Continuing from Strengthening Your Writing Voice Part 1, the final tool at your disposal as a writer is:

Tone

Tone is what we use to convey our attitude towards our characters, the subject, the situation, in our writing, be it a fictional story or a non-fiction essay. No matter what you feel about the subject you are writing, you need to tell your readers and we achieve that using a mixture of syntax and diction and emphasizing it through imagery and details. A reader must be able to perceive your attitude, your tone through these elements of your writing.

While you can get away with using just one or two of these tools, to make your writing voice really stand out, you should use all of them, in the right place and at the right time. Now we’ll look at some tips on how you can make your voice heard.

10 Tips for Making Your Writing Voice Stronger

If a person were to say to you, ‘I know it’s your work as soon as I read it', then you know that your writing voice is distinct already. Usually, the first people to say this are your mentors or people that you have asked to critique your work but, given time, given enough published work, your readers will be saying the same. It is important to keep your voice strong or, if necessary, make it stronger than it is. Here’s how:

Keep expanding your vocabulary. Do this by reading a lot of different publications, have a thesaurus with you always and learn an unfamiliar word every day – along with its meaning, of course!

Get your sentence structure right. Study the way a sentence should be structured; if necessary, go back to basics and learn it all again.

Keep an eye on your grammar.  All writers, no matter how professional they are, how many books they have under their belt, can get some benefit from this. Learn the grammar rules and you will find your confidence is boosted – and your editing time is reduced.

Be more specific.  Don’t brush over details in your descriptions; we want to know all about your characters, the setting, the scenery, what’s going on, everything. Every word must count so make sure you choose the right ones.

Use the senses. List some words that correspond to each of the senses and then use them – try to use a minimum of 2 in each story or piece that you write.

Be a little risky. Give your instinct a bit of free rein when it comes to making decisions. You might think a word is wrong but try it – it might just fit!

Hook your reader. The first line or two is important so use them to hook your reader and reel them in.

A memorable exit. As with openers, your exit should be memorable so practice at coming up with the right lines or words.

List everything. Everything that means something to you is a possible subject so list it and write it.

Read everything. Reading another person’s work is a good way of seeing what goes into voice, followed by a bit of experimenting on your own work.

In simple terms, the better your writing is, the stronger your voice will be.