How to write: be yourself

We all have a way of speaking that is unique. Even if they can’t see you at a crowded party, if they can hear you, your friends will know you’re there. It’s the same with writing. The more practice you get, the more your special writing style, or voice, will develop.

Each of us is unique. This is me at a dinner to celebrate my PhD. The little dog was made out of paper by my daughter Lucy!

 Everyone has a different way of catching it. The way that works for me is that I imagine I’m writing for one special friend, a woman friend, who cares about the same things as me. I write to make her smile and cry and go “wow!” at the end. She’s an imaginary friend and she doesn’t have a name, but when I write I imagine I’m whispering the story in her ear.

 If you BINMAD, your writing voice will develop and it’ll be a voice as unique as the one your friends can hear.   

Here are some examples of unique writing voices:

A man once sent me a series of blank pages. This was the man who brought me narcissus, the man who took me to Boston, the man I left at Niagara by the waterfall in winter.The spray from the falls drifts some distance in the winter, becoming lighter, colder, harder as it comes to rest. It weighs down trees on the Canadian side of the border until whole branches become the rafters of rooms made of living tree and ice. Poe’s Cat, Brenda Walker. 

The grey gelding he had named John was waiting at the gate, his backside turned to the wind. The old man retrieved a rope lead looped over the fence and snapped the catch onto the halter ring under the gelding’s chin. Whispered who the good boy John who the boy? Bad morning mate. Walk back now. Made a kissing sound with his mouth.Traitor, Stephen Daisley.

He shrugged and left me. He never talked about the future and only occasionally, when drunk, would he talk about his marvellous past. A past filled with sequinned women and double-tailed horses and a father who made his living fired from a cannon. He came from somewhere in eastern Europe and his skin was the colour of old olives. The Passion, Jeanette Winterson.

I made out her shape. Wearing a white wrapper, its voluminous sleeves rolled up above her elbows, she was sitting at the little desk in the corner, writing and smoking. Her back to the room, as though saying: I don’t really inhabit this place. Her black hair, piled up on her head, a coral spike thrust through the toppling knot to secure it…“Remembering George Sand’, Michele Roberts.

Each of these writers has his or her own distinct voice. If you read them often, you can tell who’s written a passage without having to read the author’s name. Each author relaxes into their story. There’s a sense that they know what they want to tell you, and they’re eager to do so, without having to try too hard.

Each of these writers creates characters so real they could be in the room with you. With characters that your readers really care about and a story that’s exciting, told in your unique way, you’re on the way to getting published.