Lessons in Fiction Writing: Find Your Voice

When first learning how to write fiction, so many take the hard route, and try to branch out and write the 'Great American Novel'. Unfortunately, there isn't going to be the next-great novel like there once was. Publishing has gone commercial, capitalistic, and the 'great' novels are going to be those that likely never see the desk of an acquisitions editor.

What will make the desk of an acquisitions editor is solid, compelling fiction writing that has a voice and keeps an editor entertained and turning pages.

The only way to do that is for the writer to write about what they know, who they are, where they've been, in a compelling and interesting 'fiction' way.

At some point in the future, when a writer is established, has found their voice, and is ready to venture out on those limbs, the great American novel just might make its way onto the desk of an editor or agent who has already worked with that author before.

So how do you go about writing what you know? Let's look at that.

Find Your Voice:

I've been a fiction novelist for about five years now. Prior to that, I wrote novels, but I really didn't have a voice yet. I was trying to write to some model that everyone out there in the great big writing world told me to do. The problem with that was, writing stopped being fun for me and started being a chore.

Okay, I know, editing is the pits, and we all have to do it, but trying to write to some pre-prescribed idea of what someone else thought made a 'writer' was not working for me. I didn't mind putting in the time, doing the revisions and editing, but somewhere along the way, the actual writing lost its luster for me.

But I still loved to write on my blogs. I was very active on my blogs, and even wrote fun, short fiction pieces, prose and thought-provoking creative non-fiction. I looked forward to my blogs every day. There, on the pages of someone else's server, where I wasn't making a penny, were the best writings I'd ever done, and I enjoyed them.

Then I'd sit down to write in the novels, and I'd grumble under my breath, tell my characters I hated them, and drag my figurative feet.

Not gonna sell many books that way, huh?

The most important part of being a fledgling novelist is: find your voice.

I had found my writing voice. It was the voice I used on my blog. In the process of realization, I found that I was happiest when I was writing in that voice. I was most miserable when I was trying to force my writing into someone else's mold.

So I quit trying to write to some model and decided to write from that place within me where I found the passion, excitement and fun that I found when I was writing my blogs. That lead me to the novel I'm currently working on, which will be my break-out novel. It's my voice, who I am, but it's pure fiction. I have thrown myself into it, without being a part of it.

How to know when you find your voice: you'll know.

You'll just know. The worlds will come flooding out of you faster than you can type them. The flow of the story will just keep coming at you, no fighting it, no writer's block, not stalling.

There is absolutely nothing like finding your writing voice.

This doesn't mean I can't go back at some time in the future and try to write to a mold, or tackle a novel that has a tough subject matter, but when I do, I'll do it with my voice solidly planted in me, ingrained by then, so the fun will still be there, amidst the work.

So if you're wanting to write and your novel is bleeding you of all energy and love and desire for writing, then you're trying to write in someone else's voice. Step back and ask yourself what you want to write, what sounds good to you, what type of writer you really are.

Find your passion, find your voice, and then follow it. You'll be writing up a storm in no time!