An Exercise to Help You Find Your Voice

Try this writing exercise from Simon Van Booy if you feel you need help finding your voice, whether you are writing nonfiction or fiction.

Every writer has a unique voice. But getting it out and onto the page can be difficult, especially when what we love as readers influences our sense of style. I wrote two novels (both still unpublished) before I realized I hadn’t found my voice, and it was devastating at the time—even though any writing is excellent practice. To save you the same heartache, here’s an exercise to help you find your voice:

1. Take ten books you love and ten books you absolutely despise, all in the genre you want to work in. This is also a good moment for you to remember that in many ways we write what we read—so if you read short stories mostly, that’s the genre that might be most natural for you.

2. Copy out the first page of each book on your computer, or handwrite on a piece of paper. Now edit the first page to make it better.

Your edits might involve moving things around, rewriting sentences, cutting words, anything—just remake it in what your opinion is better, clearer, deeper.

After you’ve been through a few drafts of editing and rewriting each page, print out twenty clean copies of your edited pages and compare them to the original twenty first pages in the books. All the original pages will be very different, but in all of your pages there will be similarities and a pattern will emerge. That’s your voice.

*

Did you enjoy this exercise? Check out Simon’s Catapult page to check for upcoming classes with us.