While properly structuring a memoir or set of personal essays is essential to completing the process, a memoir cannot even begin to take shape without identifying and nurturing a written voice. Voice often evades creative-writing instructors as it is hard to explain to a novice writer, but that does not change how incredibly important it is to writing.
Voice is simply this: The writer's connection to the subject at hand – a series of rhythms and patterns that are heard by readers while reading the words from a page. It is as if the story itself has an inner monologue that it is sharing with the readers. That is voice.
Expanding The Definition of "Voice"
Voice does not simply happen – writing thoughts down the way the brain filters them is much harder than it looks. Instead, voice arises as the culmination of many different stylistic choices. This makes voices terribly important in the world of memoir writing.
Many different types of writing are expressive and arguably contain voice, but in personal writing, the voice in question belongs to the author and not a fictional character or absent third party. A strong written voice shows not only great storytelling and depth of character, but the person behind the words as well.
How Do We Develop This Voice?
Many assume that when you are writing a memoir, the voice will be a natural part of the writing process as the memories and quips at hand do belong to the writer in question. This isn't actually the case. While any story can be put down on paper, it is actually quite difficult to mimic the way a memory plays back.
There are quite a few techniques to help even the struggling writer find their own voice. Many of these techniques don't even involve writing.
Become a Good Reader
Assembling a written voice is much easier when the writer has a body of examples from which to derive his or her own personal voice. So, reading is very much an important part of the process. By reading examples of memoirs, the writer is able to discern between what they like and do not like about different writers' voices. This can, in turn, help the writer assemble their own writing style by discarding all of the aspects they found displeasing and using what they liked to form their own unique voice.
Become a Good Listener
Obviously, everyone listens to their own inner-monologue, but not everyone takes the time to listen to themselves speaking or to other people speaking. This is also VERY important in the writing world. Rules of grammar and punctuation are occasionally made to be broken and where formal speech will work in some pieces, it does not always lend itself to an individual’s personality. This is where the listening comes in.
Take some time and go sit in a park or an airport and just listen to people speaking to one another. Their tones, inflections, speech patterns, word choices, as these things will help construct a written voice. Listening to the way people converse will also help when it comes time to create dialogue. With a good knowledge of colloquial conversation, the writer will avoid awkward dialogue in their writing.
In listening to others speak; writers will often notice the importance of vocal inflections and/or tone of voice. Something can be said a million different ways and it is up to the ears to determine which way to take the statement, this is lost in writing, but that is the next lesson in developing voice. These tips are a great start toward helping a writer develop a written voice.
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