Finding Your Voice

Howdy everybody, I’m back! I want to start with an apology for missing my last post. In my defense, I was working with a new client and also in Disney World, which is not an excuse, but it is an explanation. 

Maybe you’ve missed a posting deadline too. There are so many reasons for that, some within your control and some well outside it, but the most frustrating one is writer’s block.

You’re sitting at your computer and staring at a blank screen. You have a million great ideas and a thousand things you just know will get people hooked. But the page is still blank. 

Intimidating, isn’t it? 

There are a bunch of reasons for content paralysis. One of them is voice. Your writing voice, “is a blend of the writer’s personal style, tone, personality, vocabulary, syntax, and unique experiences.”

It’s the thing that makes it easy to tell Stephen King from Jodi Piccoult. It’s the thing that makes it easy to tell Lore from The Last Podcast On The Left. It’s the thing that’s going to make it easy for your audience recognize you in a sea of other voices.

It can be difficult to capture and difficult to describe. What makes you…well, you? You are unique and so your communication style is also unique. 

The question is: How? How do you craft your voice in a way that works for the medium you’re using? How do you pin down the communication quirks that make you singular?

That’s where I come in.

Find Your Voice

Finding your voice, your unique and quirky voice, can be hard. So many aspects to fit together and work through. So many moving, shifting parts.

You sit down to write and whatever you do, it doesn’t sound like you. You draft and you draft, but every version your write sounds either like an essay you need to submit to your 12th grade English teacher or a memo for your boss. Stiff, formal, and just…not you.

No one wants to read a blog that sounds like a high school essay. I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t. So you don’t want to write one. On top of that, it’s pretty hard to connect with your readers if you don’t sounds like yourself. 

So how do you do it? How do you find your voice?

Well, first things first: Take a moment to recognize yourself. There are certain aspects to the way you communicate that make you different from everyone else. What make you sound like…well, you? Do you use a lot of metaphors? Do you tell a lot of Dad Jokes? Are you sarcastic or witty? Do you tend to pause for thought?

Do you ask a lot of questions? ;D

Sit down and take notes about the way you communicate when you’re just being you…the way you talk or text or journal or post on social media. The ways you connect with others when you’re not trying to be ‘professional’ or ‘academic.’ Make a list of traits or common quirks. 

If you’re having trouble coming up with things to write down, try asking a friend or family member, someone who knows you well. 

Then, after, ask an acquaintance. Maybe someone from work or school, who you know, but aren’t friends with. They’ll likely have a different perspective and a different set of observations from first person you asked. 

Now you have a good sized list to work from. You don’t want to use them all. Quirky and personal is good. Overly quirky or personal can be confusing to the reader or off putting. 

For example, a blog post full of dad jokes could be really funny. A blog post full of dad jokes and sarcasm and puns and metaphors and questions is likely going to be overwhelming and hard for your reader to pick through. The same goes for a website or social media profile. 

Okay, you have your list. You’re ready to winnow that list down to a special few personal quirks. But how?

Get It On The Page

Picking your communication style can be daunting, so let’s break it down into steps.

Step one: Determine out your medium.

What is the reason you’re communicating in the first place? 

If you’re blogging, you can be a little wordier, a little more repetitive, if that’s you’re style. (it’s definitely mine!). If you’re posting to social media, being concise is important. People’s attention span for social media posts is only so long. If you’re drafting a podcast episode, snappier is better. Moving at a good pace is important when people are going to be listening to you for twenty minutes straight, or more. 

Once you know your medium…

Step Two: Figure out your audience.

There are at least a couple ways to do this. 

You could create an avatar, an ideal person that you address all your writing to and who is the exact kind of person you want reading/listening. You could image a broad spectrum of people listening to you, maybe they’re all fans of whatever you’re communicating about. Think about the share traits of those people or the traits of that common interest and what might attract them to it. 

Or maybe you know another way to discover your perfect audience! Whatever day works for you.

Step Three: Pick the traits that feel most you.

Okay, so you know how you’re communicating and who you’re addressing. Now, it’s time to pull out that list you made earlier. Read it through. What items on it feel the most authentic to you? What aspects of it resonate with the medium you chose and the audience you’re aiming for? 

For example, if you’re writing a social media post, sarcasm can be harder to convey than if you’re podcasting. Pauses…might work better in a blog post than they would in a podcast. 

Or certain quirks might not be right for certain audiences. If you tend to curse a lot, by all means pepper a blogpost or a podcast with curses, unless your target audience is children. Or if you tend to be sarcastic, but you’re discussing something really solemn, that might not be a good mix (or maybe that’s your point and it would work perfectly).

Cross of the things that don’t work for your medium and your audience. Cross of the things that don’t feel you enough. What are you left with?

Step Four: Translate that into words.

So, now you’ve got your list. You know how and who. Now it’s time to practice. Write a sample blogpost or Insta-caption or podcast episode. Take your time, refer back to your list, and just get a feel for how writing in this new way feels. 

Once you’ve captured your voice, a lot of the writing process is going to be doing gut checks. Does this post feel like me? 

Keep writing until you’re comfortable with it. It doesn’t matter if you have to throw away pages and pages of writing. I write all the time. I throw away things I’ve written all the time. Thousands of written words just dumped in the trash.

In fact, I will confidently say almost every writer will throw away pages and pages of words, before settling on something they’re happy with. Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and The Sea) once wrote in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise), "I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.” He was not wrong.

The best way to capture your voice is the write until that voice is second nature. Write until you unlearn the formal style that you were taught in high school. That type of writing can be really important, but it’s not write for this kind of content creation. 

Don’t be afraid to ask a friend to check on your work. Ask them for a gut-check. Take their advice back to your writing desk and keep working.

One Last Thing…

“A writer’s voice can also be a reflection of the relationship they have with the reader and with the world around them.”

It’s a way to connect with others and to share something of yourself. It’s also a way to convey your passion and enthusiasm. If you’re excited about the topic, don’t be shy about letting the audience know. They’ll pick up on it, if you’re genuine. 

So instead of sitting staring at a blank page or writing mini five-paragraph essays, go find your voice. Find your voice, captivate your audience, and make connections. 

Disclosure: Any links in this post may be affiliate links. That means, if you click them and buy the recommended product, I make a small commission. It also means that you’re contributing to my vacation fund. Thank you in advance!

And as always…My inbox is always open for suggestions about future topics.