Finding and Developing Your Writing Voice and Style

I’ve been working on a new romance series that is darker and in a different sub-category than what I normally write for myself. Because I write mafia romance for my client, I felt this shift would be easy. Interestingly enough, it hasn’t been. It almost feels like trying to write with my non-dominant hand.

The problem I’m having is holding onto my voice while adjusting my style.

All writers have their own voice and style. If you read, you probably can recognize your favorite author’s voice and style, in the same way you can hear a guitar riff and know who the band is (I’ve always wondered how musicians can play the same instrument and yet make a sound uniquely theirs).

Many writers struggle with finding their voice and style. Sometimes the terms are intertwined even though they mean different things.

This post will help you understand, uncover, and strengthen both.

What Is a Writing Voice?

Your writing voice is the personality of your writing. It’s the worldview, the attitude, and the energy behind your words. Voice is the “you” readers connect with. When readers describe their favorite authors, it isn’t just the stories they tell, but how they tell them. It’s not unusual for a reader to say, “I like their style of writing,” but usually what they mean is the voice.

Your voice shows up in:

• how you phrase things
• the rhythm of your sentences
• how you observe the world
• the words you gravitate toward
• the emotional tone you default to
• how you use humor, sensuality, or tension

Two romance authors can write the same scene, beat for beat, but deliver vastly different experiences based on voice alone.

When people say AI-generated content is lacking the human element, it’s usually because it doesn’t have a voice. Instead, it reproduces work based on patterns it finds after being trained from millions of books, all with different voices. But it can’t recreate that je-ne-sais-quoi of voice…at least not very well yet.

What Is Writing Style?

If voice is your writing personality, style is the craft you use to express it.

Style includes:

• sentence length and structure
• pacing choices
• how you write dialogue
• how descriptive you are
• how you handle character internal elements (thoughts, feelings, etc)
• the level of heat and how you depict intimacy
• POV distance (deep third, first person, omniscient, etc.)

Unlike voice, which remains mostly consistent, style can change intentionally depending on the story, the genre, or even the scene.

Voice vs. Style 

A simple way to think of it:

• Voice = who you are on the page.
• Style = how you shape the words to support the story.

Voice is your fingerprint. Style is the outfit you choose to wear today.

How to Discover Your Natural Writing Voice

1. Notice How You Tell Stories in Real Life

Do you ramble? Do you jump right to the point? Are you warm? Sarcastic? Poetic? Your natural storytelling habits are clues to your voice.

2. Freewrite Without Editing

Many authors start out trying to write like others they know who are well-renowned or they like. But trying to sound writerly smothers your voice. Practice writing in your own voice with prompts like:

• Write about your first crush.
• Describe the ocean.
• Write a scene where a character wants something desperately.

3. Pay Attention to the Books You Love

If you gravitate toward angsty slow burns, dark romance, swoony contemporary, or playful romcoms, your voice likely leans in that direction too.

4. Look for What Comes Easily

Areas that you’re good at writing hint at your voice.

• Banter?
• Emotional depth?
• Worldbuilding?
• Intensity?
• Sexy tension?

How to Strengthen Your Voice

1. Write Consistently

There’s no shortcut. The more you write, the clearer your voice becomes.

2. Lean Into Your Strengths

When I pitched my first nonfiction book to agents, I got rejections every time. At first I couldn’t figure out why. The content was great. And then I stumbled on voice and style. I realized that I’d written my book and proposal like a high school paper. The content was good, but the delivery was dry. On my next attempt, I wrote the book and the proposal as me, a pajama-clad mom working from home. Two agents expressed interest in representing the book, and it sold to Adams Media. That is the superpower of voice.

If you’re naturally funny, let yourself be funny. If you’re emotional, go there. If you’re dark and broody, embrace it…in your writing, that is.

Trying to suppress your natural tone leads to flat, dry writing.

3. Borrow Structure, Not Sound

Stephan King says in his book, On Writing, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” (BTW, it’s worth getting the audio as King is the reader, making the insights he shares all the more interesting).

The more you read, the more can recognize authors’ voices and style. I feel confident someone could hand me a Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb book, and I’d figure out it was her.

Of course, in this tip, I’m not suggesting plagiarism or mimicking someone’s voice. Instead, reading helps you see how other authors plot, use pacing, as well as voice and style.

4. Experiment With Different Forms

If you’re struggling to find your voice, consider writing something different, such as:

• short stories
• flash fiction
• monologue scenes
• letters
• text message scenes

Each form reveals different facets of your voice.

5. Balance Character Voice and Author Voice

There’s a writer in my writers group who has a voice/style that involves dropping the noun or pronoun in his sentences. The problem is, everyone of his characters speaks and thinks the same as he does, also dropping nouns and pronouns. This makes everyone seem the same. Your characters need to have their own distinct voices, even as the overall narrative still carries your tone. Character voices fit within your author voice, not replace it.

Common Mistakes Writers Make With Voice

• Believing they “don’t have a voice.” If your voice isn’t coming through in your writing, it’s probably because you’re trying to emulate other writing.
• Thinking voice is something they must consciously invent. Voice is discovered through writing, and it can evolve, but it already exists within you.
• Editing out their uniqueness. Stay true to you!
• Mimicking other authors in a new subgenre.
• Fearing their voice is “too much” (too quirky, too dark, too emotional).

Your voice is never the problem. Doubt is.

How to Develop Your Writing Style

While voice is your personality, your style is the words and how you use them to convey your story. Style can be developed and improved. The best way to do that is to:

1. Study Craft

Learning how to control pacing, structure scenes, or vary your sentences strengthens your stylistic range. Look at what happens to your writing if you delete the filler words (very, pretty, really, just, etc). See how the sentence gets stronger.

She was pretty mad. VS She was mad.

Or replacing a dialogue tag with action or thought. Dialogue tags are telling. Why not indicate the speaker through action or thought that highlights what is being said?

“I hate you,” she said. VS “I hate you.” She threw a vase at him.

Learning about deep POV helped me learn to write stories that evoke more imagery and emotion from the reader.

2. Read Like a Writer

I recently read Can’t Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan, and something about her writing hit me. I read a lot and enjoy the writing style and voice of many authors, but Ryan’s had a fullness or richness…I can’t even explain it, that resonated with me. When that happens, I pull out my sticky tabs and markers, and study to figure out the writing. Again, I don’t want to mimic, but instead I seek understand how she used words to evoke my response.

Going back to Stephan King’s recommendation to learn about writing through reading, look closely at how your favorite romance authors:

• build tension
• pace their chapters
• balance description and action
• craft heat and intimacy

Dissecting style can help you refine your own.

And yes, consider annotating books to help you determine style, voice, and other elements of writing. If you’d be interested in me doing a post on how I annotate books to study writing, let me know.

3. Play With Rhythm

New writers in particular tend to use longer sentences, trying to stuff as much information into them as possible. While longer sentences can serve a purpose, so do shorter ones. And remember, in fiction, you don’t always have to follow the rules of writing in that you can use fragments and even passive voice as a tool to control pacing.

Longer sentences offer a relief, or a slower build of tension. Shorter sentences crank up the tension.

I ran, feeling the wolves’ breath on my heels, the panic in my chest growing until I reached the cliff.

I jumped.

4. Use Creative Constraints

When I was in tenth grade, my English teacher had us write a personal essay without using the verb to-be in any form. (is, was, had been, etc). Go ahead. Give it a try. It’s not easy. But what it does is force you to find more descriptive verbs.

Eliminating to-be verbs isn’t the only challenge you can try. Others include:

• a scene without dialogue
• a scene only in dialogue
• a scene limited to one page
• a scene where you heighten sensory detail
• a scene without adverbs (this is a good challenge as, like eliminating to-be verbs, it forces you to find better verbs).

Exercises to Help Clarify Your Voice and Style

1. The Voice Journal

Write what you feel, not what you think you should sound like. Use your journal to practice other exercises listed on this page, such as freewriting.

2. The First-Page Experiment

Rewrite the first page of your novel three different ways:

• lighter
• darker
• more descriptive

Look at how your voice shows up in all three.

3. The Genre-Shift Scene

Write the same kiss scene in:

• contemporary
• romcom
• dark romance
• paranormal

Compare how your voice adapts.

4. The Word and Mood Map

List the words, emotions, and sensory details you use most often. These are your voice signatures. Autocrit has a feature that will do it for you. 

How You Know You’ve Found Your Voice

• Writing feels more natural than forced.
• Readers (or beta readers) describe your writing with similar traits.
• You can shift style or tone without losing authenticity.
• Your writing feels like you, even in a different subgenre.

Changing Your Voice and Style When Switching Romance Subgenres

I opened this post on the challenge I was having in switching my voice/style to something darker and more serious. Having written mafia for my client, I thought it would be a piece of cake to make this transition, but for reasons I’m not sure of, it hasn’t been.

Initially, the stories I wrote felt flat (no voice). I think that has improved; however, the style is still not as dark as I’d like.

Moving from one romance subgenre to another that requires a different tone, pacing, and atmosphere can be a challenge, but one you can do. Many authors, including Nora Roberts, have moved from softer romances to grittier suspenseful ones. I might argue that the grit was always there, but tucked away as they built their author careers in contemporary romance. But if that’s the case, then their softer romances were written in a style/voice they had to develop.

Here’s what to consider as you make the switch:

Your Core Voice Doesn’t Disappear

Your worldview, your emotional tendencies, and your natural rhythm stay with you. What changes is how you express them.

Think of it as changing the music, not rewriting your personality.

Style Is the Part That Shifts Most

Each subgenre has stylistic expectations that you need to adapt to. Here are some examples:

Contemporary Romance

• clean, modern prose
• emotional but grounded
• balanced pacing

Dark Romance

• sharper edges
• heightened stakes
• more visceral description
• deeper interiority (often involving trauma)

Romcom

• quick rhythm
• banter-first dialogue
• comedic timing

Paranormal Romance

• lush, atmospheric prose
• intentional worldbuilding
• heavier sensory detail

Historical Romance

• immersive period detail
• slightly more formal or elegant sentence structure
• attention to manners, social rules, and historically accurate language
• descriptive worldbuilding grounded in time and place

Meeting reader expectations when changing genres is trickier than it might seem. I’ve liked Autocrit‘s alpha reader feature to help me identify areas in which I might be missing mark. It has “readers” in several genres and subgenres, and has done a good job in pointing out parts of my story that readers might not like or that fall short based on genre expectations.

Emotional Tone Shifts Second

Emotional tone is also a factor in stylistic choices. This is where I’m struggling in going from lighter, quirkier to darker. When you change genres, you need to consider:

• How dark?
• How funny?
• How sensual?
• How atmospheric?
• How psychological?

Techniques to Evolve Your Style

• Rewrite a scene in your new subgenre’s tone.
• Create a vocabulary list for the new mood.
• Analyze sentence patterns of authors in your target subgenre.
• Experiment with new pacing and POV (first person vs third person)
• Look at changing tense (e.g. past tense to present tense or vice versa).

Expect a Learning Curve

Your first attempt in a new subgenre won’t feel smooth. In fact, it’s a bit uncomfortable, at least it has been for me. The discomfort comes from feeling like the writing is flat. But the more you write, the more you practice and develop in your new style.