Voice and Learning

I was listening to a podcast, and the podcaster reviewed Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.” He said how well-written it is, and I decided to read some excerpts. During this time, I remembered a criticism that I got from a literary agent talking about “voice.” I honestly didn’t understand “voice” very much and just wrote how I wanted to. 

Reading some excerpts of “Alice in Wonderland,” I was surprised by a lot of things. For one, the sentences that I read were particularly long, and I was under the impression of condensing and having a “less is more” mentality. The other thing is that I can identify the “voice” of the author in what I read. I can tell that the author’s “voice” which entails quirks, humor, knowledge, etc. was present in what I was reading.

In college, I wrote a lot of essays and helped many students with their essays. Now, I’m not saying that my writing is totally essay-like, but having essay writing being the primary source of my writing, I can tell that certain aspects of that such as rigidness and not really having a “voice” are present in my writing. I can write a grammatically correct sentence, and I can even describe the actions in a way that I’m “showing” and not “telling,” but I always knew that one couldn’t really tell who wrote that sentence. Hopefully, with this newfound knowledge, I can lend my own “voice” to what I am writing.