Writing 101: Voice and Style
There are a lot of things to consider when developing writing skills. In fact, it can get extremely overwhelming. While there are many places to find helpful writing advice, I thought I would distill the parts that have helped me into a handy little guide. I have a strange ND brain that might be able to present this in a way that resonates with other…strange ND brains.
That said, yes–this can be overwhelming. So keep in mind while you read on: the best way to develop writing skill isn’t to read about it, but to write. Remove the idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ from your mind for a while and just explore it like a playground. If things start to stump you, questions come up, or you get to the point where you’re really ready to hone your craft of purpose, then start picking up all the blogs and books.
Voice and Style
Voice and Style are interesting words when talking about writing. Style is a semi-personal word, both vaguely indicating a writer’s personal style and–more importantly–discussing the accepted ‘style’ standard for a specific type of writing. Academic writing has a style, genre romance has a style, literary fiction has a style. One of the best ways to pick this up initially is to read in the genre you want to write. You’ll passively absorb a lot.
As for voice, that’s more author-specific. An author’s voice is the specific feeling and tone, structure and word choice, personality brand that permeates what they write. It’s a disciplined thing, developed over time with a lot of work. But it should also be natural and authentic.
In order to learn either of these though, a new writer needs to start with a few foundational steps and considerations. There are good rules of thumb that work in most types of writing, and those are what I’ll try to communicate here.
In general, these are all with the aim of 1) not confusing the reader and 2) impacting the reader the way you mean to. The idea is to manage these two things while still maintaining your own unique voice. Although try not to actively worry about that last part yet; personal style develops naturally through practice + refining related skills.
Precision
Early writers especially will need to cut out as many words as possible. Think of it as a game: how tiny can you make a sentence before it’s unintelligible? You’ll find as you do this that you’ll develop two basic instincts: that for your core intent and that for evoking confidence through conciseness. Once you understand your core intent, you’re equipped to communicate it to others without confusing the message. You will be able to state it boldly and clearly, and the reader will understand.
Similarly, to evoke confidence you need to be willing to remove some of the bells and whistles that are so often used as a crutch. The frills muddy what you’re really trying to do, and people who see that mask will probably assume you don’t believe what you’re saying. And if you don’t, why should they?
This is a fundamental skill that takes you places in your writing. The practice is critical, but once you get the hang of it, you have to learn another skill: relax. Being as stringent as possible helps with the learning, but style comes in those places between perfect precision and going with the flow. We’ll add a few words here, flourish it up there–our tone and personalities will take extra space on the page, so give it extra space. Drag it back….then relax.
Melody
Once you’re learned brevity, the relaxing space is where you make things sing. The beautiful thing about words is that they not only have meaning and tone, but they also have rhythm. It’s not just in writing songs that you want to play around with the beats, pacing, and sounds. Your ‘voice’ will develop out of the unique way you approach this aspect of writing.
Bad news: this is a fairly personal and subjective aspect of writing, so it’s impossible to put together a comprehensive guide to giving your writing a melody. Good news: the subjectivity allows for there to be very few ‘wrong’ choices. Someone, somewhere, will resonate with what you resonate with. What you don’t want to do is use that as an excuse to be lazy. Take time to practice, write stories or just put random thoughts to words. Read a lot and pay attention to the ways your favorite authors structure sentences. What words do they pick? How do they convey concepts not just with dictionary meaning but with the quality of the sound itself?
When something catches your fancy, read it aloud. When something turns you off, read it aloud. When you’re trying to refine your own work, read it aloud. Sometimes we can hear it all in our heads, but it comes out crystal clear when we get our ears involved.
Power
Powerful prose is not necessarily going to be a single, staccato hit that assails you with profound meaning. What it is is a strong message with all the fat trimmed off. Whether it’s a single line or a whole chapter, you’re going to use your vocabulary to cut out extraneous words without losing meaning and you’re going to arrange the information and action to suit your needs.
Get curious about words. Vocabulary is language, and language is only learned through practice. When you hear or see a word you don’t know, take the time to look it up. Say it out loud, use it in a sentence. I get excited when I find new ones to learn, always dragging them into my writing toolbox like a gremlin secreting away a stolen treasure. Cool word? That’s mine now. After a while, you’ll get more and more comfortable with an expanded arsenal of lexiconical genius!
Meanwhile, you need to keep your goals in mind when structuring information. With any given scene, you’re trying to convey critical information about the story as well as an emotional tone. What order do you give the events (usually it’s chronological in prose, although there are times when obfuscating is powerful)? Whose perspective? Which aspects are going to be highlighted and which can fall into the background or even just be implied?
Prose needs to persuade just as much as an academic paper. You’re convincing people to buy into the reality you’ve presented. Create a foundation, build to your conclusion, and deliver a powerful wrap-up.
Honesty
Remember what I said about believing what you’re saying? This is that, but deeper. Like any art, the best writing comes from a place that is raw and emotionally honest. If you get it right, you can drag people into an experience of something new and powerful, something that will stick in their head, maybe even change them in some way. But none of that is going to happen if you write at a surface level.
Does this mean only painful, gritty stuff is ‘great’ writing? Hell no. We have a lot of raw, real happy emotions, too. You can make an uplifting story just as affecting as a tragedy. Just tap into something real while you write it. The opposite of honest writing isn’t lying. It’s hiding. Unfortunately, a lot of us are just as likely to have learned to hide the good as we did to hide the bad. Do internal work, figure out what you’re trying to access, and really dig into it. Get into the real and the ugly and the primal in yourself and put that on the page.
Grammar
This is probably a no-brainer, but I have to say it anyway. Understand the rules of grammar in your language and in your field. This is looser in fiction and prose than it is in academic, government, or business spaces, but there are still rules. Also, if you’re going to choose to break them, you need to do that on purpose. That means knowing your stuff.
I’m not going to go over…almost any of them here. I’m not equipped to give a textbook level grammatical breakdown of the English language, so I suggest actual textbooks, reading, and specific question-answer sessions with myself or other knowledgeable people.
A few things to pay attention to in fiction, however:
Punctuation
Sentence and paragraph structure
Vocabulary
Dialogue and dialogue tags
Paragraph and chapter breaks
An aside….
I hate a run-on sentence. Unless it’s meant to convey a moment of panic and overprocessing of a character, I will burn it. I’ll slice it apart. Run-on sentences are usually unfocused and very difficult to follow; I often get to the end of one having no idea what I just read. As a personal plea: please put periods and commas in your writing.
Final Thoughts
These are basic skills to strengthen writing fundamentals. Honestly, each could have–and do have–whole books written about them. For now, though, just keep this in mind as you go. The most study you should make starting out, I believe, is mastery of the language itself: grammar, punctuation, vocabulary. Editors are amazing and critically helpful to authors, but they’re also expensive. And they get more expensive the messier the writing is, so…learn. For your sake.
Finally, keep in mind what I said: If you’re going to break a rule, you should know it in the first place. For every ‘rule’ you learn about writing, there are several effective ways to break them. Rambling and unfocused language in dialogue or prose to convey confusion. Jarring cadence to create discomfort. As you learn, be open to these opportunities as well.