Why Your Writing Sounds Like Everyone Else’s

The Sound of Your Story

Voice is the most discussed and least understood element of fiction. Everyone talks about it; few can define it. Agents say they’re looking for “a distinctive voice.” Writing teachers say you need to “find your voice.” But what does that mean, practically, on the page?

Voice is how your story sounds—the personality that emerges from your word choices, sentence rhythms, observations, and attitudes. It’s what makes your writing recognizably yours, what separates your prose from every other writer’s even when describing the same events.

The Two Kinds of Voice

Authorial Voice

This is your voice across all your work—the fingerprint that identifies writing as yours regardless of character or genre. It develops over years and reflects your worldview, your ear for language, your sense of what’s worth noticing.

You can’t manufacture authorial voice. You can only discover it through writing—a lot of writing. It emerges naturally as you gain confidence and shed imitation.

Narrative Voice

This is the voice of a specific story—the particular consciousness through which this tale is told. In first person, it’s literally a character’s voice. In third person, it’s the narrator’s sensibility, which may be influenced by the POV character.

Narrative voice can be crafted for each project. A thriller might have a clipped, terse voice; a literary novel might have a lyrical, reflective one. The voice should match the story’s needs.

The Elements of Voice

Diction

Word choice is voice in its most basic form. Consider the difference between:

“The old man walked slowly down the street.”

And:

“The geezer shuffled along the sidewalk.”

Same action. Completely different voices. The first is neutral, almost invisible. The second has attitude, personality, a specific way of seeing.

What words does your narrator reach for? Formal or colloquial? Simple or elaborate? Clinical or emotional? The vocabulary you choose shapes readers’ entire experience of your prose.

Syntax

Sentence structure is voice’s rhythm section. Short sentences punch. Long sentences meander, accumulate, build toward something. Fragments. Emphasis. Variation creates music.

Read your work aloud. Where does it flow? Where does it stutter? Where do you naturally pause? The rhythm of your sentences is as important as the words themselves.

Detail Selection

What you notice reveals who you are. A narrator who observes brand names thinks differently than one who observes cloud formations. A narrator who registers emotional undertones in every interaction sees a different world than one focused on physical facts.

Your choice of details—what to describe, what to skip, what to linger on—creates voice as powerfully as word choice.

Attitude

Every narrator has opinions, acknowledged or not. A cynical narrator sees the worst in people; a naive narrator misses what’s obvious to readers; a weary narrator notices the same old patterns repeating.

This attitude colors everything. It’s not the same as the character’s conscious opinions—it’s the underlying sensibility through which the world is filtered.

Humor

Is your narrator funny? Dry? Sardonic? Earnest? The presence or absence of humor, and its type, powerfully shapes voice. Some voices find absurdity everywhere; others maintain strict seriousness.

Developing Your Authorial Voice

Write a Lot

Voice emerges from practice. You can’t think your way to a distinctive voice—you have to write your way there. Every writer’s early work sounds like their influences; mature work sounds like themselves.

Read Promiscuously

Expose yourself to many voices. Read authors nothing like you—different genres, different eras, different cultures. Your voice will absorb and transform these influences.

Imitate, Then Diverge

There’s nothing wrong with imitating writers you admire, especially when learning. The goal isn’t to become them but to understand what makes their voice work—then find where your voice wants to differ.

Trust Your Instincts

When you write something that feels right—that sounds like how you think—pay attention. That’s your voice emerging. Don’t second-guess it into genericism.

Crafting Narrative Voice for a Project

Character-Driven Voice

For first person or close third, develop your POV character’s unique way of seeing:

• What’s their education level? Profession? Region?
• What do they care about? What bores them?
• How do they speak? (Voice on the page should reflect how they’d actually talk)
• What’s their emotional default? Anxious? Confident? Depressed? Curious?
• What are they hiding from themselves?

Project-Appropriate Voice

Match voice to story. A romp needs a light touch; a tragedy needs gravity. A historical novel might justify more formal diction; a contemporary YA demands current idiom.

Ask: What kind of narrator does this story need? What voice will best deliver the reading experience I’m after?

Voice Exercises

The same scene, different voices: Write a car accident in the voice of: a paramedic, a nervous teenager, a cynical journalist, a poet. Notice how different worldviews create different stories.

Voice paragraphs: Write one paragraph describing a rainy street in the voice of each of your favorite writers. Then write it in your own voice. What did you learn?

The natural voice: Write quickly, without editing, for fifteen minutes about something that genuinely angers you. Don’t perform—just vent. The voice that emerges when you forget to be writerly is often your most authentic.

Dialogue into narration: Record yourself telling a friend about something that happened to you. Transcribe it. Notice your rhythms, your word choices, your asides. This is a version of your natural voice.

Common Voice Problems

The Inconsistent Voice

Your narrator sounds like a poet in one paragraph and a bureaucrat in the next—not for effect, but from lack of attention. Read your work aloud; inconsistencies become audible.

The Generic Voice

Prose that could have been written by anyone—serviceable but interchangeable. Usually results from playing it safe, smoothing away anything distinctive in pursuit of “correctness.”

The Trying-Too-Hard Voice

Prose that calls attention to itself, showing off vocabulary or style at the expense of the story. Good voice serves the narrative; bad voice interrupts it.

The Borrowed Voice

Prose that sounds like someone else—an influence not yet transcended. This is fine for early drafts but needs revision toward your own sensibility.

Finding Your Voice Takes Time

Most writers need hundreds of thousands of words before their voice fully emerges. This isn’t failure—it’s the process. Every sentence you write teaches you something about how you sound.

Don’t wait until you’ve “found your voice” to write. Write your way to it. The search is the work.

And when you finally read your own prose and think “that sounds like me”—when readers start describing something ineffable about your writing that they can’t find anywhere else—you’ll know the search has paid off.

Voice can’t be taught, but it can be developed. Write until yours emerges.