Your Voice (Holly Schindler)

What if finding your voice as an author was actually easier than everyone made it out to be? 

What if it were as easy as telling a story the way you would tell to a friend?

How do you naturally tell a story? With humor? With lots of detail? How do you draw your friends in? How do you get a reaction from them? 

That's a perfect starting point. 

As a reader, nothing hauls me into a story faster than feeling like the main character is sitting beside me, tapping me on the shoulder and saying, Wait till you get a load of this. 

Sometimes, I think we overcomplicate things as authors. We feel that in order to make our stories memorable or interesting--in order to keep our readers hooked--we feel as though we have to dig into our literary bag of tricks. Pile on the metaphor and experimental story shapes. 

But most often, what hooks a reader is being real. 

And what is more real than a voice that is as natural as the way you speak when you're not trying to be an author?

~

Holly Schindler is the author of A Blue So Dark