How To Bring Out Your Voice
General tips and motivation in developing your story for COSY.
One of the core tenants of COSY is showcasing unheard perspectives and ideas in modern society. A beautiful thing about this, is that everyone’s individual experience has something insightful to offer for the rest of us to support, listen, discuss, and learn from.
We believe one of the closest ways we can gain an understanding of objective truth is by collating everyone’s subjective experiences together. The more perspectives we can curate, the more we strive towards an authentic representation of a collective consciousness.
Every single person has something insightful to share from their experiences in life, and we are dedicated to being a platform to help people find their voice, and share their stories with the rest of the world.
Whether it be an elephant in the room, a confession impatiently leaping out your chest, or a general event that happened in your day which made you to stop to think, the possibilities are so endless that one only needs to do some light digging to reap a thousand great ideas.
Unfortunately, we have discovered many people seem to get hung up on the fact they “can’t write”, or aren’t confident enough to share their story; a real shame when these very people have extraordinary things to say.
So if you feel like you want to write something to us, but don’t know exactly what or how to say it, we’ve developed a guide on how to develop your voice, confidence, and hopefully even a story.
1. Ask yourself what makes you different to others.
In a crowded world where everyone is constantly telling you stories about their life and their opinions, grasp your inner voice, and focus on what makes your life unique from everyone else.
Delve into your memories, experiences, thoughts, ideas, lifestyle decisions, unpopular opinions:
e.g. Moving cities, recent breakup, social media addiction, learning guitar during lockdown, why Dune is the best David Lynch film, when I experienced sexual objectification in public…
…and write down loose ideas that could be interesting to explore. There’s no need to commit to them; just write them down as the ideas flow without overthinking it.
Eventually, you will gather ‘seeds’ for potential articles which could be developed with a little more attention, and enthusiasm perhaps for a later time.
Different articles may appeal depending on different moods or life circumstances.
Simply writing down an intention to write a story, is the crucial step to following through.
2. Find the purpose of your story.
So you found a story worth sharing, but are looking to develop it further. It is worth asking yourself what you are trying to achieve with the article:
What is the fundamental point you want to get across?
Is it a first-person perspective, or are you tackling a subject from a third-person perspective?
Is there a meaning, a lesson to take away, or just wanting to share with others?
It can help to write this down to formulate a brief plan, where you can ensure certain areas are explored:
e.g. Subject: Breaking up with someone after 5 years made me forget what single life was like.
Story: Despite the hardship, I realise it was for the better and I was denying who I was to myself for a long time.
Purpose: Finding personal satisfaction in getting things off my chest, talk about adapting to single life again and hookup culture.
You don’t have to copy this word-for-word; everyone has their own style of planning and noting, but the fundamental point is that writing any and all underdeveloped ideas is crucial to materialising your essay further.
This should help you to become more confident in recognising your ideas as seeds which can blossom into beautiful fruits with enough attention, and enough patience.
3. Write first, edit later.
The truth is the most immediately obvious thing to write, so don’t overthink it.
Recall those times when you had to tell someone else a true story. You probably didn’t have to prepare a lecture, you most likely winged it, and the truth came out completely naturally.
Just like that, the vulnerability and truthfulness will be naturally apparent in your article. Trust your gut to take you to the next area, and do not worry about your headline, subtitle, or punctuation errors until the very end. You have a lot of time to change things around.
4. Format your article at the end.
We love all the personal touches authors can give their articles, and a picture can really get help the reader enter your world. Use your own, or a friend’s image with permission to make your article stand out.
If not, don’t worry — we can match your article with kindly donated work from one of our COSY artists. Just let us know, and we can help.
We recommended writing your headline and subtitle after your article because the headline has a better chance of accurately depicting what your story is about particularly after it is written.
The headline should not be clickbait, or overly ambiguous. The best articles do well when the reader doesn’t have to guess what is going on
Your subtitle should elaborate further on your headline, so the reader doesn’t have to question what is going on in your article.
5. Sit on your article before sending it to us!
Once you’ve done, congratulations! But don’t send it through straight away. You’ve been laser focused on what you’ve just written, that it’s very likely you’ve made some errors you are yet to notice.
Letting your article sit for a bit, and approaching it with fresh eyes, will definitely give you another take on it. Want to elaborate a bit more here? Find this part unnecessary? That extra look on your article will guarantee that you’re happy with it.
Send it to COSY, and we will have a look and let you know whether or when we decide to publish your piece.
We like to think COSY differs to other publications in many ways. As odd as it sounds, we’re not looking for technically skilled writers as much as people with something important to share with the world.
Our editors are more than happy to help you along the way, without judgement. In the unlikely case we decide not to publish you, we will give you reasons why we rejected, and detailed notes on how to improve your writing.
Love —
The COSY Team
