13 Ways of Looking at the Novel: Part Nine

9.  As a matter of voice.

The claim that you need to Find your voice is one of the great mysteries of writing workshops.  Your voice is already there.  It’s the natural patterns where you feel most comfortable.  Your voice is natural and unique to you, and you can’t change your authentic voice (though you can imitate), for it is the way you project yourself artistically.

What can be changed, of course, are the novel’s tone, point of view, and other conscious decisions of style.  You can change styles and tone, and you should, from time to time, try to sing in a different key.  Or at least a new tempo. 

More on style in the next section, but as an aside, let’s look at the narrative modes.  The Wikipedia on Narrative Mode is actually a good starting point.  The single biggest decision, of course, is: in what narrative mode should the story be told?  One of the great debates in workshops is over whether the first person point of view is that its limitations detract from the possibilities of the narrative, and that is true, to some extent, but I’ve written both ways and enjoy both and find both suitable to different kinds of storytelling.  (For example, it is much easier to have an unreliable narrator if you’re writing in the first person.)