3.3: Writers Must Develop a Strong, Original Voice

Author: Patrick Thomas, English, University of Dayton

One of the most common pieces of advice to writers (old and new) is that they must spend time cultivating their voice. Far less common are pieces of advice for actually doing this work. Should writers spend months in search of an original topic, researching, and developing brilliant new subjects to write about? Such work seems particularly difficult in an era of excessive information. Or should writers journey on their own, Elizabeth Gilbert-style, eating, praying, and loving their way around the globe? This kind of journey, while glamorous, seems as extreme as it would be expensive.

Part of the reason advice about developing one’s authorial voice is scant is because the concept of voice usually implies some intrinsic characteristic of the author herself. With such a fuzzy definition, instructive advice about developing one’s voice instead gets conflated with two other aspects of good writing: point of view, or the writer’s perspective on a topic; and figurative language, the use of descriptive devices.

Why, then, does the idea of the author’s voice have such staying power in discussions of good writing? For one thing, voice is a concept that reflects the long-held belief that writing developed from spoken language and that, over time, writing became a substitute for speech. However, recent research from fields of archaeology and art history suggests that this is not the case: Writing developed not from speech but out of a need to represent numbers in the increasingly complex, economic transactions in early cultures (see, for instance, Denise Schmandt-Besserat’s work on the history of writing).

Origins aside, writing and speech are two ways of using language, so many people think it is possible to ascribe similar characteristics to each and, in turn, to conceptualize writing in terms of speech. Further, since writing and speech are conceptualized in terms of rhetorical practices—that is, the uses of language as a means of creating knowledge and effectively communicating that knowledge—applying verbal qualities of speech to writing provides a kind of shorthand for thinking and talking about writing. That shorthand also prevents us from thinking and talking about writing as its own form of communication. And the author’s voice represents one important limitation of thinking about writing in terms of speech.

No writing happens in a vacuum. Writing, as a communicative activity, is made for an audience of readers. In practice, how readers interpret writing has far less to do with passive decoding or reception of a message developed by someone else. Reading is itself a constructive act—quite literally, reading is meaning making. From the perspective of the reader, then, being a part of an audience has power. Much of that power lies in the ways readers infer an author’s voice into a text.

Suppose, for example, that you receive a love letter. You would likely interpret this letter differently depending on what you know about its author. If the love letter comes from your spouse, significant other, or paramour, you might cobble together memories of the author’s familiar expressions, knowledge of the author’s manners of language use, and even particular moments in the history of your relationship that imbue your reading of the letter with what you think the author’s motives are. On the other hand, if your love letter is written by a secret admirer, you might find the whole notion of this letter awkward, flattering, intriguing, or intrusive. With this unknown author, you have less to go on to determine what the letter means, and with the knowledge you’re lacking, the author’s voice is distant, even inappropriate.

Regardless of your letter’s author, it is important to remember that all of the conjecture about the author that goes on happens in the mind of the reader. It has little to do with the author or her voice at all. Using the author’s words, the reader weaves together an interpretation based on the reader’s own previous experience with those words, with similar genres or situations, or her own priorities for the text.

Where, then, is the author’s voice?

From the perspective of an author, an audience is always an approximation, or, as Walter Ong called it, a fiction. When an author writes, she anticipates when, how, and why an audience might use her text, but this is always a best guess, something in between what the author imagines and what actually happens when real people read her writing. In the same way, when a reader encounters a piece of writing, the author’s voice is always a fabrication—a fiction—in the mind of the reader.

This is hardly a groundbreaking observation; after all, fifty years ago Roland Barthes declared that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” Barthes’s “The Death of the Author” holds particular importance for revising contemporary myths about the author’s voice; specifically, it brings into stronger relief the fact that any rendering of the author’s voice rests solely in the ways a reader encounters a text, and what the reader pays attention to while reading. In other words, any voice of a text is contingent upon the particular ways a reader might apply emphasis to certain ideas, prioritize certain linguistic devices, and make inferences about an author’s motives, intents, or aims—all at the expense of other ideas, devices, or aims.

Recognizing that an author’s voice is a characteristic created by the reader, the concept and efforts to develop it occupy a less prominent role in the development of writing ability than writing teachers commonly give it credit for. On the other hand, letting go of the myth of the author’s voice allows for a number of possibilities that help writers develop their work.

First, letting go of this myth de-mystifies the practice of writing. Prioritizing voice stifles necessary kinds of invention practices needed to produce writing in the first place, because the priority of authenticity or unique ability over content makes writers edit themselves before they’ve even started writing. Recognizing, too, that writing is audience-driven helps to make the work of writing more manageable.

Second, de-bunking the myth of the author’s voice helps to remove the stale notion that writing is some kind of divined gift, talent, or genetic trait that some people have and others do not. Removing this obstacle to writing helps people see writing as not only important to their lives, but also an ability that is learnable, teachable, and can grow with practice.

Third, laying bare the myth of the author’s voice draws attention to aspects of good writing that reflect what readers want and need. Specifically we come to recognize that aspects of writing we claim to value—like originality, authenticity, or sheer cleverness— are perhaps less important than more practical issues like the ability to make and support a claim, the ability to select and ethically represent evidence and experience, or the ability to write in a way that readers might recognize as important.

Fourth, removing the myth of the author’s voice helps to provide a larger, more cumulative picture of how writing functions in the world. Scholars call this intertextuality—the ways writing emerges from, builds on, responds to, acts upon, and provides for other writing. Removing writing from the constraints of a single author’s voice helps to trace how writing circulates and brings about the production of more writing and to show how writing is employed in all facets of life.

Finally, relieving ourselves of the myth of the author’s voice empowers readers to consider the ways their own abilities to make meaning have an impact on the subjects they care about. It also provides a way to explain how multiple, even competing interpretations of a text can be developed through careful, critical reading practices. This is, in the end, what authors really want from readers: to engage in dialogue about the knowledge they make through the practices of writing and reading.

What’s lost by letting go of the myth of the author’s voice? Not much—except, perhaps, a clumsy metaphor that gets in the way of more accurate descriptions of a reader’s response. Conversely, letting go of the author’s voice turns writers’ and writing teachers’ attention toward more important aspects of learning to write. It allows writers to move beyond what Linda Flower calls writer-based prose—in which the primary concern is the author’s own ideas and expression of those ideas—to reader-based prose, in which the audience’s needs take priority. It re-focuses the analysis of production of writing toward what authors can help readers to think about, understand, feel, and believe. In short, letting go of the author’s voice makes room to envision the nature and function of writing more accurately—not as a series of individual disruptions, but as a continual integration of knowledge and a way of making sense of the world.

Further Reading

For more about the history of writing, see Denise Schmandt-Besserat’s website. For voice and authorship from the perspective of the “original” author, read Roland Barthes’s germinal essay “The Death of the Author.” Basic theories of audience are explained in Walter Ong’s “The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction.” For a pedagogical discussion, see Linda Flower’s “Revising Writer-based Prose” (Journal of Basic Writing). For practical advice, see Joseph Moxley’s “Consider Your Audience,” and Amanda Wray’s “What to Think About When Writing for a Particular Audience.” The latter two sources are particularly good for students to read.

Keywords

audience, authenticity, intertextuality, origins of writing, reading as meaning-making, speech, voice

Author Bio

Patrick Thomas is an associate professor of English at the University of Dayton, in Dayton, Ohio, where he teaches courses in composition theory, literacy studies, and professional writing. His is interested in how people write outside of school, new theories of what writing is, and digital culture. His Twitter handle is @ patrickwthomas.