

Write like you talk, only better.

It sounds straight forward enough, but the reality is that it takes a LOT of courage to bring yourself to the page. Your sense of humour. Your way of thinking about the world. The quirky things you know and love.

Your feelings and emotions.

Fortunately, it’s a writing superpower we can all develop – we just have to dig down into those dark recesses of who we are and be happy to present them on the page for all to read.

Seriously, though, it’s about working your way past all the influences – every writer you’ve ever read and loved – and the obstacles – fear being the biggest one.

These five tips might help.

My top 5 tips for finding your writing voice

Tip #1: Start a journal

Your writing voice is like a shy child, hiding away behind your everyday conversations and communications. To coax them out of the dark recesses, you need to create a comfortable, cosy, quiet place.

For most writers, that’s a journal. Your journal can be a file on your computer or a beautiful notebook with fancy pen. Whatever works best for you to unlock the ability to get your thoughts on the page.

This is not a place to think about a reader. The relationship here is strictly between the writer and the page.

Write what you actually think. Capture snippets of your day. Write down thoughts, ideas, things that turned your head or captured your attention.

For me, as a working journalist at the time, it was a blog that helped me discover the intimacy I needed to tap into my fiction voice. As a professional journalist, I was used to writing – but I was not used to the intimate honesty I needed to bring to the page to make my stories sing.

Blogging gave me that (and I wrote about it here).

Tip #2: Try different things

Often, as writers, we form strong ideas very early about what we should be writing.

Just as often, this is what we love to read – and that’s a great place to start.

But it pays to experiment with different types of writing. You may have a very clear picture of yourself as a writer of literary fiction, but when you sit down to journal, what you’re actually loving is writing funny character studies or strong responses to opinion pieces you’ve read that day.

I was convinced I was going to be a writer of romance novels or commercial women’s fiction – until one day I sat down to write a middle-grade adventure novel and became consumed by it.

Write poetry. Try a screen play. Write short stories, or crime novels, or picture books.

Every time you try something new, you expand your writing muscles – and you’ll hear your voice more strongly.

Tip #3: Trust the writing

I wanted this tip to be ‘get out of your own way’, but I thought I’d best stick to the polite.

Finding your writing voice takes time and patience. Be kind to yourself and trust the process. Every word you write brings you closer to understanding how you write and what you want to write about.

You’ll know when you’re there because the idea will sing to you and, no matter how difficult the writing becomes (and it can be difficult, trust me) you’ll keep showing up to your desk or your notebook to push through.

More about this here.

Tip #4: Show your inner editor the door

I don’t have a study to prove this but, anecdotally, I’m going to say that nobody ever found their writing voice with an editor sitting on their shoulder telling them that the last sentence wasn’t ‘perfect’.

Your journal doesn’t need to be grammatically correct and neither does the first draft of your novel or memoir. That first draft is about you learning what the story is about – even if you’ve planned it down to the last T on a spreadsheet.

Things change.

Stories are like life, messy and complicated. We all begin with the vision of what the story needs to be perfect – and then characters start to make their own plans.

But, unlike life, with stories, we get to finish the first draft and then go back and try to make it match up to the perfect vision.

Bring the shouty voiced editor into the picture at that point and not before.

Tip #5: Don’t show anyone too early

Finding your writing voice is a solo adventure. Yes, feedback is essential at different points along the journey of any manuscript, but if you ask for it too early, you’re in danger of sounding like a choir, rather than the prima donna soloist you need to be.

Going back to the idea of intimacy and trust, trust yourself. At least until you’ve got enough of your story on paper to feel confident you know what you want to say.

Until you can hear yourself thinking in the words on the page.

Then a reader will be able to hear you too.

Are you new here? Welcome to my blog! I’m Allison Tait and you can find out more about me here and more about my online writing courses here.

For full details about Write With Allison Tait, my new online writing community offering Inspiration, Motivation, Information and Connection, go here.