10 Ways to Let your Voice Shine in your Writing

What is the Writer’s Voice?

You may be wondering: What exactly is my writing voice? Do I even have one?

Is voice simply the style that sets us apart from other writers? Does insisting on a distinct voice risk sounding prideful, like writing from an ivory tower? Or is it something more natural, the everyday rhythm of our speech, translated onto the page through our diction, syntax, and tone?

Writing books and workshops often say the same thing: our writer’s voice authenticates our writing and makes it memorable. But how do we actually let this voice shine?

Here are 10 practical and creative ways to celebrate our unique writing style.

1. Write What We Believe

Our voice needs conviction in order to resonate. Because I have only one life, it must stand on one faith, one sustaining belief. I cannot remain neutral if I expect my voice to be heard. To accommodate too many beliefs is presumptuous. At the same time, it is difficult not to compromise when contemporary culture constantly demands political correctness. But this is my life, that I live by grace, to serve only one Master.

Writing from faith is not simply about inserting Christianity into my creative work. I am not trying to preach through creative writing. The deeper question is whether my life embodies what I claim to believe. The moment I fall short, my declaration of faith is placed under scrutiny.

When I read a memoir or autobiography, I am drawn to honesty and vulnerability. That, perhaps, is the true test, both in life and in writing: the willingness to be examined, to endure criticism and questioning, while still speaking one’s convictions. Even when my flawed life falls short of my own expectations and good intentions, the call remains the same, to write what I truly believe.

2. Write from the Heart

I have often chastised myself for what I perceived as a lack of passion. Because I do not always feel joy in the many tasks I find myself doing, I sometimes wonder if I even understand what passion means. Happiness, satisfaction, even delight, these do not always accompany my work, nor do they motivate me at all times. And let me count the near to nothing monetary gains from writing content.

And yet, I keep reading. I keep writing. I keep teaching.

WordHouse has become more than a project; it has become a habit, content writing becoming more personal, more vulnerable, more emotional. Now, it is also becoming harder and harder to quit.

I have realized two reasons for this: first, my heart is crowded with thoughts, questions, and longings I cannot keep to myself. Second, writing is the one faithful act that allows me to unload every reflection I have about what it means to be human.

3. Write in the Heart Language

My first language is Tagalog, the second language is English. I can claim fluency in both, although there's this realism in my writing that is gritty in Tagalog, but is always difficult to make concrete in English.

My poems are all written in Filipino, but its difficult for me to essay in this language. So my creative non-fiction are in English. Whatever best exposes my soul, is what I believe will render my voice.

A novelette I'm writing in vernacular Tagalog reveal characters more naturally. As I use the heart language in describing atmosphere and setting, I discover new rhythms, cadence, and nuances, and I am delighted at the resulting prose that feels more alive and authentic.

4. Write Using Stories

Once upon a time. A little while back. A moment later. Last year. An hour ago. Today. These are time markers, signals of memory and transition device in a narrative.

My life becomes history the moment I record it as a past event. Yet even as I trace a clear arc, my narrative will not be in order. Trivial anecdotes will interrupt the chronology. Some dialogues will resurface. Spectacular incidents and strange characters will intrude, but they will not come from exact dates, or the dates are immaterial.

When they happened, how exactly did they happen, where they occurred, are not the main questions to answer. But how to device a what, a when, a how, and even a why. How will I write these assertive memories into small stories that will support the larger narrative flow?

A creative non-fiction device is shaping such moments into story, drawing only from emotion with incomplete facts recall. My stories must be able to suspend disbelief to illuminate truths rooted in my lived experience.

5. Write with Humor

In “The Ethics of Laughter: David Sedaris and Humour Memoir,” Cardell and Kuttainen examine how humor functions ethically in the memoirs of David Sedaris. They focus on how Sedaris blurs and contests the boundaries between fact and fiction, a technique that has drawn criticism for exaggeration and ambiguity in truth-claims. Some critics argue Sedaris exaggerates too much for work labeled nonfiction, but the authors argue that his use of hyperbole, a defining part of his humor, is defensible within the context of humorous life writing.

Rather than undermining authenticity, Sedaris humor in blending the “real” and the “realish” in his nonfiction opens my mind in the broader debates about truth, representation, and ethics.

(CARDELL, KYLIE, and VICTORIA KUTTAINEN. “The Ethics of Laughter: David Sedaris and Humour Memoir.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 45, no. 3, 2012, pp. 99–114. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44030697. Accessed 20 Feb. 2026.)

6. Write with Keen Senses

Details, details, details. But never scattered carelessly or piled on at random. Every descriptive choice is a decision.

When I “show, not tell,” I'm probing my intention: what effect do I want the language to produce? Thus, not just any image will do. I must shape, arrange, and imagine my images to connect emotion to material reality. The five senses, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, every intangible made tangible through language.

The resulting paragraph must not only be a collection of exact words, but also pre-meditated syntax, rhythm, and cadence. The language must construct character, scenario, and atmosphere. As I describe in detail, I take note of both the apparent and the withheld. How do I craft presence through absence? Even ellipses, those gaps in meaning and thought pauses, are set forth through keen and attentive language, making visible what must remain unsaid

7. Our quirks are our signature

It is not only our present time that foregrounds difference and representation across disciplines, including literature. History overflows with both grand and intimate narratives about extraordinary individuals, whether marked by physical distinction, intellectual brilliance, limitation, trauma, or oppression. Literature has long specialized in highlighting what sets a person apart. A “different” quality can be celebrated as contribution or scrutinized as failure, but either way, it becomes the "it" of the narrative, quirks compacting meaning.

My own narrative is not occupied by any obvious extraordinariness. So how will my voice emerge without spectacle? How can I sharpen it by a quirk, a strangeness, a quaintness that is mine alone, even if it appears plain? This is difficult to manage in writing, especially in a culture attuned to spectacle. We are trained to notice the exceptional and overlook the passerby.

8. Write Authentically

In “Writing Literary Memoir: Are We Obliged to Tell the Real Truth?” Michael Steinberg explores the ethical and artistic tension between factual accuracy and emotional or aesthetic truth in literary memoir. Should I recount events exactly as they happened?

Since memory is naturally constructed in our creative imagination, I need to distinguish between the “truth of event” (literal fact) and “aesthetic” or “emotional” truth (the deeper meaning or felt reality of an experience). In the memoir, I will reshape dialogue, setting, and sequence in order to uncover insight and thematic connection between my past and present selves.

Steinberg tells me that I am not obliged to document facts perfectly, but I am responsible for conveying the “real truth” in the interpretation of my emotion.

(Steinberg, Michael. “Writing Literary Memoir: Are We Obliged to Tell the Real Truth?” Writing on the Edge, vol. 12, no. 1, 2001, pp. 15–20. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43157137. Accessed 20 Feb. 2026.)

9. Write Now, Edit Later

Editing is not negotiable. As long as I’m writing, there will be a first reader, a critical eye, an editor who will eventually see my work. Even vanity publishing cannot replace this professional discipline. I believe it’s ethical to show a final draft, or something close to it, to someone trained to notice detail, who can confidently tell me how much fluff I’ve included and how to cut it.

But editing is more than pruning unnecessary words. An editor is a counselor, skilled at watching language perform, able to point out both its strengths and its limitations. An editor is a friend who will tell me when I’m wrong, biased, or short-sighted. An editor is the enemy of a bad draft, unafraid to draw lines through projections, pretenses, or excess.

An editor will let my voice stand out, because no editor settles for a whisper. An editor cares about ideas and refuses to let me remain proud, vague, or ambiguous.

10. Write Regularly

Write, write, write. That’s what I’ve been doing, sometimes even when I don’t feel like it, even when no subject seems worthy of content. Often, I pray over the pieces I write, because nowadays, writing itself isn’t difficult. You can simply spew words onto paper and call it writing. Artificial intelligence can help with that.

I have no objection to AI writing with me or me writing with AI. AI can sound authoritative. But while succumbing to this ease of production isn’t illegal, it is unethical: a mechanism that erases voice.

Writing regularly means writing from the very marrow of my thoughts, pulling words out of my own skull. This piece, which took me more than half a day to encode, is an act of vigilance against the subtle erasure of human expression, a danger that feels all too real in this age of AI.

Have you found your writing voice, or are you still exploring?