Is Your Voice Being Corrupted?
How to know if your writing is good enough to stand out from the noise
Standing Out in the Cacophony
When I am editing manuscripts or articles, I can always tell immediately the novice writers who will struggle to ever get far from the writers who are in the league all on their own. The magical difference between the two is VOICE.
Every writer and artist who wants to “make it” in a creative career is looking for what makes them stand out from the oversaturated market that is bent against our thoughtful stories in favor of fast trends. Every artist is told that in order to succeed, they need to find their own style that sets them apart from everyone else.
Unsurprisingly, the most repeated advice any writer will run into when they start looking to improve at their craft is:
“Find your own narrative voice”
“Develop your own writing style.”
People love to throw these phrases around as a catch-all answers to every problem beginner writers run into. But if you ask someone to define exactly HOW to accomplish this feat, you are bound to run into a few hot takes and a lot of unsatisfying answers. So, today, we’re going to cover the whole issue, and I’m actually going to answer for you WHY you need to develop your own writing voice, and HOW you can know for sure if your writing is unique enough to stand on its own merit.
Let’s get into it.
Everything is a Trend
Writers are constantly being turned down by agents and publishing companies because the industry will only take a chance on selling stories that have already been proven to sell before. Any storyteller who breaks the mold and tries something different from the shiny style and accepted tropes is left out on the street because the industry claims they “aren’t marketable.”
The problem is, when we go looking for desperately-needed advice on making a living from our work, we find that what is touted as “marketable” is so often not what feels like our own voice. Too often, there is a disconnect between what we’re told sells and what feels like the real us.
The age of AI makes it easier than ever to prepackage our stories to sound exactly like what the industry wants to sell. You can fit in with the bestsellers easily enough if you sell out to instantaneous, unoriginal, formulaic AI generation. But we cheapen our stories when we try to fit them into these commercialized boxes of success. The writers whose stories will impact people the most stand out from your next Colleen Hoover or James Patterson novel. The kinds of writers who parrot the style, vocabulary, trends, stereotypes, and tropes on the market are a dime a dozen. They may be celebrated by the industry because they play it safe with marketability, but their stories won’t endure beyond a fad.
The truth is humans crave real stories—the ones that are raw and ugly. The ones with cracks around the edges. “Authenticity” is being tossed around as a buzz word because readers are actually begging for it. People who have been deprived of human connection after being sold nothing but generic performance polish for so long are desperate for something real.
The human experience is wild. On the one hand, the things we struggle with are universal, and on the other, every perspective of the same experiences and struggles is unique to each individual. We don’t realize how not alone we are in our struggles until we meet someone else whose story reminds us of our own. Then, the words that they share offer us a bridge of connection. A chance to say, “Someone sees me. I’m not alone.”
These are the kinds of stories that stick with us—not the ones that fit into every trend that is currently selling. Even if these radically honest writers aren’t saying anything revolutionary, they tell their story with a certain unique style, grounded in the raw parts of humanity that every single one of us experience yet no one is brave enough to say out loud.
The writers that get under our skin and change our hearts are the ones that say the things we were never allowed to say. They give words to the feelings that we buried because they were too raw; too uncomfortable; too taboo for society to accept. And you, with your unique voice, have the ability to be the one that can reach the people who need to hear their truths spoken.
We don’t make a lasting impact by saying what’s already been said 1,000 times before in the same way it’s been said before. We tell stories that can change the world by bringing our unique, inimitable voice to the conversation; sharing bold truth instead of comfortable facades. The worst thing we could do is sell our unique voice to appeal to the mass audience. When we do that, we sell our biggest source of power.
The Lie We Were Fed
We grow up editing ourselves. We all are raised understanding that we need to sound like someone else—someone more credible and professional—to be taken seriously. As early as middle school, we learn that in order to be accepted and successful, we have to sound like the most popular person in the room. We follow the advice of our teachers to make our stories sound like what has already been lauded as “good writing.” As if “good writing” can always and only consist of Hemmingway, Plath, Dickens, and Shakespeare.
Writers are naturally introspective people, and that makes us self-conscious. I think we creative personalities are, more than anyone else, prone to battling paralyzing self-doubt over if anyone will care about what we are saying or if our story is worth telling. We fear judgement, rejection, and not being good enough. All of humanity craves acceptance, but the most raw, tender, emotional truths we writers put into our stories make us especially vulnerable to these anxieties.
We develop our writing skills under a lifetime of this pressure from all sides to say the acceptable thing, in the acceptable way, and then we’re expected to one day suddenly find our own voice to write our stories? No wonder everyone is clueless about how to find their own style and scared to use it! The biggest lie creators are ever told is that if they want to make an impact, they shouldn’t sound like themselves.
We are taught not to make waves. Not to break the mold. Not to say the truth that would make people uncomfortable. Not to tell the stories that could change the world. We’re taught for our entire lives that our authenticity isn’t good enough.
I’m here to tell you that it is.
The How
The elusive question: how do you develop your writing style to be strong and distinct? If you ask this question, you will often hear one of these two conflicting answers:
1. Learn from what works.
The industry tells us that the only way to beat the challenges of marketing and gain popularity with readers is to copy what works. Follow the trends. Sound like other professional writers. Write what the majority agrees with. These strategies are the most sure path to success.
There is truth to this advice, because we all learn by mimicking people who already know how to do a particular thing. Immersing ourselves in the work of “the greats” of our craft will naturally teach us how to improve—and will also bleed into our own narrative voices. Copying the kind of writing that resonates with us is a surefire way to strengthen our own writing.
The problem is, if we never learn to listen for and trust our own voice, we will blend in with everyone else in the cacophony. Our truth will be corrupted by others’ truths. Our voice will be co-opted by the fake humanity we are fed. Our personality will be drowned out by the stories that have already been told.
2. Don’t sound like anyone else who has been published.
This suggestion is really hard—especially nowadays with instantaneous access to our global and incredibly extensive digital library—because it turns out, truly, there nothing is new under the sun.
Which is why I echo the wise words from author
:“I think new writers are too worried that it has all been said before. Sure it has, but not by you.”― Asha Dornfest
Here is where we run into the hot button question: is it a corruption of your own voice if you are influenced by other artists or writers?
People seem to think that any influence on your voice is a corruption of yours. This conflict can cause us to swing to the other extreme of caution by refusing to learn from anyone. I’ve seen people isolate themselves from any kind of art or culture because they don’t want to sound too much like anyone else. But this kind of island is actually the greatest disservice you could possibly do to the development of your own voice. We start developing our own voice exactly by being influenced by others.
Your Patchwork of Stories
We are all made of stories. The stories that influenced our ancestors are passed down and given to us in pieces. We collect our own tales every day—from the books we read, the movies we watch, the people we meet, the things we experience…yes, even the TikTok trends we watch. This unique amalgamation of all these intersecting story pieces is what makes you, YOU. That is the unique patchwork that only you can bring to the table of what has all been said before. This unique patchwork of millions of story pieces is what makes your narrative voice inimitable, never before seen on the globe and never to be seen again.
Stories offer threads of connection across humanity, transcending millenniums, continents, cultures, and nations. Part of going through life is collecting little pieces of everyone else’s shared stories and using those pieces to add depth to your own story.
The best thing you can do to develop your distinct voice is to collect as many stories as you can throughout your life. Honor the ones you carry, and add new ones. Read widely, watch widely, experience widely. Pass on the things that have spoken deeply to you, along with your own thoughts about them. Be influenced by pieces of so many others that you don’t get mistaken for any one person.
But What About Editors?
“But Ceylan, aren’t you an editor? Are you saying no one should have their writing edited because that fundamentally ruins authenticity?”
How do we balance professionalism with authenticity—and somehow still keep the nuances of our own voice intact? This balancing act can feel impossible to navigate.
The topic is really a whole separate article for another day, but deserves a quick address here. Editors with an objective perspective on your story ARE important to making sure your message is coming across as clearly and powerfully as possible. A good editor will work with you to understand your unique story and honor your authentic voice so they know how to AMPLIFY it, not SCRUB it. This is the exact work we do with writers at One Brilliant Arc to help them get their manuscripts ready for publishing.
I polish your grammar and advise you on story structure best practices so no one has an excuse for writing off the truth of your story. But I will never change the rhythm of your natural sentence structure or the vocabulary you use to describe the feelings behind your message that makes you sound like YOU.
What Does Your Voice Sound Like?
No one can answer this question for you—only you know what your authentic voice sounds like. You MUST discover it before the cacophony buries it. Don’t fall into the lie that your authenticity isn’t acceptable in today’s market. Don’t scrub your personality to the point that you don’t recognize your real self. Don’t try to fit yourself into a box that some editor or agent tries to tell you that you need to in order to be successful. Your authentic voice is your greatest superpower for being able to resonate with people. Use it.
Your personality may not be for everyone. That is okay. For the right people, your voice will feel like home and they’ll never want to leave. Your truth may not resonate with the masses. But for the people it does resonate with, it will resonate powerfully. It may even change their lives.
You do not have to be loved widely to be loved deeply.
The real answer to this elusive question is way simpler than all the conflicting advice would proclaim. It’s a mix of the two recurring ideas: you need to both WIDEN your own perspective, and CONNECT with your own perspective. This is why, in the end, AI writing, entertainment trends, and celebrity popularity will never truly stick forever: they do not speak to the real essence of humanity inside of us.
And the essence of humanity is stories.
So what is yours?
Need an editor for your story who knows how to help you develop and honor your authentic narrative voice? OBA’s story team is here for you! Submit your work in progress and we’ll give you a free editing session with our panel of story coaches.