A story’s “voice” is sometimes hard to define or talk about. You’ll hear people in the industry praising a certain writer’s voice, or asking for a certain kind of voice in their submissions—quirky, lyrical, etc. I’ve had people ask me how to practice developing one’s own voice, or improve it.

But what exactly is voice?

Wikipedia (that college professor’s bane…) provides the following:

The writer’s voice is the individual writing style of an author, a combination of idiotypical usage of syntax, diction, punctuation, character development, dialogue, etc., within a given body of text (or across several works). Voice can be thought of in terms of the uniqueness of a vocal voice machine. As a trumpet has a different voice than a tuba or a violin has a different voice than a cello, so the words of one author have a different sound than the words of another. One author may have a voice that is light and fast paced while another may have a dark voice.

READ MORE via Literary Voice: Developing it…and defining it..