Do all writers have voices? by Malachi Fernandez, Alex Howard and Lataisha Elo Fashola

Do all writers have voices? This was a question we wanted to unravel and find an answer to. Most people associate the author - the name of the person written on the piece and its published words as the writer’s voice but that isn’t necessarily the case. It is normally defined that the writer’s voice is a unique and individual writing style, a combination of their common usage of syntax, diction, punctuation, character development, dialogue and so on, within a given written piece or across several of that writer’s works. However, it is common for writers to take inspiration or adapt from others and in most cases be changed by the editor. Therefore the writer’s voice could be defined as a layer of voices, not just one.

Our thoughts on the writer’s voice:

Malachi Fernandez:

To say that all writers have a unique voice I believe is untrue. All writers take inspiration from someone or somewhere and a lot of them base their own writing style on others but the writers’ voice is important as it gives a sense of individuality to each and every writer. Every writer wants to be able to distinguish themselves from others and that alone would make you a commendable writer. Despite the voice being important to many authors, many also point out that focusing solely on your voice can lead to “branding”. A lot of writers focus on creating a trademark style of writing which they aim to use throughout all of their books in their career but can also be argued that all writers both have a voice and don’t. Some voices are more distinct than others and others can be seen as simply mimicking these stronger voices, for example; George Orwell famously wrote six rules for writing which writers should follow, these are;

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

As well as these rules, he focuses on themes of politics and totalitarian authorities creating a unique and distinguishable writer’s voice for himself yet writers such as Tess Gerritsen who make novels of the thriller genre can be said to not have her own voice. She is compared to Stephen King which reinforces the idea that writers take inspiration from each other.

Alex Howard:

Personally the writer’s voice is important in getting fans that like the style that you write in. This is why authors develop their own distinct styles. Once voices are found then they can be worked on and developed. A lot of people start off emulating a style before developing it into one of their own. The style is also not something that is set in stone, it is fluid and adaptable and able to constantly evolve. For example; Charles Dickens - Dickens used unnecessary words and went off on tangents. Making stories conversational, as if we were hearing the story being told with the character’s voice while Markus Zusak wrote with a depressing sort of humour, making jokes that had a downbeat point of reference to them. He also interrupted himself in the middle of conversation. Giving off the sense of a normal conversation and in turn making the text more exciting.

Douglas Adams’ writing made it seem as if everything was absurd, it could be called a form of absurdism. He wrote as if to share the absurdity with others. He seemed to see everything as ridiculous, everything was bizarre to him.

Mark Twain wrote with very bad grammar sometimes, he also interrupted and repeated himself. He wrote in this way to help us identify with characters, not every person speaks with perfect grammar and people miss out words in their sentences.

Robert Heinlein wrote in a way to make us understand how the story was being said. Like when writing a teenage girl, he used long sentences with commas, making it seem as if the sentence was being said in one breath. He wrote how the characters would speak in real life.

Lataisha Elo Fashola:

The writer’s voice is a hard subject to completely define given it is so ambiguous. I personally think that all writers have a voice in the sense of preferred style of writing, there are some writers who use an intoxicated state to write, the alcoholic American writer Jack London [1876-1916] is a good example of this, he clearly states he use of alcoholic helps with his daily thousand words. “I was carrying a beautiful alcoholic conflagration around with me. The thing fed on its own heat and flamed the fiercer. There was no time, in all my waking time, that I didn't want a drink. I began to anticipate the completion of my daily thousand words by taking a drink when only five hundred words were written. It was not long until I prefaced the beginning of the thousand words with a drink."  But I don’t believe a writer has only one voice and these other voices come through in their characters and written perspective as well as the aid of other people and their voices being mixed in. This is why I think the writer’s voice is important because it doesn’t only just express the thoughts and feels of the writer or define that writer but allows everything else to come to light in more than just one way and as a writer it reassuring to know that my voice is unique simply because of the different components that influence it, make me the person I am.

RAYMOND CHANDLER [1888-1959]

“Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.”