If finding your voice is so important, how is one to know when that goal has been mainly achieved? Below, I collected ten points that could help you decide if you've found your trademark:
Comperto vocem
1.) The tone creeps into everything you try to write
2.) You find yourself thinking of events that happen to you in the same flavor with which your stories end up on the page
3.) Someone reads an author whose work has definitely impacted yours and says that their book reminds them of you somehow
4.) You are never quite as easy in another tone as you are in the tone that is currently under surveillance
5.) The majority of your plots fit the style that has become yours
6.) The plots that don't fit the style fizzle out and you find you cannot do them justice, even if they are perfectly good plots
7.) You are writing in a manner that makes your project something that would catch your fancy, were you to see it in a bookstore
8.) You can easily discern similar voices to your own as you read, and mentally differentiate between a style you could write well and one you could not
9.) You find that describing your style in a query-letter (or conversation) comes quite easily after all, once you've properly started
10.) The tone carries into emails, letters, and the like without a conscious effort on your part
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2 comments:
I'd say I've experienced a little bit of all of these except for #9. I get bogged down when I try to describe anything about my writing to someone else, whether in person or with a pen. That's why I usually don't tell anybody much about my stories till I hand them a satisfactory draft to read. :)
If these are what define a distinct voice, (and I can't rightly see why they wouldn't) I'm pretty sure I've found mine. It's mostly rather point-blank, with a heavy sprinkling of wit when I don't mean it, a little dash of British sometimes, an imiginatory nature, and some measurement of drama & realism. Quite odd indeed, but very me I suppose...
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