Finding Your Voice for Non-fiction

Your voice is unique to you. It’s the way you express yourself through tone, style, and personality. Voice is important for connecting with readers and making the content memorable. Finding your voice can take some time while you experiment and view your writing through a more aware focus to determine what your distinct voice is. These tips should help you through the process.

Understand Your Purpose and Audience

Knowing who you’re writing for and why is the first step in finding your voice. What kind of tone does your audience expect? What’s similar between the content your audience enjoys? For example, an introspective long-form blog might sound poetic and peaceful while a blog for cooking in college would sound more casual, fun, and upbeat, likewise, a self-help book will sound explanatory and supportive. To help you hone in on your voice, write a description of your audience and the feelings you want to convey to them.

Choose Authenticity

Authenticity is what builds trust between you and your readers and creates a relatable narrative. Even if you’re providing facts or discussing studies, approach and provide the information in a conversational manner that’s natural for you. Deliver your information through stories or relatable examples of personal experience. When you read back a paragraph you wrote, does it sound like you or like someone you’re trying to be? You have the freedom to get creative with your tone, just make sure it’s something you can be consistent with throughout your writing.

Experiment with Tone and Style

Play around with humor, vulnerability, and varying levels of formality to find what feels natural, and sustainable across your project, and engages your reader. Take a paragraph you’ve written and rewrite it two or three times in different tones. What feels more authentic? Have a friend read them, which do they find more engaging?

Draw Inspiration From Other Writers

Studying other writers in your genre and subject, especially writers you love will help you hone in on what voice you want to develop. Consider their tone, sentence structure, and word choices. While one writer might be introspective and conversational, another might be intellectual and excitable. As you read within your genre and subject, write down descriptions of the writer's voices.

Clarity and Consistency

No matter what voice you develop for yourself, your writing should still have clarity. Don’t trade detail for humor or explanation for poeticism. Create a tone that is clear and can be used consistently throughout your project. You don’t want to get halfway through your book and realize you shifted your voice. That would be a lot of frustrating rewrites. 

Refine with Feedback

Share your work with friends, mentors, and critique partners on StoryForge. Ask them how they perceive your voice. They can let you know how it makes them feel, how it sounds like you feel, and how it affects the sharing of information in your book. Utilize their feedback to tweak your voice if needed.

Readers and writers on StoryForge are excited to read something new and give you detailed feedback on your work. Not only can they help with your voice but also grammar, pace, depth, and so much more! We can’t wait to see your work there!