How to Find and Improve Your Writing Voice

Like Caitlin Clark’s phenomenal jump shot, great writing voices can’t just be “found”

Search “how to find your writing voice” and you’ll find plenty of advice that basically says: Do a lot of writing. Yeah, good luck with that. I’ve worked with scores of journalists and other nonfiction writers who wrote their fool heads off for months or years and never found a distinct voice. I’ve worked with others who were seemingly born with words flowing mellifluously out their fingers.

Voice is a hard thing to pin down. You can find it in yourself, if it’s lurking in there somewhere. But if it’s not there, then you can’t just find it. It’s not that simple. Voice is even harder to teach. So how can you know if you have a bad or sufficient or great voice in your writing, and how can it be developed and improved?

Great writing is a lot like great athletic ability. You can learn the basics and improve on just about any aspect. But like Caitlin Clark’s phenomenal jump shot, a great writing voice is one of the hardest things to achieve without natural talent. That’s not to discourage you. Just setting the expectations here for what each of us can, and can’t, realistically achieve. That all in mind, let’s figure out how you can find and improve your voice.

Since it’s so hard to define, it can help to consider what a good voice is not.