The Writer's Voice in Literature

Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms

byRichard Nordquist
Updated October 23, 2017

In rhetoric and literary studies, voice is the distinctive style or manner

of expression of an author or narrator. As discussed below, voice is one
of the most elusive yet important qualities in a piece of writing.

"Voice is usually the key element in effective writing," says teacher and
journalist Donald Murray. "It is what attracts the reader and
communicates to the reader. It is that element that gives the illusion
of speech." Murray continues: "Voice carries the writer's intensity and
glues together the information that the reader needs to know. It is the
music in writing that makes the meaning clear" (Expecting the
Unexpected: Teaching Myself--and Others--to Read and Write, 1989).

Etymology
From the Latin, "call"

The Music of a Writer's Voice

 "Voice is the sum of all strategies used by the author to create the
illusion that the writer is speaking directly to the reader from the
page."(Don Fry, quoted by Roy P. Clark, Writing Tools. Little,
Brown, 2006)
 Voice is the most popular metaphor for writing style, but an
equally suggestive one may be delivery or presentation, as it
includes body language, facial expression, stance, and other
qualities that set speakers apart from one another."(Ben
Yagoda, The Sound on the Page. HarperCollins, 2004)
 "If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always
recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really
everything."(Mary McCarthy, Writers at Work: The Paris Review
Interviews, Second Series. 1977)

Voice and Speech

 "I think voice is one of the main forces that draws us into texts.
We often give other explanations for what we like ('clarity,' 'style,'
'energy,' 'sublimity,' 'reach,' even 'truth'), but I think it's often one
sort of voice or another. One way of saying this is that voice seems
to overcome 'writing' or textuality.
  "That is, speech seems to come to us as listener; the speaker
seems to do the work of getting the meaning into our heads. In
the case of writing, on the other hand, it's as though we as reader
have [to] go to the text and do the work of extracting the meaning.
And speech seems to give us more sense of contact with the
author." (Peter Elbow, Everyone Can Write: Essays Toward a
Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching. Oxford University
Press, 2000)

Multiple Voices
 "The personality I am expressing in this written sentence is not
the same as the one I orally express to my three-year-old who at
this moment is bent on climbing onto my typewriter. For each of
these two situations, I choose a different 'voice,' a different mask,
in order to accomplish what I want accomplished."(Walker
Gibson, The Limits of Language. Hill and Wang, 1966)
 "Just as you dress differently on different occasions, as a writer
you assume different voices in different situations. If you're
writing an essay about a personal experience, you may work hard
to create a strong personal voice in your essay. . . . If you're
writing a report or essay exam, you will adopt a more formal,
public tone. Whatever the situation, the choice you make as you
write and revise. . . will determine how readers interpret and
respond to your presence."(Lisa Ede, Work in Progress: A Guide
to Writing and Revising. St. Martin's Press, 1989)

Tone and Voice

 "If voice is the writer's personality that a reader 'hears' in a text,
then tonemight be described as the writer's attitude in a text. The
tone of a text might be emotional (angry, enthusiastic,
melancholy), measured (such as in an essay in which the author
wants to seem reasonable on a controversial topic), or objective or
neutral (as in a scientific report). . . . In writing, tone is created
through word choice, sentence structure, imagery, and similar
devices that convey to a reader the writer's attitude. Voice, in
writing, by contrast, is like the sound of your spoken voice: deep,
high-pitched, nasal. It is the quality that makes your voice
distinctly your own, no matter what tone you might take. In some
ways, tone and voice overlap, but voice is a more fundamental
characteristic of a writer, whereas tone changes upon the subject
and the writer's feelings about it." (Robert P. Yagelski, Writing:
Ten Core Concepts. Cengage, 2015)
Grammar and Voice
 "If, as we believe, grammar is linked to voice, students need to be
thinking about grammar far earlier in the writing process. We
cannot teach grammar in lasting ways if we teach it as a way
to fix students' writing, especially writing they view as already
complete. Students need to construct knowledge of grammar by
practicing it as part of what it means to write, particularly in how
it helps create a voice that engages the reader on the page." (Mary
Ehrenworth and Vicki Vinton, The Power of Grammar:
Unconventional Approaches to the Conventions of Language.
Heinemann, 2005)

The Elusive Entity of Voice

 "One of the most mysterious of writing’s immaterial properties is
what people call 'voice.' . . . Prose can show many virtues,
including originality, without having a voice. It may avoid cliché ,
radiate conviction, be grammatically so clean that your
grandmother could eat off it. But none of this has anything to do
with this elusive entity the 'voice.' There are probably all kinds of
literary sins that prevent a piece of writing from having a voice,
but there seems to be no guaranteed technique for creating one.
Grammatical correctness doesn’t insure it. Calculated
incorrectness doesn’t, either. Ingenuity, wit, sarcasm, euphony,
frequent outbreaks of the first-person singular—any of these can
enliven prose without giving it a voice." (Louis Menand, "Bad
Comma." The New Yorker, June 28, 2004)

The Power of a Literary Voice

 The Writer's Voice: 10 Writers on Writing
 Editorial We and Inclusive We
 Eudora Welty on Listening to Words
 First-Person Point of View
 Implied Author
 Persona
 Tone
 Unreliable Narrator
 Voice (Grammar)
 Voice (Phonetics)