I want to tackle something today that I often hear in the publishing industry. It sounds like this: “I look for voice-driven novels.” Often the phrase appears somewhere on manuscript wish lists, which is, in fact, where I read it recently.

Voice is one of those things that’s incredibly hard to pinpoint. It’s easy to spot when a novel has it and when a novel lacks it but what are the secret ingredients?

Here’s what to do to ensure your novel has this coveted voice thing down.

Write the way the character talks.

This is going to feel weird at first like you’re violating your English teacher’s every rule. Mrs. Trail might take some points off but do it. In today’s fiction often times what we mean by voice is the character’s traits, interests, and way of talking come through in the writing.

Let’s look at an example. I’m currently reading The Martian by Andy Weir. In it, Mark Watney has a distinct voice even though he’s just writing information in a log. He is funny, sarcastic, a little self-deprecating, nice, and nerdy. He knows a ton about astronaut things, botany, and chemistry. How do I know all this? Check out this excerpt:

“You know what really sucks? I’ve only made 130 liters of water. I have another 470 liters to go. You’d think after almost killing myself twice, I’d be able to stop screwing around with hydrazine. But nope. I’ll be reducing hydrazine and burning hydrogen in the Hab, every ten hours, for another ten days. I’ll do a better job of it from now on. Instead of counting on a clean reaction, I’ll do frequent “hydrogen cleanings” with a small frame. It’ll burn off gradually instead of building up to kill-Mark levels.”

Andy Weir’s The Martian

See what I mean? We could easily rewrite this in a completely different way, changing our word choices (That’s called diction, Mrs. Trail; see I remember things.) and the personality of the character. We could have Mark blaming everyone but himself, sitting around plotting his revenge while having zero self-awareness and zero humor. Villain character anyone?

So voice comes down to writing the way the character talks.

Often teachers, critique partners, and fellow writers might suggest writing in the first person.

Doing so will make it easier to connect to your character’s thoughts and opinions. Since we think in the first person, it’s a logical idea.

However, a writer can also crush voice in the third person, particularly third person limited. Consider Leigh Bardguo’s Six of Crows. She writes from five different perspectives, each in the third person.

And to be even crazier with this, sometimes an omniscient third-person narrator, say the one in The Hobbit, also can have a voice. Hear me out, y’all. The narrator in The Hobbit straight makes fun of Bilbo Baggins pretty much the entire novel.

If you’re struggling with voice, try the first person for a while until you get in the habit of thinking like someone else. I know that sounds creepy, but thinking like another person is a necessity as an author.

Throw away your business and academic writing rules.

Well, okay not all of them, but many of them are going to get in your way. In business writing, we strive to be professional, which often means we take out some of the personality we might use with a best friend. In research writing, we present the facts. In both instances, we limit our voice. I find this particularly true in research writing where voice makes the data sound bias. A research paper is meant to be factual and not an opinion piece, after all.

Y’all, fiction writing is one big opinion piece. I mean you’re not straight up arguing for one thing over another (well, sometimes you are but not in such an obvious way), but you are taking the opinion of your main character and applying it to the scenarios he/she/they encounter.

So, give us your crazy phrases, your unflattering yet human thoughts, your misgivings and fears. Those are what make characters sound like people not some research paper about life on Mars.

Though to be clear, I’d read Mark Watney’s paper because he’s got voice down.

What other strategies have you used to write “voice-driven” novels?

Photos by Christina Morillo, Negative Space, and Stokpic