Style and Voice

What is style? What is voice?

Authors are told all the time to ‘have a unique voice,’ ‘find your voice,’ ‘develop a style.’ It’s about as difficult as catching sunlight in a jar.

My take on ‘style’ or ‘unique voice’ is, if you stripped away the cover of a book and all the identifying marks, and let someone read it, would they know instinctively that it was yours? Think of your favorite author. Would you know her words anywhere? Her unique style? Of course you’d recognize pages from a beloved book, but what about something new? Does an author have a unique way of crafting words that makes her ‘voice’ stand out?

I don’t know if I have that. I hope I do, but I think it’s really too elusive an idea to hit it dead on. Good writing is good writing. In my opinion, the words should fade into the background and only the story should really stick in your mind [except for a particularly good quote here and there.] When I’m finished reading a book, it should be the plot and characters that I remember, not necessarily the style of the narrative.

I’ve read several books lately where the ‘style’ of the author is apparent, and not in a good way. Quirky grammar and overused phrases don’t make style or voice, they just make a story difficult to read. This only confuses me more as to how to develop that elusive ‘voice’ that publishers want. Perhaps it’s something we can’t see in our own work-sort of like watching your kids grow up. You see them every day so the changes aren’t readily apparent to you, but when your great aunt from Winnebago, Wisconsin drops by, she can’t believe how much the kids have changed since her last visit. I can’t hear my ‘voice’ or see my ‘style’ because it’s just me, the same image I see in the mirror every day. But can my readers pick me out of a crowd?

What are your thoughts on voice and style? How do you develop them?