When agents say they're looking for "a strong voice," what does that actually mean? It's the hardest thing to define but you know it when you see it. It's the reason you can read a few paragraphs by Toni Morrison or Chuck Palahniuk or Kelly Link or Colson Whitehead and immediately know who wrote it. Something about the way sentences move, the words chosen, the attitude behind the prose. That's voice.
And it's also the thing writers struggle with most. How do you develop something as intangible as voice? Especially when you're told it needs to be "unique" and "authentic" but also "appropriate for the genre" and "appealing to readers." It feels like you're supposed to be simultaneously yourself and someone marketable, distinctive but not weird, strong but not overbearing.
Here's the truth: voice isn't something you invent or construct from techniques. It's something you discover and refine. It's already in you. Your job is to clear away the things that obscure it (trying to sound like someone else, using clichéd language, following rules that don't serve you) and strengthen the patterns that make your writing sound like you and only you.
This guide will teach you how to identify your natural voice, strengthen its distinctive elements, and develop the consistency and confidence that makes agents stop reading slush and start reading your story.
Understanding What Voice Actually Is
Voice is the sum of all your prose choices. How you build sentences. What words you select. How you pace information. What details you emphasize. How close you sit to your characters. What tone you take toward your material. It's not one thing but rather a pattern of choices that creates a distinctive sound.
Think of it like a human voice. You recognize a friend's voice on the phone within seconds not because of any single quality but because of the combination of pitch, rhythm, word choice, accent, and a hundred micro-qualities that add up to that specific person. Writing voice works the same way.
Voice operates on multiple levels. There's the narrator's voice, which is how the story is told regardless of characters. There's character voice, which is how specific characters speak and think. And there's author voice, which is the underlying sensibility that shows up across all your work even when you're writing different narrators and characters.
Strong voice isn't about being flowery or literary or experimental. It's about being distinctive and consistent. Literary fiction values voice highly, often prioritizing it over plot. Genre fiction generally prioritizes story over voice, but even in the most plot-driven genres, voice is what makes readers choose your book over another similar one.
When agents say they want strong voice, they mean: this writer has a way of putting words together that I've never quite seen before, that keeps me reading, that makes familiar stories feel fresh. They mean: this isn't generic or invisible prose, it's prose with personality.
Identifying Your Natural Voice Patterns
Your voice is already there in your writing. The problem is you might not recognize it because you're too close to it, or you're unconsciously imitating authors you admire, or you're trying to write how you think you're supposed to write.
Start by reading your own work looking for patterns. Pull up several different pieces you've written. Don't read for story, read for how you tell story. Do you tend toward short, punchy sentences or longer, flowing ones? Do you use a lot of metaphors or stay more literal? Is your prose spare or lush? Serious or laced with humor? What words appear repeatedly?
Look at how you open scenes or chapters. Do you jump into action? Start with setting? Begin with character thought? There's no right answer, but you probably have a pattern. That pattern is part of your voice.
Notice your dialogue style. Do characters speak in naturalistic fragments or complete sentences? Do you use a lot of dialogue tags or mostly action beats? How much dialect or verbal tics do you include? Your approach to dialogue is a voice element.
Check your vocabulary level. Are you using complex, precise words or simpler, more accessible language? Neither is better, but which comes naturally to you? If you're constantly using a thesaurus to find fancier words, you're probably writing in a voice that isn't naturally yours.
Pay attention to rhythm. Read your work aloud. Does it have a consistent rhythm or does it vary? Is it choppy or flowing? Fast-paced or contemplative? The sound of your sentences is a major voice component.
Notice what you emphasize. Do you spend a lot of time on internal character thought? On sensory details? On dialogue and action? What you naturally gravitate toward reveals your voice priorities.
Clearing Away What Obscures Your Voice
Once you've identified your natural patterns, the next step is removing the things that weaken or hide your voice. These are usually learned behaviors that make prose more generic.
First culprit: imitating other authors too closely. It's natural to be influenced by writers you admire, but if you're consciously trying to sound like them, you're writing in their voice, not yours. Read widely for influence and technique, but write in your own voice. If you catch yourself thinking "how would [author] write this," stop. Write it how you would write it.
Second: overusing adverbs and weak intensifiers. "Very," "really," "quite," "rather," "extremely," "incredibly," "absolutely." These words are verbal filler that dilute prose and make voice less distinctive. Cut them. Find stronger verbs and more specific nouns instead.
Third: clichéd phrases that could appear in anyone's writing. "Crystal clear," "dead of night," "cold as ice," "bated breath." These are ready-made phrases that flatten voice because they're no one's specific way of seeing or saying things. Replace them with fresh observation or just say the thing directly.
Fourth: trying to sound "writerly." Using purple prose, convoluted syntax, archaic or overly formal language because you think that's what good writing sounds like. Good writing sounds like a person who has something to say and says it in the way most true to how they see the world. If you don't naturally think in flowing, poetic sentences, don't write them. If you do, then do.
Fifth: following writing rules that don't serve your natural voice. "Never use adverbs," "show don't tell," "avoid passive voice," "short sentences for action" are all useful guidelines, but they're not laws. If your natural voice uses more telling, more passive construction, more complex sentences, and it works, then it works. Voice sometimes means knowing which rules to break.
Sixth: inconsistency. Voice should be relatively consistent throughout a work. If chapter one sounds literary and contemplative, chapter two sounds like a thriller, and chapter three sounds like sitcom dialogue, you haven't found your voice for this story yet. Consistency is what makes voice recognizable.
Strengthening Distinctive Elements
Once you've cleared away what obscures voice, identify what's already distinctive in your writing and make it more so. Double down on what makes you sound like you.
If you naturally use unexpected metaphors or specific sensory details, do more of that. If you have a dry, sardonic tone, embrace it. If you write long, building sentences that create rhythmic momentum, perfect that. If you write spare, minimalist prose, make every word count even more.
Look at successful authors in your genre and identify what makes their voice distinctive, not to copy them but to understand what distinctive means. Gillian Flynn has a sharp, acidic quality and willingness to go dark. Neil Gaiman blends whimsy with creepiness. Celeste Ng has careful, layered observations. Colson Whitehead has formal elegance with devastating directness. What's your distinctive quality?
Strengthen your vocabulary choices. If you notice you use "walk" a lot, consider when you might use "stride," "shuffle," "trudge," "amble" instead. Not to be fancy but to be specific. Specific word choice is a major voice element. But stay true to vocabulary that feels natural to you.
Develop your rhythm. If you write naturally in longer sentences, learn to vary them strategically. If you write short sentences, same thing. Rhythm that's too constant becomes monotonous. Rhythm that varies intentionally creates voice.
Cultivate your angle on the world. Voice isn't just how you write but what you notice and how you interpret it. Do you see humor in dark situations? Do you see sadness in happy moments? Do you notice specific details others miss? The perspective behind your prose is voice.
Trust your humor if you have it. A lot of writers suppress humor because they think literary fiction needs to be serious or genre fiction needs to stay on plot. But if you naturally see things with humor, that's your voice. Let it show.
Matching Voice to Story and Genre
Your voice should be flexible enough to serve different stories while maintaining core consistency. You're not writing in the exact same voice for a funny contemporary novel and a serious historical one, but both should sound like they're by you.
Genre expectations influence voice. Thrillers generally require tighter, faster prose. Literary fiction allows more expansive, contemplative voice. Romance often has warmer, more emotionally direct voice. Fantasy and sci-fi vary widely but often use more descriptive voice for worldbuilding. These aren't rules but norms.
You can work within genre expectations while maintaining distinctive voice. A thriller with your specific word choices and rhythm patterns is still a thriller. Literary fiction written in your particular style of sparseness or lushness is still literary. The genre provides the structure; your voice provides the texture.
Story needs should influence voice choices. A funny story needs lighter touch even if that's not your default voice. A tragic story needs emotional weight. A creepy story benefits from unease in the prose itself. But these adjustments should feel like modulations of your voice, not wholesale changes.
Character POV influences voice in first person and close third. The character's voice should be distinctive from other characters but should still feel like it's filtered through your sensibility. If you're writing multiple POV characters, each needs distinct voice, but readers should still feel they're reading you.
Sometimes you'll write a story that doesn't fit your natural voice. That's okay. Either adjust your voice to serve the story or recognize this might not be the story you're meant to tell. Not every story should be written by every writer. Some stories demand voices we don't naturally have.
Developing Voice Through Reading
You can't develop strong voice by only writing. Reading is where you internalize what's possible with language, absorb techniques, and calibrate your own voice against others.
Read widely in your genre. See how other writers solve voice problems similar to yours. If you're writing YA contemporary, read the best YA contemporary voices. If you're writing literary thrillers, read those. You're not copying but learning what distinctive sounds like in your space.
Read outside your genre. Literary fiction teaches voice even if you're writing mysteries. Poetry teaches compression and music. Nonfiction teaches clarity and rhythm. Cross-genre reading expands your sense of what prose can do.
Read actively when studying voice. Don't just absorb story. Stop and analyze passages where voice is particularly strong. What's the writer doing with syntax? Word choice? Rhythm? How are they creating this effect? Can you identify techniques to try?
Copy passages by hand from writers you admire. This isn't plagiarism, it's study. The physical act of writing someone else's sentences teaches you how they built them in ways reading doesn't. You feel the rhythm, the word choices, the structure. Then you can try similar techniques in your own voice.
Read authors who are stylistically opposite to you. If you write spare prose, read lush writers. If you write complex sentences, read minimalists. Understanding what you don't naturally do helps clarify what you do.
Return to books you love multiple times. First reading is for story. Second is for craft. Third is for voice specifically. Each reading reveals new layers of how the writer achieves their effects.
Practicing Voice Deliberately
Voice develops through practice, but you can accelerate development by practicing deliberately rather than just writing and hoping voice appears.
Exercise one: Rewrite the same scene multiple times in dramatically different voices. Once spare and minimalist. Once lush and descriptive. Once sardonic. Once earnest. Once in fragments. Once in long, flowing sentences. Notice which version feels most natural and effective. That's information about your voice.
Exercise two: Write a scene in the voice of an author you admire. Then rewrite it in your voice. Compare. What did you naturally change? Those changes reveal your voice preferences.
Exercise three: Take a paragraph of your writing and cut it by half without losing meaning. This forces you to identify what's essential to your voice versus what's padding. Often the tighter version is stronger.
Exercise four: Write the same character voice in different emotional states. How does your dialogue and internal monologue change when the character is happy versus terrified versus angry? Character voice should be consistent but emotionally flexible.
Exercise five: Record yourself talking about something you care about, then transcribe it. Compare your speaking voice to your writing voice. Where do they align? Where do they diverge? Sometimes writing voice that's closer to natural speaking voice is more authentic and distinctive.
Exercise six: Write first drafts fast without thinking about voice. Then revise specifically for voice, strengthening your distinctive elements. This separates the story-getting-out stage from the voice-refining stage.
Knowing When Voice Becomes Affectation
There's a line between distinctive voice and trying too hard. Voice should serve story, not overwhelm it. If readers are noticing your prose more than your story, voice might have crossed into affectation.
Warning signs: every sentence calls attention to itself. You're using unusual words just to be unusual. The syntax is convoluted for no reason. Metaphors are strained or mixed. You're breaking grammar rules without purpose. The prose feels exhausting to read.
Good voice should be distinctive but not distracting. Readers should feel the voice without constantly thinking about it. It should enhance their experience of story, not pull them out of it.
Test: can someone read your work aloud without stumbling? If your sentences are so complex or unusual that they're hard to speak, they might be too much. Prose should have flow even when it's stylistically distinctive.
Another test: do beta readers comment more on your writing style than your story? That's not always bad, but if no one's absorbed in the story because they're too busy noticing the prose, voice is getting in the way.
Remember that voice should be in service to emotional truth and story. If a sentence is beautiful but doesn't serve the scene's purpose, cut it. Voice that's too precious becomes self-indulgent. The reader's experience should always come first.
Building Confidence in Your Voice
The final piece of developing voice is confidence. Trusting that your way of writing is valid and valuable even when it doesn't sound like anyone else or doesn't follow conventional advice.
Confidence comes from practice and positive reinforcement. Write a lot. Finish things. Get feedback from readers who respond to your voice. This builds evidence that your voice works, which makes you trust it more.
Stop apologizing for your voice. Don't preface submissions with "I know this is unusual but..." or "This might be too [insert quality] but..." Own your voice. Agents and editors can tell when a writer lacks confidence, and it makes them less confident too.
Understand that not everyone will like your voice. That's actually good. Distinctive voice polarizes. Some readers love it, some don't connect. This is better than bland voice that no one loves or hates because it makes no impression. Your people will find you.
Accept that voice develops over time. Your first novel won't have the voice confidence of your fifth. That's normal. Every book you write, your voice gets clearer and stronger. Don't expect to sound like an established author when you're still developing your craft.
Remember why distinctive voice matters: because in a crowded market with millions of books, voice is what makes you stand out. Plot can be similar. Characters can be archetypal. But no one else writes exactly like you. That's your advantage. That's what agents notice. That's what readers remember.
Develop your voice by clearing away what hides it, strengthening what makes it distinctive, practicing deliberately, reading widely, and writing with confidence. Your voice is already there. Your job is to let it fully emerge, then trust it enough to let it carry your stories into the world.