I’ve wondered this, too. Great topic, Chuck.

I’ve had times where my instructors have told me that I’ve got a nice voice and I thought I’m writing for fool’s sake, not reading ! I think it’s one of those things that people say when you’ve created characters and a story that they find new or refreshing (whatever that means) and they haven’t got anything else in their memory bank to compare the style to. I think it’s more about style and word choice than anything else.

I do like the fact that I have a ‘distinct voice’ even though I’ve never been able to find it !

I think it’s like you said: the little fingerprint, the smudge we leave on the page that’s not only constructed of what we say but how we say. Word choice is a big part of that, but so are the little details we continue to use, the character types we prefer, so on and so forth. It all comes together and, when done well, lets the read see the man behind the curtain just enough to really like (or really hate if done poorly) them and trust in the story.

Then again, it is perhaps the most difficult thing to do voice intentionally. I find it’s tied into not only how the author presents the world, but how they see. Take Neal Stephenson. A lot of the time when he gets into super info-dump mode, his voice is one of the few things that saves him for those passages. He has such an engaging, irreverent way of presenting information that you don’t mind it quite as much as you would coming from a less skilled author.

As for my own, it beats me. I’m aware of my little ticks (like characters looking up at ceilings when they think, of character thought tangents that are germane to nothing but the fact they are ADD infested squirrels in first drafts, etc). But voice isn’t something I try to consciously wrestle with. I’m sure it can be done, I’m just not there yet. I have been told, however, that it has a sardonic quality that can go either way for the reader. Some love it, some don’t. But so it goes for all things I suppose.

I know that if you were to stick a paper bag covered book in my hand, and I read it I could instantly pick out that it’s Christopher Moore, or Stephen King, or Carl Hiaasen, but I couldn’t tell you why.

I’ve seen writing advice alongs the lines of “find your voice.” The idea has always baffled me. I mean finding the voice that’s true to you — your default. How can you do something like that on purpose? It’s just an illusion caused by a hundred microscopic and unremarked choices you make during writing. Sentence structure, word choice, how you frame dialogue, where you put in your telling details, the kinds of things you describe in your settings…

How can you cultivate your natural chewing motion? It makes as little sense to me. Overthinking it would just make you bite your tongue.

But for first-person work, I think and worry about voice quite a lot. Scripts, Tweets, blog posts need to be true to the voice of the character. It’s not rare for me to do a first pass for content and then a second go to “voice it up.” (Especially when the character’s voice is hard for me, or needs to be distinctive.)

That said, readers and teachers from the time I was young have told me I have a distinctive voice. Go figure.

@Andrea:

That, yes. It seems strange to “find your voice.”

Now, advice I understand is maybe to… embrace your voice? Or let it come through? I do think authors early on (or even late if they’re not confident) aren’t comfortable with their own style, whatever what style may be. They might stand in the way of their own voice, or try desperately to duplicate someone else’s voice.

– c.

I think trying to find a voice is futile. You just sort of find it once you’re confident as a writer.

By the way, there’s this funny little gadget that does statistical analysis on your writing and tells you what famous writer you write like.

http://iwl.me/

Based on the first few paragraphs of Dennis, it told me I write like David Foster Wallace. Which cheered me up a bit, even if it’s just a computer telling me that.

I think only other people can tell you what your voice is, but I’m not sure it’s something you want to be overly concious of, lest you start trying to purposefully magnify whatever effects others have found enduring. I have some ideas about what makes my voice my voice, but I try not to think about them for just that reason. Your voice is organic — it’s the result of all you’ve read, all you’ve written, all you’ve experienced and partly it’s just you, how you see the world. When you think about it instead of just letting it flow, then it isn’t organic, it’s forced. It becomes your radio-announcer voice, and that ain’t good.

Once again, @Dan dropping science.

So, too, @Wood.

It does seem like a thing that can suffer from the uncertainty principle — the more you study it, the more it changes due to study.

– c.

I make too much of this (as is shown by by publication history, or lack thereof), but to me voice is the most important element of a book. I can forgive almost anything when I read a book if the voice captures me, and don’t really care how good the story is if the voice is bland, or too generic. This is not to say each writer should remain consistent from book to book (though they may, in which case the voice becomes an integral part of their style), but the voice must be compatible with the story being told.

I probably spend more time working on voice when i write than on anything else. Again, this may be why I’m not published, but you work hardest on what you notice most, and what’s most important to you as an individual. For me, it’s voice.

I’m willing to bet my voice is far from as developed as it could (or should?) be. Part of the problem is that about half of the words I’ve written seriously in novel form have been for NaNo, and for the month of November it becomes all about quantity instead of quality. It’s not like I was completely abandoning all sense of making things sound good or right, but it’s not what I’ve been worried about in the first draft. I worried about hitting 50k, and then about not losing momentum.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that tweaking and pushing voice is something that’s going to be a second, or possibly third draft thing, for me. First gets it out, second fixes major errors, third fine tunes and sends me to home plate. Then again, I don’t know for sure– I’ve never gotten that far.

I’ve wondered about the same thing, and come to the same kind of conclusion: I have no fucking clue. I could ponder, I could bullshit, I could emote, but a solid lead? Nope. Starting to hate that bastard Heisenberg.

The fingerprint, the chewing motions — I think you folks are right, pretty much. Trying to dissect your own authorial voice would be like trying to headshrink yourself. There’s really only so much you can do before you’re trying to pin down mercury.