Episode 47: Echoes of Expertise​:

Recap & Takeaways

• 01:31 Why you want a unique author’s voice
• 02:32 Tip #0 – When you don’t have a clue
• 04:28 Tip #1 – Self-reflection and exploration
• 07:02 Tip #2 – Read extensively
• 07:33 Tip #3 – Write regularly
• 08:32 Tip #4 – Define your message
• 09:10 Tip #5 – Be authentic
• 09:59 Tip #6 – Experiment and evolve

Transcript for Episode 47: Echoes of Expertise: The Art of Finding Your Author’s Voice

Every author has his or her own melody, rhythm in their words. Pick up anything by Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Ray Bradbury, Maya Angelou Stephen King  and you’ll know it’s by that author because of their unique author voice. Stay tuned to this episode of The Author Switch, and I will give you some clues, some tips, some advice on how you can develop your author voice.

Hello and welcome to Episode 47 of The Author Switch. I’m your host, Carma Spence, and I help entrepreneurs write and publish their client attracting book in 90 days or less. Now, in today’s episode of The Author Switch, I want to share with you some actionable things that you can do to find your unique author’s voice.

Now, why do you want one? Well, these days, you certainly don’t want to sound like ChatGPT. So, I, I get emails now that’s like, oh my gosh, you just pulled this from Chat and sent it to me. What the heck? Because Chat has its, Chat has its own author’s voice, and it is not yours. It is not your voice. You need to infuse your writing with your voice, and that’s especially true in your book, and especially true in your client attracting book, because you want to attract clients who resonate with you. In fact, I was talking earlier on my Coffee with Carma podcast about your Geek Factor. Your Geek Factor is communicated through your author’s voice in your books.

So how do you find your unique author’s voice?

Now, if you have absolutely no clue, one good exercise to do is to mimic other people so that you know what you like about them and what you don’t. And this is a very time-consuming exercise, but for many people it is a very helpful one.

Find a piece of writing that you like. It can be a short story. It can be a poem. It can be an article in a magazine. It doesn’t matter. If you liked it, you resonated a bit. You thought, oh, that’s a beautiful piece of writing. Take it, grab some paper and a pen or pencil, and copy it. Word for word.

What that does is teach you rhythm. It teaches you the melody of that piece. And as you’re doing it, you are going to find, wow, I really like the way that sentence was put together. If that happens, highlight that sentence. And then go on. And what you’re going to find is there’ll be some sentence that you’re like, Oh, I loved it. And others were, Eh, not so much.

Then when you’re done, you look over the highlighted ones. What is it about those highlighted sentences that really struck you? Was it word choice? Was it rhythm? Was it length? Who knows? Because for everyone, it will be something different. And what this does is give you clues as to what your music is.

Now, that is just basic, basic, basic, basic stuff. You don’t have to do it. It’s just an idea. But these next tips, I highly recommend doing, and I’ve done them myself.

And the first one is self-reflection and exploration.  That means who are you? I mean, who are you really? Who are you in the deepness of your heart? Who are you when nobody’s looking?

And I’ve talked about this on blog posts and in Coffee with Carma I’ve talked about this a lot, But one exercise is to take a piece of fiction that has a group of characters now I tend to go for the 100 Acre Wood or Star Trek.

But it can be whatever, whatever TV show you like. Friends. Could be Friends.  In fact, let’s just go with Friends as an example. So there’s the six main characters. There’s Phoebe and Rachel  and Oh God, what was Courtney Cox’s character’s name?  Can’t remember. It’s been a while since I saw Friends. Then you’ve got, Chandler. Chandler Bing.  You’ve got Matt LeBlanc, who was Joey,  and then you’ve got the sad faced guy. My gosh, you can tell it’s been a while since I watched Friends. Anyway, you’ve got these six characters, and it doesn’t matter what gender you are. One of those characters you’re gonna really like. That’s the one that’s probably most like you. In Friends, I probably liked Phoebe and Chandler the best, although Joey was kind of fun, too.

And I think the reason why I like Chandler is because he was kind of goofy, and I’m kind of goofy. And I liked Phoebe because no matter how much she sounded like a ditz, she often said something really profoundly deep, if you just went underneath the layers enough and, you know. I have my moments where I say things that are pretty darn deep.

Often I kind of sound a little ditzy. Or at least I did when I was younger.

Look at the characters that you resonate with in the books you read, in the TV shows you watch, in the movies. There is something about those characters. that says something about you. And when you get a fuller understanding of who you are, you are better able to express who you are in your words.

 Second tip is to read extensively. Writers write, but they also read. And I highly recommend read a lot in your own genre, but also read outside your genre. Because what happens is you start understanding new perspectives and new ways to communicate the same thoughts. And this can expand and enrichen your author’s voice.

Three, I just alluded to it. And that is write regularly. And it doesn’t, you don’t have to like, Oh, I’m going to write 500 words or I’m going to write 10 pages. No, just write for 15 minutes a day about anything. You can write about how angry you were at something that happened. You can write about how happy you were about something happening. You could write about your cat having the zoomies. It doesn’t matter what you’re writing about. It’s just the fact that you are writing. And I highly recommend that you do it with a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Don’t do it in typing because there’s science behind the fact that writing with an instrument actually gets what you’re trying to learn and what you’re trying to explore into your brain better than typing.

Tip number four, define your message. If you’re going to be writing a client attracting book, you need to clearly understand what your message is so that you can choose the correct stories to convey that message. And you’ll have a better idea of who your ideal clients are. because you know what your message is.

Understanding your message informs your author’s voice because it is part of the color of your message and a part of the color of your author voice.

Tip number five, be authentic.  Now what does that mean? What does authentic mean anyway? I mean you, you read a lot about it and how important it is and then you’ll hear people say things like, well be authentically authentic. Honestly, you’re either authentic or you’re not. And part of being authentic, at least in the way I think about it, is being vulnerable.

Now, does that mean you share every sob story of your life? No. It means be human, be relatable, and share those sob stories, have a lesson in them related to what you teach your ideal clients.

And finally, This is my last tip. Experiment and evolve. You’re going to, you’re going to be doing all these things.

You’re going to be practicing new ways of writing things. You’re going to be reflecting on what happened in your day. You’re going to be writing regularly, reading regularly. And as you do all these things, you are going to change. Because you are never the same two years in a row, two months in a row, two weeks in a row, heck, two days in a row, sometimes not even two hours in a row.

And your author’s voice will evolve and change too. Now, more than likely, it will have a through line. I mean, you can read early Mark Twain and late Mark Twain and still know it’s Mark Twain, but it’s different. It’s evolved. Maybe what he’s talked about has evolved. And that’s the same for you.

So, today I covered why you want to hone your author’s voice. And I’ve given you some solid advice on how to do it. I hope that you go out there, and you not only find it, but you express it. And get that book that’s in your head, out of your head and into readers hands so that you can get your message out in the world and create the ripple effect of change that you were meant to create.

This is the end of this episode of The Author Switch. This is your host, Carma Spence, saying ciao for now.

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