.product_section .product_form, .product_gallery { opacity: 1; } .multi_select, form .select { display: block !important; } .image-element__wrap { display: none; }

Finding Your Writer’s Voice: Expert Advice for Developing Your Style

May 01, 2019 | 7 min read

Whether you write blogs and articles or your focus is on fiction, you need to find your voice. Every writer has a unique voice or style - but sometimes it can take a while for you to actually find your own voice. Especially when you’re first starting out as a writer, you may find that you’re trying to imitate another writer’s voice, and that means your unique voice is hidden.

Here’s the thing: you don’t need your writing to sound like another writer’s. In fact, imitating other writers’ style will not help your writing to get noticed. Your readers want something different, not another clone of a popular writer or author. They want to hear your voice - your unique, authentic voice.

What Is a Writer’s Voice, and is it the Same as Your Style?

Before we dive into the meat of this article, I want to take a moment to define what exactly I mean when I talk about your voice as a writer and how that relates to your overall style of writing. Some people argue that voice and style are two completely different things, but there are so many overlaps it’s impossible to separate them.

Your voice as a writer comprises:

Your personality
Your tone
Your choice of words
Your use of punctuation
Your attitude
Your personal preferences or personal style
Your approach to sentence structure
Your attitude towards strictly following grammatical ‘rules’
Your use of formal or informal language
Your use of language when you speak

You can see from this list how your true writer’s voice will be unique to you because it’s affected by your personality and your unique way of using language. When it comes to style, there may be some variations in your voice, depending on the audience that you’re writing for.

Ultimately, whether you’re writing for an academic publication, a magazine or publishing a blog, your voice should still shine through in your adaptation of a particular style. Your voice will also mean you favor particular styles of writing, too, so there’s no way of completely separating the topics of voice and style.

But why do so many writers struggle to use their own writer’s voice? There’s actually a superb explanation.

Beating Imposter Syndrome

Those self-doubts that you experience every time you sit down to write, and that feeling that your writing can’t compete with all the ‘great’ writers out there, is often referred to as ‘imposter syndrome’. Although you love to write, you’re never satisfied with the results, and you’re constantly waiting for your readers to discover that you’re ‘not really a writer’.

Imposter syndrome is a huge barrier to using your own unique voice. While there’s no magic way of getting rid of imposter syndrome, when you focus on developing your own voice instead of copying someone else’s style, you will gradually see the value of using your unique style.

Techniques for Unleashing Your Writer’s Voice

So, how can you explore your own writer’s voice when you’re so used to imitating your favorite writers? I’ve spent a lot of time researching this topic (since I really struggled with imposter syndrome when I first got started) and have pulled together some of the best advice and exercises that will help you discover your unique writing style.

1. Set Your Voice Free

When I first started writing fiction, blogs and articles, I found that I was focusing far too much on ‘doing it right’. I could spend days writing and rewriting an opening sentence or paragraph because I was worried about breaking the ‘rules’. I blame the education system for enslaving me to a long list of grammatical rules that must not ever be broken.

I was also too focused on finding stylistic guidelines to religiously follow, even though I hated those self-imposed regulations. The ridiculous part was that I knew that a lot of writers regularly broke both grammatical and stylistic rules, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that in my writing. I was trapped and I didn’t know how to get free.

Then I discovered freewriting when I took a creative writing course as part of my college degree. We were instructed to spend at least 15 minutes every day freewriting, and I found it so liberating. So, what exactly is freewriting?

Freewriting sets your voice free because you’re deliberately breaking the rules that hold your voice back. It gives you the opportunity to explore your creativity, to express yourself without restriction and stop worrying about ‘what people will think’. Because you’re freewriting just for yourself, there’s some psychological stuff going on that breaks the chains that have prevented your unique voice from truly emerging.

2. Write Even When You Don’t Have to Write

If writing is your career, it’s easy to get into the trap of only writing when you have a project to complete (i.e. you only write when you’re getting paid to write). That’s not good for your writer’s voice, because you’re losing that sense of writing for pleasure and your writing can become more formulaic.

Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote Outliers: The Story of Success,reckons that it takes 10,000 hours to perfect your craft - and while that figure may be an exaggeration (and has been disputed), I think it’s important to bear it in mind. You will not find your unique voice if you don’t get lots of practice - and that means you need to write for pleasure as well as for profit.

Setting yourself (achievable) writing practice goals - for example, to write (for pleasure) for at least 30 minutes every day - can give you the space you need to explore your writer’s voice. When you have a regular writing habit that’s not hampered by guidelines set by other people, it’s easier to get into the flow that will reveal your own unique voice.

At the end of each week, set aside some time to read back what you’ve been writing and you should be able to see patterns in your language and how your personality shines through your writing. That’s your writer’s voice, and the more you practice using it, the more comfortable you’ll become with sharing it with the world.

3. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

If you’re the kind of writer that sticks to one kind of writing (for example, you only write blogs, or you only write poetry, or you only write fantasy fiction), then getting out of your writing comfort zone can really help you discover more about your writer’s voice.

When you write in a genre or format you’re not used to or don’t read a lot of, you don’t have the same preconceptions about what your writing ‘should’ sound like. That means that when you start writing, your voice is more likely to emerge easier since you’re not trying to make your writing ‘conform’ in some way.

Here are some examples of types of writing that may be out of your writing comfort zone and can help you explore the way your writer’s voice emerges when it’s totally free:

Creative nonfiction
Journalistic-style writing
A completely different genre of fiction to what you’re used to reading or writing. Genres include:
- Historical fiction
- Romantic fiction
- Children’s fiction
- Young adult fiction
- Science fiction
- Fantasy
- Crime
- Thriller
- Literary fiction
A piece of persuasive writing
A political speech
Poetry
A short play/film script
Biographical writing

4. Take A Journey of Self-Discovery

A crucial part of exploring your writer’s voice is knowing yourself and understanding how you view and relate to the world around you. If you’re struggling with your writer’s voice, maybe you need to spend some time on a journey of self-discovery.

It’s really easy to be swayed by other people’s opinions and views - to the point that you can easily internalize someone else’s way of thinking and being. Because those views and thinking patterns can actually be at odds with your natural (unique) ways of thinking and being, there can be internal conflicts that may affect your writer’s voice.

To reconnect with your way of thinking and being, you need to do some deep work in getting to grips with your own opinions, way of seeing the world, and your passions. At the root of self-discovery is paying attention to what makes you happy, what inspires you, what brightens your day, what makes you angry, what causes you’re passionate about.

All of these things will impact on your unique writing voice, and so the more you explore them, the more you’ll be able to unleash your writer’s voice. Getting comfortable with you empowers you to take more risks in your writing and your writing voice will thank you for the investment you put into self-discovery.

Journaling is an excellent means of self-discovery, and it’s good practice to get into a habit of regular self-discovery journaling sessions. There are guided journals available to buy from places like Amazon if you feel you need help in getting started with journaling. Or you could use these questions as prompts for your self-discovery sessions:

My greatest strength is…
I can’t stand it when other people…
If I had a theme song it would be…
When I think about the future, the thing I fear the most is…
When faced with a challenge, I…
If I encountered a road that had three forks and one path led to a mountain, one led to a forest and the third led to an ocean, I would choose… (explain why)
The things I am most passionate about are…
The charitable cause I’m most passionate about is…
Injustice in the world makes me…
If I had an unlimited budget I would...

Discover Your Writer’s Voice and Set Yourself Free

Discovering and developing your writer’s voice is an adventure that can have a massive impact on the power of your writing. When you’re embarking on the adventure, though, remember that your voice continues to develop as you write. As you mature, for example, you may notice subtle changes to your writer’s voice and even the types of writing you enjoy the most.

The goal in discovering and developing your writer’s voice is to get out of the imitation trap and learn to love your own unique voice instead of feeling you need to copy another writer you admire. When you invest in developing your writer’s voice, you’ll gain confidence and your writing will become much more impactful.

Every writer has, at some time or other, struggled with their writer’s voice, even bestselling authors like Stephen King. Persevere with your journey of discovery and you’ll get to the point that Stephen King has reached - where your readers can recognize your voice without seeing your name.

The Haunting

Hitting “publish” on an essay or a blog always stirs up insecurity — the overthinking, the over-editing. The fear that someone will call me out for not being a real writer.

I initially hesitated to make writing part of my freelance work. My background is in photography and design. Writing was something I gravitated toward, but I had no degree to validate it. No official stamp of approval.

Like many writers, I started with zero confidence in my voice — agonizing over edits, drowning in research, second-guessing every word.

I even created a shield for myself: ghostwriting.

I even created a shield for myself: ghostwriting.

If my words weren’t my own, they couldn’t be wrong. Ghostwriting meant safety — no risk, no vulnerability, just words without ownership.

I still remember the feeling of scrolling to the bottom of an article I had written and seeing someone else’s name, their face beside words that had once been mine. It felt uncanny — like recognizing your handwriting but not remembering when or why you wrote those words. I knew it was mine, but it didn't feel like it belonged to me anymore.

The truth is, I always wanted to write. As a kid, I imagined it. Yet, I found myself handing over my work, letting someone else own it.

I told myself it didn’t matter. It was work. Getting paid to write should be enough.

But here’s the thing: I wasn’t just playing it safe — I was slowly erasing myself. Word by word. Edit by edit. And finally, in the by-line.

I wasn’t just playing it safe — I was slowly erasing myself. Word by word. Edit by edit. And finally, in the by-line.

The Disappearing Act

This was true when I was writing under my own name, too. The more I worried about getting it right, the less I sounded like me.

I worried. I worried about how long an essay was (“people will be bored”), finding endless examples as proof of my research (“no way my own opinion is valid on its own”), the title I gave a piece (“it has to be a hook”), or editing out personal touches (“better to be safe than be seen”).

I built a guardrail around my writing, adjusting, tweaking, over-correcting. Advice meant to help only locked me in. It created a sentence rewritten to sound smarter, an opinion softened to sound safer, a paragraph reshaped to sound acceptable.

I built a guardrail around my writing, adjusting, tweaking, over-correcting.

But playing it safe makes the work dull. Writing loses its edge.

It took deliberate effort to break this habit. I’m not perfect, but here’s what I know after a year of intentionally letting my writing sound like me:

My work is clearer. It moves with my own rhythm. It’s less shaped by external influence, by fear, by the constant need to smooth it into something more polished, more likable.

But playing it safe makes the work dull. Writing loses its edge.

Invisible Strings

The drive for acceptance is a slippery slope — one we don’t always realize we’re sliding down. It’s present in the small choices that pull us away from artistic integrity: checking how others did it first, tweaking our work to fit a mold, hesitating before saying what we actually mean.

And let’s be honest — this isn’t just about writing. It bleeds into everything.

It’s there when we stay silent in the face of wrongdoing, when we hold back our true way of being, when we choose work that feels “respectable,” whatever that means. It’s in every “yes” we say when we really want to say “no.”

If your self-expression is rooted in a need for acceptance, are you creating for yourself — or for others? Does your work help you explore your thoughts, your life? Does it add depth, energy, and meaning?

My work is clearer. It moves with my own rhythm. It’s less shaped by external influence, by fear, by the constant need to smooth it into something more polished, more likable.

I get it. We’re social creatures. Isolation isn’t the answer. Ignoring societal norms won’t make us better writers. Often, the most meaningful work is born from responding to or resisting those norms.

But knowing yourself well enough to recognize when acceptance is shaping your work brings clarity.

Am I doing this to be part of a community, to build connections, to learn and grow?

Or am I doing this to meet someone else’s expectations, dulling my voice just to fit in?

Owning the Words

Here’s what I know as I look back at my writing: I’m grateful for the years spent learning, for the times I sought acceptance with curiosity. But I’m in a different phase now.

I know who I am, and those who connect with my work reflect that back at me — in the messages they send, in the conversations we share.

I know who I am, and those who connect with my work reflect that back at me — in the messages they send, in the conversations we share.

It’s our differences that drive growth. I want to nurture these connections, to be challenged by difference, to keep writing in a way that feels like me. The me who isn’t afraid to show what I think and care about.

So, I ask you, as I ask myself now:

If no one was watching, if no one could judge, what would you write?