There’s a common attitude that editors aim to standardize a writer’s words so they sound like everyone else’s. We don’t do this. Most editors don’t. Our main goal as editors is to amplify the writer’s voice.
This thought (or mission statement) is worth developing. Of course, we poke, prod, and tinker with your writing. But there are places it would be inappropriate to tinker with. The most fundamental, inviolable part of your writing is your voice.
A Writer’s Voice
At the most literal level, every human voice is unique, and voice is one of the best ways of identifying people. It’s similar with writing. A writer’s voice is a unique, consistent fingerprint across pieces, genres, and projects.
You might think this is just a metaphor, but a writer’s voice is one of the first things we notice as we edit. Even a choppy of unclear piece of writing has a certain consistency. Voice is like the chord progression of song: it can be the same in very different pieces, as nicely demonstrated in this video.
A writer’s voice is often hard to describe in words, but with some practice and exposure it’s unmistakeable. We’re confident that we can tell the voices of our various clients with a 3-4 sentence sample.
Signs of Voice
Your writing voice is what determines your writerly identity to a reader. Readers come to know your voice through superficial markers: word choice, emphasis, sentence length, the rhythm of the writing, and so on. We consider these aspects of writing fair game for thoughtful and tactful editorial prodding, since writers are less consistent about this level than about their fundamental voice. Our pokes and prods here concern matters of execution, and we typically give writers options about how to revise, since getting too prescriptive might accidentally make wrong assumptions.
Creative writing puts voice front and centre, but voice matters in academic writing as well. Many academic writers assume that the goal of scholarly writing is to write like everyone else. While individuality is less of a norm in academic writing, voice matters a great deal. If a writer doesn’t bring out their voice, it makes a piece of academic prose sound like reporting on others’ work, instead of a contribution to a discipline.
Barriers to Strong Voices
Many things stop an authorial voice from shining through. Most obviously, if a piece is riddled with spelling and grammar errors, the voice becomes more nebulous. Individual sentences and paragraphs sometimes just don’t work—they may have issues with coherence or cohesion. Sometimes sentences and paragraphs are just too unique to a writer, showcasing the flow of thought in a way that’s hard to follow. Dealing with this is a matter of polishing.
Sometimes the problem is inherent to a piece of writing. Something hasn’t come together. The goal needs to be clearer. Or more research needs to happen. Dealing with this is a matter of strategizing.
There are deeper barriers. The most common one with writers is lack of trust in their authorial voice. We see this especially with grad students. Grad students are usually budding academics who are still unsure of their capacities. They’ve read enormous amounts of other people’s writing, and try their best to emulate those voices, sometimes at a disservice to their voices. Here our intervention looks more like coaching and dialogue.
More broadly, the deepest problem for authorial voices is self-doubt, which can only be addressed patiently and persistently, ideally in a supportive community.
Developing Voices
Our job is to both diagnose the problem and to suggest remedies that are appropriate to the problem. Helping a voice shine through depends on what the problem is. In the longest term, we work with writers to provide an interested reader with whom they can sharpen their skills. But we are always only developing what’s already there.
We respect the mystery and the drive behind an author’s voice, whatever it may be. It would be inappropriate for us to tell a writer how and why they write, or what they’re trying to convey. Our work, boiled down, is that we help the writer’s voice pop off the page, whatever it may be.