As I begin the second Caitlyn Jamison mystery
I started to think more about voice. What is it exactly? What should it be? Is
it something I have to learn, practice, develop? In a September 2013 Writer’s Digest article, Cris Freese
states:
“To set your voice free, set your words free. Set your characters
free. Most important, set your heart free. It is from the unknowable shadows of
your subconscious that your stories will find their drive and from which they
will draw their meaning. No one can loan that or teach you that. Your voice is
your self in the story.”
The article confirmed what I believed, which
is that my writing voice is mine alone, my personality coming through, and in
that sense unique. It only alters when I get so “in the groove” that the
characters take over, and that’s okay.
So where does writing style come in? Style is
your particular use of sentence structure - long, short, complex, simple,
imagery, conversational, etc. And that is what I need to work on in this next
book. Developing a style that fits my voice, my personality, and is in a way
uniquely me.
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