Quick Fiction Fixes – Writer’s Voice, part five
We’re all busy, whether working full-time or chasing/chauffeuring kids around all day. Yet we’re also writers, striving to get our words on paper and then polish them to a sparkle.
This column gives quick fixes for fiction manuscripts specifically for busy writers. Pick and choose what works best for you!
Developing your writing voice, part five:
On March 9th, I explained why I’m doing this series, and how short exercises to develop your writing voice can help you revise and add that oomph! to your manuscript. If you didn’t read my column that week, go read it now. It was very inspiring. 🙂
Your writer’s voice is what will capture the editor or agent who reads your manuscript from page one. That’s what you want.
I liked the book, Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall. Not all the exercises resonated with me, but many of them were great to shift my thinking to a place where I could unleash my voice with more clarity and power.
So I’ll be giving a handful of short, easy writing exercises that you can use to develop your writer’s voice in whatever few minutes you can snatch from your day.
Take a lesson from children’s storytelling.
When children tell stories, they improvise with things connected to their emotions, urgent and important to them at the moment. The duckie in their lap, the blue carpet, the stinky smell from the diaper bag, the lint under the table. It doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to be polished.
What makes their stories compelling is that they’re raw and free. Our writers’ voices come out when we can emulate their storytelling mindset.
This is related to what we say in public and private. There are certain things we will only say to our families, or sometimes just to ourselves. I’m not talking about foul language or unpleasant bodily functions. Opinions, one-line zingers, rage, frustration, joy, pride–good things, bad things. All uncensored.
Voice can come out when we start to blur the lines between the two, the way a child does. Children don’t know what’s acceptable to say in public versus private. They say what comes into their heads, guided by emotions.
Adults tend to edit ourselves, even when we don’t think we are. But what if you didn’t? What if you wrote everything and anything–the good, the bad? What if it was just a matter of getting it all down, no matter what it looked like, no matter that it didn’t make sense, no matter that you’d never let another living soul see what you wrote?
Voice is that raw writing. Don’t stress, because the editing will come later. Write on any topic, going off on any tangent, making whatever associations you feel like. Just get it down. You’d be surprised at what comes out of you, and it might even start you off on new, uncharted ground.
