Two useful questions to help you shape your writing voice are:
- Who is writing it?
- Who is reading it?
It makes sense, right?
You might want to use a different tone if you are a staff writer of The Babylon Bee vs. Salon.com.
In the same way, you read content in a different way on Twitter vs. LinkedIn – and expect different analyses from the Foundation For Economic Education vs. The New York Times.
The writer has to know the audience – and the audience looks at the context of the platform.
Make sense?
Or, I don’t know: Maybe just forget about all of it.
Formal writing, especially fiction, offers a writer the opportunity to conceal his identity and to wear disguises. That can be fun and beneficial, but at some point the reader deserves to know who’s doing the talking. And, turning it around, the narrator should have some idea to whom he’s speaking. Those are the two main questions involved in choosing a writing voice: Who’s telling the story and who’s listening?
-John Erickson, Story Craft (Amazon)
