Imitate the field to find your writing voice

Voice in writing is tricky to define. It’s like one of those “you- know-it-when-you-see-it” situations. Basically, your voice consists of all those unique attributes that make you sound like you (and no one else) when you write.

Cover up the title and byline of an Emily Dickinson poem and you can still identify the author (almost by her peculiar use of dashes alone). And no one will ever confuse a zany, frenetic story by Hunter S. Thompson with one written in the spare prose of Raymond Carver. In fact, Raymond Carver recounts in his essay “John Gardner: The Writer as Teacher” that Gardner instructed him to “[r]ead all the Faulkner you can get your hands on, and then read all the Hemingway to clean the Faulkner out of your system.” William Faulkner, of course, was known for his long, serpentine sentences; Ernest Hemingway, by contrast, for his spartan, unadorned prose. Either way, Gardner recognized that it was important to Carver's development as a writer for him to be familiar with both styles. Now neither you (nor Dickinson nor Thompson nor Carver, Faulkner, Hemingway, nor any other writer) was born with his or her own unique voice intact. It develops over time. In fact, you have to discover it over time.

And, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, one of the best ways to help you discover your unique and personal writing voice is through imitation. Try on the voices of different authors you admire. Don’t be afraid -- it’s okay to copy another writer’s style and techniques. That’s not plagiarism, so long as you don’t also copy their specific words and ideas. Will this imitation make your writing sound derivative for the moment? Yes, but don't worry -- every writer goes through this imitative phase. Some even publish their work from this phase. You can read it today; it’s called juvenilia. For example, read the early poems of Walt Whitman -- written in formal meter and rhyme and highly derivative of English poets -- which preceded the imaginative eruption of his wild free-verse style that signaled the beginning of true American poetry (and of Whitman’s unique poetic voice). In his memoir The Spooky Art, novelist Norman Mailer estimates that he wrote half a million unpublished words as a Harvard undergraduate before he became an “overnight success” with publication of his best-selling first novel, The Naked and the Dead. But Mailer's practice writing was not wasted; it was absolutely necessary for him to hone his craft and discover his voice.

So, as a new college writer, you should try to imitate those writers you admire. And, for heavens sake, play the field! Imitate the style of lots of different writers. Just like you don’t need to settle on your “one true love” while dating in college, neither do you need to adopt your ultimate unique writing voice just yet. Eventually, when elements of style borrowed from other writers fully mix together with your own unique characteristics, you will have finally discovered that precious but hard-to-capture quality: your own writing voice.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.