Your Writers Voice is Inside You
Why do you write?
I write to change my world by revising it and giving it a happy
ending. I think most write fiction to create new realities and
new ways of expressing ourselves. It gives us the power to
fix anything we don't like in the real world. We write to
escape, and to escape we must express ourselves in our writers
voices.
Who do you become when you write?
First, you become vulnerable. You must become the characters,
all of them -- even the bad guys. For the characters to be
compelling I believe they must contain some real part of the
writer's personality. You have all the voices inside you waiting
to come out; they only need the right character. Being able to
let them each speak for themselves, individually, is your
writers voice. You literally must pour yourself into your
writing. That isn't as much a cliche as you may have thought.
Have you ever found an old writing of yours, something you'd
written a few years ago, and heard a certain voice that brought
up emotions? It will have a tone of realism that could be
embarrassing or pleasant, depending on the words and topic you
chose, but it's your real writers voice. It is probably
something you wrote on the spur of the moment while in a
particular emotional state. Learn to control it by
becoming each character. To become each character, you
must know them well. Study them, make them individuals by basing
them on someone real.
I've heard some creative writers say they don't worry about the
characters, because they think the story is more important. They
admit throwing card-board characters in as they're needed to get
the story to the finish line. I haven't read their work so I
don't know if they can pull it off or not, but I wonder who
performs the action, how is emotion brought in? I think even if
it's completely narrated, the narrator still needs a strong
voice.
I agree with the statement that the story is important, but the
characters are at least equally important. Good ones can fool
the reader into thinking even a bad story is good. Good, solid
characters with consistently strong voices can sell mediocre
serial books. Readers read to escape. They don't know or care
that the writer was forced to draw on painful memories and cry
buckets of tears to make the characters true-to-life; they just
know if they can identify with them or not. They can't
become that particular character or overcome the
obstacle, without the true writer's voice bringing the character
to life. Bottom line - they won't like your story.
So, to find your writers voice, dig through all the animosity,
fear, anger, cruelty, joy and heartbreak of everyday living,
past, present and perceived. Twist it, exaggerate it, and give
it to your characters to work out. Your readers will love it.