It's important as a writer to find your voice. But it can be a challenge.
Writing style refers to the
manner in which an author chooses to write to his or her audience. A style reveals both the writer's personality
and voice, but it also shows how he or she perceives the audience. The
choice of a conceptual writing style molds the overall character of the work.
source Wikipedia.com
You don't find your voice overnight. Every writer is different. Every writer has different ideas, ways of thinking, ways of conveying their thoughts and feelings, etc. Every writer writes differently. How's that for a tongue-twister?
You may have found your voice; you may still be striving for it. Either way, finding your voice is a journey. The more you write, the closer you come to finding your voice. So don't be so quick to give up. It takes some writers years to discover and perfect their own voice.
I have a few tips to help you get started though.
Get out of your comfort-zone.
Maybe you've written your first short story, or book but you're not sure about your writing. This is normal! First time writers question themselves constantly. But don't panic. Like I said, it's a journey to find your voice; a process like this takes time.
Maybe you feel that one of your stories should be written in present
tense, or past tense, and so on. Only you know what kind of writing fits
your story. You should jump around to get a feel for your preferred way of writing. Jumping and playing around with your writing is always a good thing, though it's always difficult to get out of your comfort-zone. You should do this even if you've found your voice!
Eventually, you'll find your voice and you'll be able to just sit down and write!
Read!
I always say to read more than you write, and here is another reason why!
If you read, you know what kind of writing you like, whether it's past tense, first, third person, really descriptive, or faintly descriptive to leave readers to be more imaginative, etc. Once you figure out the way you like to write, you should struggle to make your writing as unique as possible. (Don't be discouraged if you can't figure out some way to make your writing notable. If your writing is good and you have a unique story, it shouldn't matter).
Write!
Maybe change up your writing a little every time you start another story if you're still not sure about the style you've been using thus-far. I've been doing this for the last year.
I've changed up my writing during the last 3 books I've written. Since the beginning of my writing journey, I've written in past tense. Past tense gives you more material than present tense, so I liked it. But I decided to try out present tense when I started
The Darkest Light.
It was a struggle. It was a lot harder to write in present tense than I thought it was going to be, so there are a lot of grammatical errors, even though I edited it several, several times. The book isn't perfect but I published it because I was ready to publish a novel and I wanted
The Darkest Light to be my first published novel.
I
wrote my next book in present tense too, because I wanted to give it one
more shot (plus, I thought present tense fit the book more than past).
It was better and I got used to writing in present tense. Now I've switched back to writing in past tense because it's my stronger voice, and I make less mistakes.
Work hard and pour as much as you can into your writing and things will work out in the end. You'll find your voice.
Happy writing!
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