What, Exactly, Is a ‘Writing Voice’?

Voice as bias, exemplified by Taylor Swift lyrics about weddings

Let’s say you work for hours on a story, polishing it, telling it exactly the way you think it should be told. You send it off for publication, only to be told it ‘lacks voice.’ That doesn’t feel possible. Maybe it’s narrative non-fiction — it’s a story about your life, so surely it has your voice, right? Or you thought you captured a character’s voice well in the story you submitted.

What exactly does it mean, then, if someone mentions you need ‘more voice’ in your writing? Since June is traditionally wedding season and January through December is my listening to Taylor Swift season, I thought I’d analyze two different kinds of weddings that Taylor describes in two different songs each, and what we can learn about voice from the differences.

The friends to lovers marriage

The first wedding-related song Taylor released was, ‘Mary’s Song,’ about a friend of hers who grew up to marry an old friend. Most of the verses describe their life as children and young adults. The narrator here focuses on telling a story — as is common in country music.

First the two kids are young next-door neighbors, who tease each other. ‘I dared you to kiss me and ran when you tried,’ she sings as the narrator, Mary. As teenagers, they start dating, and Taylor focuses on their first fight, when they experienced ‘the slamming of doors instead of kissing goodnight.’

Then, in the bridge, we get the wedding.

Take me back to the time when we walked down the aisle Our whole town came and our mamas cried You said, ‘I do,’ and I did too

The focus here is on the town supporting them, and on their mothers’ reactions, as they used to tease about Mary and her now-husband ending up together.

This narrator wants to remember these details while she ‘rocks babies’ of her own, and is focused on the narrative aspect of their love for one another.

Fast forward 13 years, though, and we get Taylor’s ‘It’s Nice to Have a Friend.’

Like ‘Mary’s Song,’ this one focuses on two people who knew each other as kids and slowly grew to lovers. However, instead of telling the whole story, explaining their relationship in a narrative arc, this song focuses on moments closer to vignettes: dropped gloves, video games, hints of the weather. ‘Something gave you the nerve to touch my hand.’ The tone of the song is understated from beginning to end, but nowhere is this more clear than in the bridge, where we once again get the lovers’ wedding.

Church bells ring, carry me home Rice on the ground looks like snow Call my bluff, call you ‘Babe’ Have my back, yeah, every day Feels like home, stay in bed The whole weekend. It’s nice to have a friend.

Unlike ‘Mary’s Song,’ this wedding description isn’t about how anyone reacts to their wedding. It’s about the couple. The understated ‘It’s nice to have a friend’ that concludes a description of their wedding and, uh, honeymoon plans shows a stark contrast between this narrator and Mary — not in their lived experience, but in how they interpret that experience and tell that story.

The fancy wedding

Another motif that comes up in a few Taylor Swift songs is the fancier, traditional wedding. It’s hinted at many, many times, including in the infamous ‘Love Story.’ However, I want to look at two less-known songs, one early and one later in Taylor’s career.

The first, ‘Speak Now,’ is one of the best examples of writing voice I can think of in songwriting. Everything is filtered through the lens of the narrator, who is watching a woman prepare to marry the man she loves. The details of weddings Taylor seems to love elsewhere seem awful to her here:

I sneak in and see your friends And her snotty little family all dressed in pastel And she is yelling at a bridesmaid Somewhere back inside a room Wearing a gown shaped like a pastry

Even without hearing the melody or the way Taylor sings these words, the scorn she has for everything to do with this wedding is obvious. Beautiful details are on a ‘snotty little family,’ and the wedding dress isn’t ornate or a ballgown, but ‘shaped like a pastry.’ Not to mention that this bride isn’t basking in her love, but ‘yelling at a bridesmaid.’

Compare this to the understated description of a wedding that was likely even more over-the-top from ‘The Last Great American Dynasty.’ The narrator here is disinterested, describing something she had no real stakes in.

The wedding was charming, if a little gauche There’s only so far new money goes

Considering we later learn that Rebecca would fill the pool with champagne, dye her neighbor’s dog, and blow ‘through the money on the boys and the ballet,’ her wedding was maybe not as charming as this narrator says. But, because the narrator of this song finds Rebecca’s life fascinating, rather than envying the fact that she’s getting the wedding at all, she’s far more kind when describing how the wedding looked than the biased narrator of ‘Speak Now.’

Bonus wedding allusions

It would practically be a sin for me to note Taylor’s wedding songs without mentioning ‘Lover.’ Even though the song never explicitly talks about a wedding — and this in itself is a sign of Taylor’s growing maturity and more complex understanding of relationships — it has one of the best wedding allusions I’ve ever read. Of course, I’m referring to:

Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand? With every guitar string scar on my hand I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue All’s well that ends well to end up with you Swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover

This narrator knows about weddings, understands what they represent, and is interested in moving past the way they constrain her relationships while still acknowledging their importance. The play on words here must belong to someone who knows the traditions well enough to break them. The narrator of ‘Lover’ is focused on humor both in her lover and herself, and the understanding that their pasts, blue as they might have been, led them to this moment.

‘Lover’ doesn’t describe the moment of a wedding, not even here as she plays on traditional American vows and superstitions. Instead, even in this, the focus is on their feelings for one another, and why they are stronger for coming to this moment scarred.

What, then, is writing voice?

A writing voice, to me, is the filter through which the narrator experiences the world around them. A writing voice determines what details are noted, what vocabulary is used, what emotions are felt.

No two people will have identical experiences of anything, from a wedding to a dinner party to a concert. Using these biases in your writing can elevate something from a recounting to a story.

Some ideas you can tap into to make a writing voice stronger:

• which details a character notices
• the memories these details trigger
• the emotions these details trigger
• the lens through which a character interprets someone else’s tone
• the meaning a character ascribes to someone else’s dialogue
• the metaphors and similes a character uses

A writing exercise

One of my favorite assignments I give the authors I work with is practice finding a character’s bias. The below is a variation of the work I give (which is usually book-specific). If you give this a try, I’d love to see what you’ve written in the comments.

I have three lists below: a character, a situation, and the emotional dominoes a character enters the scene with. Use a random number generator, or pick your favorites, and write a short scene or paragraph from the prompts.

To get the most out of the exercise, complete this twice, changing either the character or the emotional dominoes (or both), but keeping the situation and anything objective (like dialogue) the same.

Character list

1. A teenage boy whose favorite game is Fortnite
2. A 63-year-old woman who was a professional ballerina in her 20s
3. A college-age nonbinary person who knits stuffed animals to sell on Etsy
4. A 28-year-old mother of three kids under four who loves to travel
5. A 28-year-old father of three kids under four who works for a social media giant
6. A 30-something librarian who runs a D&D club for middle schoolers
7. A 50-year-old man who worked as an electrician his whole life and loves to go fishing
8. A 90-year-old slowly losing their memory
9. A 72-year-old woman who taught piano lessons and now has arthritis
10. A 6-year-old obsessed with Encanto, unicorns, and hot wheels

Situation

1. A dinner party with extended family
2. A wedding
3. At the movie theatre early and the previews haven’t started yet
4. Grocery shopping
5. At an airport about to board a flight

Emotional dominoes

Just before this scene, the character was thinking about/experiencing…

1. A breakup with a long-term partner (death, divorce, or breakup)
2. A confession of love from someone who matters to them
3. A fight with a relative (sibling, parent, child, etc.)
4. An unexpected bill that showed up in the mail
5. A mysterious phone call with a voice message that was mostly static
6. A great conversation about work that might lead to a promotion/job offer
7. A life-changing lottery win

Obviously, not all of these emotional dominoes will work with every character, but you can play around with combinations until one speaks to you. Then think about how the person’s interests and emotional dominoes affect the way the scene is described.

A six-year-old who just fought with their brother is going to sit through a wedding differently than a 28-year-old mother whose partner just left her, and very differently than a 72-year-old pianist with arthritis who had a winning scratch-off ticket before the ceremony.

What can you come up with? How can you use voice in your narrative non-fiction and stories to amplify the emotions associated with it?