Writing Voice: The Complete Guide to Creating a Presence on the Page and Engaging Readers

What a great book for writers and such people who will be starting over with writing ... very helpful content ...

Voice is often considered this amorphous, quasi-mystical element of narrative. It's the Muse's whisper in your ear. It's the whole of the writer in words. "Either ya gots it or ya don't." Put that nonsense aside once and for all. This is a superb guide that addresses the mercurial aspect of voice from numerous angles, and manages to do in clear, practical, useful terms. I'm writing this review having just read Don Fry's Chapter 7: "Creating Your Own Voice." I'm a novelist, a writer, and a teacher. I am currently teaching an online course on character through Litreactor, and this week's lesson is on voice. But Fry's chapter opened my eyes to elements and techniques I had imperfectly understood before, and my mind continues to smolder with several dozen ideas I took away from it. I personally know several of the contributors, so take that into account, I suppose. But I'm not praising this book to pimp my pals. I'm praising it because it helped me understand more deeply, more precisely, and in greater detail something I thought I understood perfectly well, and clearly didn't.

My sister is an aspiring author, and she wanted this book for Christmas. Once she read through it, she said it was really helpful in helping her gain insight into using a "voice" to write a well-rounded book that could be picked up by agents. I will trust her opinion that this book is useful for aspiring authors. She said it brought questions into her mind that helped make her a better author and changed her writing for the better. This book is a compilation of different voices from different writers, so you get to hear different viewpoints, which is very interesting too!

Written by the editors of Writers Digest WD is a collection of various articles that seems originally published in the WD magazine. Already read around 6 articles with great interest.

More than anything, this book reiterates how much we've lost our voice through most of our schooling and been forced to be so mechanical! Less is more. Enjoy writing. Stop worrying so much about what everyone will think and HAVE FUN. Your voice will come naturally. I love this book.