Finding Your Author Voice

Especially in YA, there's a lot of talk about writing a good character voice. And it's incredibly important to do that. There's another type of voice that's important, though-- your own voice as an author.

To me, your author voice is a combination of several things. It takes in everything from your sentence-level writing (do you write long, flowing sentences, or short punchy ones; is your writing clear-cut and straightforward, or more descriptive and literary?), to how you structure chapters and the story as a whole (short and cinematic like Dan Brown, or long and complex like Robert Jordan?), to the type of stories you focus on (funny and light, or deep and dark?).

Obviously these things can change from book to book, but in general, each of us tends to develop a certain "style" as we write. It's something that helps readers identify with us from book to book-- it's why we love certain authors even when they write a different book.

It can take lots of practice to find your own author voice. It takes experimenting with different styles and stories, and reading different types of styles and stories, and examining your writing to find the strengths you want to emphasize.

It took me years. I wrote short stories and novellas all through high school, and they covered everything from a murder-mystery, ghost stories, alien abductions, fun contemporary love stories, apocalyptic adventures...lots of different types of stories with lots of different types of writing. It wasn't until freshman year of college that I found the most important parts of my author voice.

For my creative writing class, I wrote story after story with grandiose literary language and melodramatic plots. Then I had a new idea. And it was creepy. And I was afraid to write it. But it was COOL. So I wrote a short story about a sociopath who signed up to watch a prison execution, and ended up escalating into a serial killer. It was from the killer's point of view, and I was terrified to show it to anyone. They'd all think I was horrible for writing such a story, especially my teacher at the conservative, religious college I attended.

However, my teacher gave me the highest score and most positive comments on that story of any I'd written that year. My dad, who read all my stuff, told me that it was the best thing I'd ever written (granted, yes, he's biased). But I learned something about myself. I wrote better when I wrote short and to the point. I wrote better when I wrote about difficult concepts-- addressing the complexities of complex situations that don't always have happy endings.

That "aha" moment changed my writing as I focused on my strengths. It helped me find my voice as an author.

So, my friends, what are some of the characteristics that make up your writing voice? What are your strengths as a writer? How did you find, or how are you finding, your own author voice?


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