Discovering Your Voice
While there's no easy trick to finding your voice, here are a couple of exercises that can help you begin to recognize and develop it.
I remember when I first started writing, I was very concerned about voice and didn’t really understand what it was.
I think of voice as the special thing only you can bring to your own writing. It's connected to tone, style, word choice, and sentence structure.
Voice is what you say and how you say it—in your narration, in your dialogue, in your descriptions, and phrasing.
When you first start writing, it's common to imitate the voice of another writer while you're on the journey of figuring out who you are as a writer.
While there's no easy trick to finding your voice, there are a couple of exercises that can help you begin to recognize and develop it:
Free writing can help bring your voice to the forefront because you will be less critical and self-conscious with this type of writing. Every morning set aside between 10 and 30 minutes and just write without purpose. See who and what emerges on the page. You'll be surprised.
Recording yourself is another way to capture your own voice. Try explaining something to someone. It can be as simple as how to brush your teeth. Or recording yourself telling a favourite family story. Then transcribe these recordings to see if you can hear your particular way of speaking.
Writing monologues can draw out voice because voice is a central element of the form.
Writing Prompt
List five topics you feel strongly about.
List five settings where your story can take place such as a barber shop, doctor's office, elementary school, etc.
List five people who could be characters in your story. Hey, your characters don't have to be people. Think of an armchair monologuing to a coffee table. What would it say?
Then pick one topic, one setting, and two characters and write a monologue in which one character passionately tries to convince another character to have the same position as them on this topic. Have them use an anecdote or story to illustrate their point.
If you're up for it, write a monologue from the other person's point of view in which they have the opposite opinion and are trying to convince your first character to see the topic their way using their own anecdote.
Structure, goals, and conflict are embedded in this prompt.
Because your first character wants to convince the second character of something, there is a goal. Because it's something the character feels passionately about there are some stakes attached that will bleed into the monologues.
The conflict is the result of the differing of opinions and opposing wants.
The story will resolve itself with the characters succeeding or failing in their goals.
For Inspiration
Five Short Stories from The Teeth of Comb by Osama Alomar, The Paris Review
"Boy in Hoodie" by Daniel MacIvor, The Rusty Toque
"Space Man" by Kathy Fish, Fictionaut
About Kathryn Mockler
Kathryn Mockler is the author of the story collection Anecdotes (Book*hug Press, 2023), five books of poetry, and several short films and experimental videos.
She co-edited the print anthology Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House Books, 2020) and she runs Send My Love to Anyone, a literary newsletter which was a featured Substack publication in 2023.
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