How Writers Actually Find Their Voice (Not What You’ve Been Told)
Every new writer is obsessed with “finding their voice.”
Most of them waste years looking in the wrong places.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
You can’t discover your voice by trying to sound like yourself.
You only uncover it by first sounding like other people--and then breaking away.
Let me explain.
The Real Problem: You Don’t Want Your Voice...Yet
Almost every writer starts out wanting to sound like someone else:
Rowling. Morgenstern. Michael Scott. Neil Gaiman. King. Márquez.
I did too.
Their sentences glowed. Their rhythm pulled me in. Their descriptions made my imagination snap awake. I’d sit down to write and think, “Why can’t I just do what they do?”
Because it doesn’t work.
Trying to write like your favorite author is the literary equivalent of trying to speak with someone else’s accent. You can force it for a sentence or two--but the second real emotion hits, your natural self leaks through.
That’s not a flaw.
That’s the beginning.
What “Voice” Actually Is
Your voice isn’t some mystical inner sound waiting to be unlocked.
It’s simpler:
Your voice is the consistent way your brain sees the world--translated into words.
That includes:
your sentence cadence
your emotional range
your bias toward detail or efficiency
your preferred metaphors
the topics you obsess over
the way you describe things without thinking
Your readers don’t want a perfect voice. They want a recognizable one.
The Fastest Way to Develop Your Voice
Here’s the part nobody tells beginners:
Step 1: Imitate the people you admire. Hard. Pick three writers who move you. Spend 10 minutes each copying their style by hand.
Not the plot.
Not the ideas.
The style.
You’re training your ear the way musicians train theirs--by covering songs first.
Every great writer starts here, whether they admit it publicly or not.
Step 2: Rewrite those same paragraphs in your own words. This is where the magic happens. When you transition from imitation to translation, your natural instincts kick in:
your pacing
your humor
your emotional vocabulary
your quirks
your worldview
This contrast--between the “voice you admire” and the “voice you default to”--is precisely how your authentic voice starts to appear.
Step 3: Write a lot. Without apology. Quantity produces clarity. You don’t “discover” your voice. You drift into it by writing enough bad paragraphs to understand what your good ones feel like.
Why Reading Matters More Than You Think
Writers read for two reasons:
To steal techniques that work.
To notice techniques that annoy you.
Both shape your voice.
If long descriptions bore you, you’ll naturally write tighter scenes. If sparse writing frustrates you, you’ll build richer worlds. If an author makes you feel something, you’ll chase that same emotional architecture in your own work.
Every influence becomes a tile in your mosaic.
The Only Rule That Actually Matters
Here’s the line worth tattooing on your soul:
Imitate to learn the rules.
Experiment to break them.
Your voice comes from your influences—but the uniqueness comes from your deviations.
That’s why you shouldn’t fear sounding like someone at the start. It’s temporary. It’s training. It’s foundational work everyone pretends they didn’t do.
The Real Endgame
If everyone tries to sound like someone else, the literary world becomes a hall of mirrors.
Your voice isn’t valuable because it’s perfect.
It’s valuable because no one else can produce your exact combination of:
history
perspective
taste
flaws
obsessions
emotional patterns
lived experiences
In a creative landscape flooded with imitation, originality isn’t a skill--it’s leverage.
Final Thoughts
Stop chasing your “authentic voice” like it’s hiding under the couch.
Write.
Imitate.
Experiment.
Repeat.
Your voice isn’t something you find.
It’s something you become by writing until the way you see the world can’t help but spill out onto the page.
And trust me--when that moment hits, you’ll know.
What I love most here is the honesty. We don’t want our voice right away because it’s unpolished and uncertain. But the sooner we face that version of ourselves, the sooner we start sounding real. I learned this when I started doing my daily journaling. Writing a lot isn’t just practice, it’s exposure therapy for authenticity. I’ve been working on finding my voice not only in my writing but my painting too. Thank you for helping writers and all creatives find their voice Idris Elijah and Happy Friday to you!
This explains why no AI or formula could ever replace a true voice. It’s not about vocabulary, it’s about patterned humanity. Our quirks, memories and blind spots are the fingerprints. The voice isn’t something you find in your head, it’s something life trains out of your silence. The way I process emotion, the pacing of my thoughts is my voice. It just took a while to trust it. Thank you for this very insightful and valuable read Idris Elijah!