Voice is a tricky concept to define for a writer, and one that I struggled to understand early on. Worse, I couldn’t figure out how to actually spend time developing my voice as a writer.
Today, I’m breaking down the basics by defining the concept of “voice” and providing some examples, resources, and even a few exercises.
My goal for this post is to suggest ways that you can understand the voice you already have and learn ways to identify its elements and deliberately change it to suit your purposes.
Defining “Voice”
I love Sonya Huber’s definition of voice, both for its clarity, its musicality, and its own apparent display of her writerly voice:
When you’re inside a piece of writing that hums and crackles and sparks, when a real person is talking to you from the page, you’ve encountered a voice. ‘Voice’ is what writing feels like. It sets off sympathetic vibrations in readers. It gives us a sense of connection to another live human presence, creating a real and complex moment of communication.1
At the heart of how I think of voice is precisely this sentence: “’Voice’ is what writing feels like.” Fundamentally, it’s something we have already. You write in a voice already, whether you do so deliberately or not. A really successful writerly voice is often different from the way we speak.
Not that written voice is wholly separate from speech. Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle have discussed the relationship of writerly “voice” to the more traditional voices of human arts-out-loud such as song and poetry. These are relevant even in a medium where the reader will frequently only “hear” your words in their own mind (although I always advocate for authors to participate in readings, and often reading your work out loud is a great way to tackle edits of a difficult passage!).2
All this being said, here’s my TL;DR definition:
The Definition of Voice (Part 1)
Writerly voice is how a story’s narrator talks to you. It is comprised of decisions about tone, diction, rhythm, point of view, grammar, sentence length, metaphor and simile, and just about any other writing device or technique.
I have seen some folks confuse voice with point of view (POV), but these are distinct concepts. A POV character (a character from whose perspective the story is told) can have voice, a narrator can have voice, but voice is a different beast altogether.
When it comes to voice in practice, identifying and developing your own voice, I have a slightly different definition:
The Definition of Voice (Part 2)
Your writerly voice is the way that feels good to you to write.
This gets us more clearly toward the direction of this post, toward voice as an objective, because frequently what people mean when they say they’re looking for a strong voice, especially from an editorial/acquisitions perspective, is a distinctive voice. You have a voice already, but the question is, how do you cultivate it into a distinctive voice?
Let’s put a pin in that for now and revisit it during the exercises below. For now, I want to dive into some examples to help give you a better idea of how voice can be visible in a story.
Examples of Voice
Voice can be slippery, a kind of “know it when you see it” idea, so I’d like to spend some time with examples. Let’s take a look at the opening lines of a few of my favorite books, and examine the differences between them.
I’m going to do three pairs of examples: two in third person by different authors and two in first person by different authors, to demonstrate how voice can sound from different POVs; and two from the same author (me!) to demonstrate consistencies in voice across different stories.
“In fifteen days, there will be no food in Aymar Castle.
She has done the arithmetic forward and back. They have been down to strangled rations for weeks now, and there have been mistakes. Thefts. Impulsive, desperate gorgings. Even if every soul in Aymar Castle keeps to their allotted portion—and Phosyne does not think that is likely—every soul in Aymar Castle will run out of food in fifteen days.
And though Phosyne is one of the few outside the Priory who can work sums, everybody else is bound to realize this soon.”
~Caitlin Starling, The Starving Saints
***
“There was a fly walking on Cordelia’s hand and she was not allowed to flick it away.
She had grown used to the ache of sitting on a hard wooden pew and being unable to shift her weight. It still hurt, but eventually her legs went to sleep and the ache became a dull, all-over redness that was easier to ignore.
Though her senses were dulled in obedience, her sense of touch stayed strongest. Even when she was so far under that the world had a gray film around the edges, she could still feel her clothing and the touch of her mother’s hand. And now the fly’s feet itched, which was bad, then tickled, which was worse.”
~T. Kingfisher, A Sorceress Comes to Call
We can say a few things right off the bat. Both have started with a one sentence, declarative opening paragraph. Both have continued that declarative style to lay out the opening situations of their respective novels. We might start to point to the differences with tenses: Starling has chosen present tense, while Kingfisher writes in past.
However, there are some critical distinctions that take a little more study and have a huge impact on how each of these passages read: Cadence/rhythm, diction, and tone. Try reading them out loud.
While those first sentences feel similar, there is a downward beat to Starling’s while Kingfisher’s has a more even tone. This is about the situations, as well: Starling is describing an incredibly dire moment, while Kingfisher is settling into a moment that (we learn over the following few paragraphs) is emotionally crushing, but happens repeatedly. Starling builds tension with varied but ultimately shorter sentence lengths (for the most part). Her novel is also set in an alternate-medieval time period, so we see some of the word choice (she can “work sums,” for example, instead of “do math”) leaning into more archaic constructions. Kingfisher, meanwhile, settles into the emotional significance of the moment with longer, slower, more contemplative sentences that bring the reader deeply into her character’s experience.
Let’s transition into two examples of first person POVs and take another look at authorial voice there:
“The sight of this old train car saddens me, though I cannot quite articulate why. There is something unnamable about the rattling of empty wooden seats, so like the pews of a deserted church, that puts me in a lonely humor. It is an unusual feeling, since I have never in my life been alone.
Jagged mountains rise and fall outside the window, dotted with white trees and the occasional lodge long since abandoned to the wild. It has been one hour and forty-two minutes since the last snow-shrouded sign of civilization crawled across the landscape, and it will be fifty-four minutes before the next appears. This is not accounting for delays, accidents, breakdowns, avalanches, or seismically induced derailments.”
~Hiron Ennes, Leech
***
“The whole mess began in a courtroom in Vsila, the capital of Nuryevet, where I was being put on trial for something stupid.
“What’s all this about?” I said, not for the first time.
“Charges of witchcraft,” they said; at least, that was what it boiled down to.
“Utterly ridiculous,” I said.
“We got some witnesses,” they said.
“Your witnesses can go fuck themselves,” says I, although not in so many words.”
~Alexandra Rowland, A Conspiracy of Truths
The differences here are a bit more readily apparent! They also are as much about characterization as they are a result of authorial voice. The narrator of Leech addresses us with details and precision that suggest their remove from people around them, establishing the setting and a certain level of the world’s technology. Ennes also has pursued an older grammatical style that lends itself to the tone and time period of the novel, but also impacts sentence rhythm. Ennes wrote, “There is something unnamable about the rattling of empty wooden seats, so like the pews of a deserted church, that puts me in a lonely humor.” But they might have written, “There is something unnamable about the rattling of empty wooden seats, which sounds like the pews of a deserted church, that makes me feel lonely.” (A clumsy attempt, perhaps, but hopefully you see what I mean.)
Rowland’s narrator, obviously, takes a far more conversational style. As with Starling’s opening, the short sentences move the action along quickly and provide a great example of where telling can be better than showing. And, of course, both of these passages feel distinct from the Startling and Kingfisher in more ways than simply POV. Again, I recommend reading these aloud to hear and feel the ways each author’s choices about structure, length, and language shift the rhythm and build tone and tension.
Finally, join me for a brief exercise in narcissism as I compare two of my own stories:
“The old Abbey loomed as hungry as it ever had in Albion’s memory. As the coach rumbled up the final stretch of road from the train station, the house crouched low over the drive, the lips of its stone façade pulling back from its toothy, jagged archivolt to open the way for him. Fog had left a sheen of moisture on every surface, and Albion drew off his leather gloves the better to feel the oak door, slippery under his fingers. The tongue of the faded pink carpet in the foyer splayed to savor him.
Albion breathed in the ancient interior. It smelled just as it ever had, of dust, silver polish, and damp. There was no hint of death to the air; they must have moved the body to the cellar to keep until Albion could deal with it.”
~”The House of Coiled Earth,” published in The Crawling Moon: Queer Tales of Inescapable Dread
***
“After the vows had all been spoken and the feasting begun, it was time for the Skin Game.
The bride remained veiled at the high table—none but her husband would see her face until more private offices had been completed—but the young groom leapt up to lead the festivities.
He was barely more than a boy, but new bride and honey-wine emboldened him. His speech slurred as he crouched like a beast on one end of a feast table and chanted the rhyme.
In the wood I went a-hunting,
Cut myself a skin to run in.
Guess which shape I wear to-day,
Or wood come take thy skin away.The assembly laughed and clapped as chatter died, dancing stilled, the fiddler stopped his strings, and all gathered to watch or join in the game.”
~“Cut-a-Skin, Outside-In,” published in The Joining: Scenes of Wedding Terror
I wrote these stories two years apart, but I wanted to put them side-by-side because they are both “period pieces,” although one is more aristocratic and gothic while the other draws more from folklore. In this case, let’s focus on the similarities. I tend to vary my sentence length, but you can see my tendency to draw multiple elements down into a single moment. Punctuation like em dashes and semicolons stitch ideas together, and you can see I love a good list (“It smelled…of dust, silver polish, and damp,” and “chatter died, dancing stilled, the fiddler stopped his strings, and all gathered”).
These are not a perfect example of everything I feel my voice encompasses, but they show some of my tendencies, despite their differences.
Now let’s talk about how you might get there: Knowing and deliberately enacting your own voice.
How to Develop Your Voice
Here’s the bad news: the best way to develop and understand your voice is write, and write, and write a lot. It took me a few years to figure out my voice once I started actively working to improve my writing. There were three stages to that process. First, of course, I needed to understand what voice was. Hopefully, this post so far has at least gotten you on the road to that.
Stage two was learning to see my existing writing voice. This was challenging for me, because I initially couldn’t understand what I was trying to do that was different. I write how I write how I write. And while I was correct (voice is a thing you have, even if you’re not doing it intentionally) it was when I started composing sentences that kind of pinged for me—they hit little happy notes in my brain and chest—that I realized how I wanted to shape my voice.
Therefore, stage three was pursuing those pings, the way that felt good for me to write. As with the previous two stages, this came, quite simply, from a lot of writing and a lot of experimentation. Let’s move on to some exercises, though, that might help you along with stages two and three of developing your voice.
Voice Exercises
You can do these separately, but I would argue will work best if they are completed in order.
Exercise 1
This is a reading exercise intended to help you read for your voice and identify elements that you like.
You will need a writing implement in your preferred medium and color, a quiet space where you feel comfortable reading aloud, and a piece that you have already written, preferably short: a short story, a book chapter, a completed scene, a poem.
Read each piece aloud. Do not make corrections or changes at this stage. Just read it. When you reach a particular phrase, or sentence that you really like, make a note of it. After you have finished reading each piece, reflect back on those places you have highlighted. Think carefully about why you like each of them. What patterns can you find in the things you like? Consider the following categories:
Rhythm/cadence/sentence weight
Alliteration/rhyme
Sentence length/pacing
Diction/casual vs. formal vernacular/contractions
Elements like a pretty image matter, but we’re not looking for pretty images, we’re looking for how you describe them.
If you like, to obtain more data to work with, you might pick another piece and repeat the process, then compare what you have highlighted in both pieces. They do not need to be the same type of piece (although if you would like to do this for poetry, you may have the best results if you are comparing two poems).
Optional: Do this exercise again with a listener you trust.
Try to make a concrete list of the things that you have identified. These should be the things that you like the most, and may not necessarily be the things you do the most. Try to aim for four to six elements.
Exercise 2
Now that you have a list of the things you like about your writing, it’s time to do a writing exercise. The purpose of this exercise is to practice cultivating those elements that feel best to you when you write.
You will need your preferred writing implement (be it pen and paper, computer, dictation device, whatever), the list you created in the previous exercise, and a concept for the beginning of a new piece. (Maybe check this list of prompts if you’re in need of inspiration.)
Choose 2-3 of the elements on the list you made. Write the first few paragraphs of a new piece, deliberately aiming to use those elements that you have chosen. Keep it short! Don’t let yourself go over 300 words.
Put what you have written away, so you cannot look at it. If you need to, make notes of what happens, but for the next part you should try not to reference the words you have already used to describe events.
Chose a different 2-3 elements from the list you made. Write the story opening again, deliberately aiming to use those elements that you have chosen. Again, aim for less than 300 words.
Now, compare what you have written. Which works for you better? Which do you want to keep doing? If you like and you still have more elements on your list, do this exercise again. You can also try writing the opening again with your favorite of everything on your list. Experiment! It’s only 300 words, so take your time and have fun with it.
Developing Voice Requires Practice, Patience, and Experimentation
I hope this has proven to be a helpful breakdown not just of what voice is, but how to figure out what you want it to be. I’ve tried to give you some tools to target voice in your writing, but writerly voice is one of those things that you can only truly discover with real focus and intention. These exercises aren’t going to get you all the way.
Give yourself time and space to experiment, and also make sure you keep reading! Find things you like in other authors’ voices—what is it that you like about it? How might you adapt the things you like?
Good luck out there. Listen to yourself <3
Works cited
Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royle. An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory. 6th Edition. Taylor & Francis, 2023.
Ennes, Hiron. Leech. Tor, 2022.
Huber, Sonya. Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto. University of Nebraska Press, 2022.
Kingfisher, T. A Sorceress Comes to Call. Tor, 2024.
Malitoris, Jes. “Cut-a-Skin, Outside-In.” The Joining: Scenes of Wedding Terror. Edited by Jacob Steven Mohr. Crystal Lake Publishing, 2025.
Malitoris, Jes. “The House of Coiled Earth.” The Crawling Moon: Queer Tales of Inescapable Dread. Edited by dave ring.Neon Hemlock Press, 2024.
Rowland, Alexandra. A Conspiracy of Truths. Saga Press, 2018.
Starling, Caitlin. The Starving Saints. Harper Voyager, 2025.
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