Find Your Unique Voice as an Author With This 20 Book Exercise Assignment:

(a). Take ten books or short stories you absolutely despise, all in the genre you want to work in (whether literary fiction, thriller, horror etc). This is also a good moment for you to remember that we write what we read—so if you read short stories mostly, that’s the genre that might be most natural for you. Now copy out the first page of each book (or story) on your computer, or if you prefer, hand-write on a piece of paper.

When that’s done, edit each first page in a way where you think it’s better. Your edits might involve moving things around, rewriting sentences, cutting words, anything at all, just remake each page, in what your personal opinion, is clearer, deeper, better storytelling. You can even print the original page and edit by hand, then type up your version, or you can work directly on the page after typing it into your computer.

(b). When that’s done, take ten books (or ten short stories) that you absolutely love and do the same thing. This might be more difficult, as if you love the work, you may already feel it’s perfect. But just get in there and start tinkering!

(c). When both sets of pages are finished, print out twenty clean copies of your edited pages and compare them to the original twenty first pages in the books. All the original pages will be very, very different, but in all of your pages there will be similarities and a pattern will have begun to emerge.

That’s your voice.

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Brennan Sarich

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