I keep hearing people saying about finding their 'voice' but want to know exactly what it means and how you know if you've found it. Any help will be appreciated :)
I keep hearing people saying about finding their 'voice' but want to know exactly what it means and how you know if you've found it. Any help will be appreciated :)
There used to be a saying that "those that can't do - teach".
I think that the same can be applied to critics and similar people... What have they written?
Anyone can criticise but there is a completely different thing to being creative... And creativity is usually a unique attribute. Can anyone name a great author who was taught to write great work? Many authors now considered great were negatively criticised - or their work rejected many times before they met with success.
"Voice" is a word that those that talk about writing use... Writers are usually too busy writing to bother about it.
Thank you all for the advice, it doesn't sound so daunting now thankfully hopefully I have enough talent to go far in the writing world :)
Yeah, 'voice' is a word I think gets used so we have something quick and easy to cover a range of things - a writer's style, how it comes across, how unique their phrasing is, the command of language, etc. It tends to be the thing that grips agents / editors and a well developed voice tends to be recognizable after a while ('Is that PG Wodehouse? Sounds just like him...')
Too much editing can damage it because the things that make a story yours alone can get cut for fear of being too different / trying to make it sound like things that are already popular.