Finding your Voice as a Writer

Posted by Helen Brain Sep 2, 2009

Learning to Write

I teach writing at an online writing college. For the first year I taught a course called 'Write a Book for Children.'

But as I worked through the full course with my first students, I realised that most people, unless they are naturally gifted and great readers, don't have the nuts and bolts basics of putting together scenes, characters and situations.

So I wrote a new course, the Basics of Creative Writing, and the response has been overwhelming. I am amazed by the number of people who have signed up.

The course consists of notes and 60 exercises to complete, and the surprising thing to me is how interesting marking the assignments is.

When I was a school teacher, faced with a pile of essays to mark, my heart used to sink. I hated it. I have a low boredom threshold, and doing the same thing again and again made me feel desperate.

But now its different. With almost 70 students, I'm spending every morning marking, but its always interesting.

My students range from teenagers to retirees. People facing midlife crises and wanting to follow their dreams, scientists who want to stretch the right side of their brains, and people who loved writing at school and want to regain the pleasure.

It's astonishing how different their responses are to the same exercises. Of course the exceptional student is a great pleasure, but more satisfying is the student who starts out with no technique, and by the end of the three modules is able to write a scene that moves me, and makes me want to read more.

Find your Voice as a Writer

My biggest challenge as a teacher is helping people to find their own voice. And the thing I am strictest about is removing all 'alien' sounding words - the forsooths, ruby heads, zephyr winds, bejewelled hands, piteous gazes and other words that sound outdated, but jar with the rest of the work. These were usually imprinted in childhood or adolescence, and the writer has adopted them as 'writerly.'

If you don't use a word in every day speech, don't use it in your writing, (unless it is spoken by a character who does use it everyday. ) Stay true to the way you speak normally, and your writing will sound genuine and appealing to the readers.