This is one of those topics that I see chewed over a lot in writers’ spaces, and I thought it might be useful to provide some insight into it for you here! There are a lot of different definitions floating around out there, and some are more helpful than others. As someone who has been an editor for over fifteen years now, I’ve come to understand and appreciate author voice in a very intimate way.
Author voice is, at its core, your unique way of putting words together. It is born of the specific life experiences, dialect, identity, and personality you have as an author. While it can seem like this ephemeral thing that you can’t define, it’s pretty easy to see it in action once you know what you’re looking for.
A demonstration of voice
Below, I have an image that I challenged both myself, a friend, and my husband to describe as if we were writing the scene in a novel. I gave no further instruction to the other two people I had participate in this exercise because I wanted them to lean into their voices and showcase how people can see and experience the same thing in unique ways.
The differences between those descriptions? That’s where voice lies. We focused on different things, highlighted different details, and have very different tones.
He knelt amongst the strewn papers, hunched low over the text before him. Tears poured down his skin and dripped onto the page before him, smearing the ink. Wheat-pale hair hung lank over his face, sweaty and unkempt, unnoticed in his distress. At his back, six wings fluttered and rustled, the feather-like pages that comprised them crumpling and making soft noises as they moved against one another, suspended by the force of his magic.
(E. Prybylski)
The boy languishes over the pages he's reading through tear-glazed eyes. It was as if the very words upon the pages were daggers to his heart. Loose sheets of those same pages surround him in a binding circle that encases him in the world the words have created, drawing him in and holding him enthralled until their final punctuations fall. However, from his back, sets of glorious wings sprout and extend. Wings made of paper and print; the very pages his tears soak before him. It was here, in this place, that he knew that even though these pages, these mere printed words, tear at his soul, they also provide him freedom from this life like nothing else can. Within those pages, until the final punctuation falls, his aching soul could fly.
(J. Prybylski)
The pages fluttered to and fro in a cacophony of regret. It was a simple writing assignment. Write a letter to someone you have lost. Nobody spoke about it, but everyone wrote to the same soul, and the soul received every single one of those letters. Each of them wished well, reminiscing, and lamenting the void that was left behind. “I miss you, too. Thank you for letting me see the imprint of my impact.”
(Nathanial Morse)
As you can clearly see, those three passages are all very different and each focused on different elements of the work. None of them are wrong. None of them are “right” either since this was an exercise to explore author voice.
Let’s take a look at the differences between them!
The first of the three was my own. As you can see, I focused on describing the physical setting and character, adding very little embellishment or story to it. I stuck to the image pretty closely and only suggested a very small amount of story by mentioning the character’s magic. I identified them as male in mine, though in truth the figure is of indeterminate gender.
Second was my husband’s. He is wordier than I am (not a bad thing) and dug into what the character might be doing or seeing in that moment. That he was enthralled in the pages, unable to look away, suggesting also that he was trapped in the papers he’s kneeling in. Whether that’s an actual binding or a binding because of the character’s emotional response is unclear. J. also identified the figure as male.
Finally, there was Nathanial’s which took the image and turned it into the emotions and focused more on the poetry of it. It looks at the words on the pages and deeply considers what they might be. What those letters were. Who they were to. It also has a deep sadness and wistfulness to it. Nathanial is far more of a poet at heart, and the emotions of the image pulled at him and drew him to write something exploring the feelings on the page.
The three of us are also of different demographics. I’m not going to dig into the specifics of all the demographics represented in these three segments, but suffice to say there is a lot of diversity represented in that exercise.
So what does that mean?
Okay, so I have three dramatically different descriptions of the same image. So what? What does that have to do with author voice?
Everything.
The reality of the world is that no two people will experience the exact same thing in the exact same way. I can state that with categorical fact because my sisters are identical twins, and they have distinct personalities and grew up with many identical events in life that they experienced very differently. They also reacted to those events differently. The three of us grew up in the same household with the same parents and shared a great many experiences that we have all responded to very differently. We are about as close as anyone can get as far as shared demographic and experience, and my twin siblings are as identical as two people are capable of being. They were born two minutes apart and have been inseparable since then.
And you know what? I can tell when one of them is texting me with the other’s phone.
Each of us has a voice that is entirely our own. When I say author voice is unique, I truly mean it. Nobody on the planet has a voice like yours. Nobody will choose to describe things in the exact same way. This means that every story you tell, every scene you describe, and every word you write will be a culmination of all of these elements that make up you.
Authors worry a lot about writing a story that’s “unique” and fixate on making all the story elements as out there as possible, but the fact that you are writing it is what makes it unique. If I were to have written Twilight, it would have been a very different book even if I used the same story beats.
I’m not saying you should rewrite someone else’s book beat for beat and claim it’s yours. You shouldn’t. That said, you are deeply unlikely to write the same story even if you are writing the “same story.” As exemplified above, we all looked at the same image and had the same instructions. The result? Three dramatically different pieces of writing.
Lastly…
The final thing I want to note is that author voice isn’t about your punctuation so much. That can be an element of it (I’m looking at you E.E. Cummings), but your voice is the unique way you tell stories. Editing rarely damages it unless the editor is hamhanded and crushing you out of your manuscript. I have seen books where that has happened or examples of an editor trying to rewrite things into their own taste, but it’s as not as common as you think.
Refining your voice is going to be a matter of identifying how you tell stories, how you describe things, what words you’d use, what you’d focus on or think about in context of your story. Accept and embrace those unique elements! However, do so with the understanding that improving your writing (things like removing excess to-be verbs, excess adverbs, etc.) doesn’t damage your voice. I’ve seen authors sometimes get wound up on the idea that some of their bad habits are “their voice.” That isn’t the case. Your voice is so much deeper than bad writing habits.
To get poetical about it, your voice comes out of your soul. It is yours and yours alone, and while it will change over time as you experience new things and grow and change as a human, it will always be yours. Your voice is a snapshot of who you are in a current time, and using that voice to tell the stories only you can tell is the power, majesty, and beauty of being a writer.
If you would like a further illustration of voice? Write a description of that above image in my comments here and show me your voice. Let others see it. Explore the differences between all these descriptions and see where you differ from others!
What Is Author Voice?