I think the best thing a writer can do is to evoke mood and attitude while avoiding the wink, wink "look how crafty I am" cheekiness. Easier said than done. Do all managers look for voice first? I've been getting caught up in the comment threads over at Scriptshadow and it seems like there is a tribe that favors structure over everything else, while another tribe tends to appreciate the voice. But I think all readers are seeking the holy grail - engaging story, well told.

Just off the cuff after thinking about the question, I think what we term "voice" is actually a melange of things: choice of subject matter; diction and sentence length in descriptions and action lines (complex words and long sentences? Simpler words and terse sentences? Both can have impact. Does it stay consistent throughout?); maintenance of the Tone of the story in both action lines and dialogue (dark and foreboding? breezy and comical? dark and comical; does the writer have enough discipline to manage it and maintain it or does it fluctuate spastically and confuse you as to what type of film you're supposed to be seeing in your mind?) Tone is a whole other "intangible" that is hard to define, but I think it plays into a writer's Voice. mastery of the genre (this goes along with Tone, in so far as the writer understands his or her genre, its limitations, and what latitude he/she has to play with within it and when h/she has to rein things in to maintain the genre's proper Tone and not stray off and hit a sour note for the reader/viewer) I hesitate to put dialogue here because each character is supposed to have his own unique voice, so relying on that to determine the writer's Voice could be deceiving. I.e., a good writer can mask his own Voice and 'become' the character in order to write his lines. Anyway, I'm obviously not an expert and I'm just finding my way like many other writers, but I thought it was an interesting question (as always from this site) and it sparked me to start speculating about it.

I've always viewed voice as being perspective. Regardless of what story we're telling, chances are it's been told before. What makes it unique, however, is us. We all come from different backgrounds and different experiences, so writing with purpose and having something to actually say is incapsulated into our stories from our own perspectives. That's your voice. It's unique because you have something different to say about the matter (theme). I'm reminded of college and having asked my documentary professor for a recommendation to grad school. She was happy to oblige, but asked me a personal question first: why didn't I ever speak up in class? I kind of shrugged my shoulders and made some excuse, pointing out to how others often spoke up and asked questions - to which she responded "yeah, and you can see what I have to deal with day in and day out". I took away from that to mean that I have a unique voice and perspective - something she readily noticed in my many papers and essays. What she loathed was sitting up in front of a class and not feeling challenged herself, listening to the same old questions, oftentimes from people who just had a fundamental lack of understanding. I would like to think this is true of managers and agents who end up schlepping through tons and tons of material, screenplays that don't have anything particularly new to say, point, or purpose. Nothing catches their eyes or stirs their souls. Nothing challenges them or their own perspective. In short, nothing allows them to live vicariously through another's eyes and to me, that's what storytelling is all about. Making other people experience things, particularly emotions, they otherwise couldn't for a number of reasons. A good voice in music will do that, but so won't the voice of a good writer.

Thanks for getting my question answered Scott! And thanks to Franklin and Adam! I've wondered about the topic of 'voice' a lot in regards to my own writing. I constantly wonder if I have a voice in my writing. I'm so new to this, that I have no idea. If I do have a voice, I'm not sure that I would be able to even see it. Scott do you have techniques you teach to help see what your voice is and how to develop it?

I think voice is something you find when you've written enough to develop one organically. When you start out you might look to spec writing conventions to get a handle on the different styles and approaches that find favour and cherrypick from them. You can read screenplays by some of the stars in the field's firmament, and might consciously, or unconsciously, ape them. But when you've been writing long enough, you'll develop a style individual to you. If it's good enough, people will notice. Someone commented above that consistency in action/dialogue and the genre you're writing in is key, and I think these are salient points. I'd surmise you're not going to find your voice until you know what language you ought to be using, so find your genre, find your voice.

I like the idea that perspective is part of voice, but I wonder if bringing a new spin to your chosen genre is part of it too. Random example - the world is full of contained thrillers, but no one had ever seen anything like Buried before... And I'm sure there are loads of other examples. Taking a familiar, saleable genre, and yet making it new and fresh.

One definition of voice is feeling the stories in the writer's cannon could exist in the same universe. Maybe it would help to list some filmmakers/writers with voice? I think of Tarantino, Lawrence Kasdan, Charlie Kaufman, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Billy Wilder, Mike Leigh, Cameron Crowe, Brad Bird, John Hughes, and Nora Ephron. You know when you're watching a film of theirs, even with your eyes closed.

Beyond genre and point of view -- both essential components -- there is also an aural quality to the spinning of the words, and hearing as you write how they will unspool in the mind of the reader, that plays a vital role. So part of finding your voice is listening for it. Listening for the music in the words. The breakthroughs often come at that point where your experience and practice and drive to master the craft -- the 10,000 hour bit -- fuse with your artistic sensibilities and your judgement regarding how the story should be shaped. Voice is sculpting with words. It's carving up and revealing that multi-dimensional world of character, action and destiny in a way that only could come from you. I heard all of that somewhere...and it still seems to help make sense of a very tricky thing to pin down...

You either have a unique voice or you don't. I really believe it is an innate quality. After that, it's all about pounding the pavement (so to speak). Work.

Gabe, if by 'structure' you mean the shape of the story's plot, in all honesty, that is just about the easiest part of the craft. Like it or not, there are these paradigms and expectations in Hollywood about what things fall where in a script. Even my own Narrative Throughline is a tacit acknowledgement of that fact, which is why I say if you use NT, your story likely won't be critiqued due to plot / structure concerns. Long way of saying, the multitudes of aspiring screenwriters can learn structure. Having a voice, that's a different subject. Voice is perhaps a better indication of a writer's degree of talent. Can voice be learned? Not from scratch, I think you start with who each writer is, they bring their own unique life experience to the mix. So probably better to say a writer's voice can be honed, shaped, and developed, not learned. I understand a big reason why much of the conversation about the craft steers toward 'structure' because it IS something that is teachable, and moreover it feels manageable: this plot point goes here, that goes there, almost like math. But voice is not math. To use this as a metaphor: Structure is more left-brain [linear, logical], voice is more right-brain [intuitive, instinct]. Why some/most managers might look for voice first is you can teach someone with a strong voice structure. But can you teach someone who knows structure how to have a voice?

CJT, those are really helpful as those do look to be areas where a writer's voice would emerge. Of course to further confuse matters, let's not forget the idea of Narrative Voice which is that every story has its own unique style tied to the story's genre [NV = Genre + Style]. So that is also a way in which a writer's voice can express itself. For example, David Webb Peoples wrote Blade Runner and Unforgiven [I will be featuring some of the latter tomorrow in Scene Description Spotlight]. Those two scripts couldn't have more different Narrative Voices. And yet presumably because DWB is one person, one writer, his own unique writer's voice would be apparent in both scripts. You're right, this is an interesting question... Thanks for your comments!

TBBB, I think if Adam Kolbrenner were to read what you wrote, he would be nodding his head, especially about the first few paragraphs: Voice as being tied intimately to the writer's unique life experience and how they then express that in words. Per the latter point about people in Hollywood sifting through tons of material, God yes! And that's perhaps one of the biggest reasons why voice is so critical because they are desperately looking for someone to jump out of that pack, speak to them, give them a jolt. Again per my comments to Gabe, we've all seen supremely well structured scripts, but no life there, nothing special. William Goldman famously said, "Screenplays are structure." But structures aren't screenplays, if you know what I mean. There is an enormous value placed upon who we are, what our unique vision of life is, what we say on the page. Each of us is our own universe of memories, associations, thoughts, feelings, passions, ideas, contradictions, conflicts. Somehow out of that melange voice can arise. Yet another opportunity to trot out one of my mantras: Read scripts. Watch movies. Write pages. The first two essential to feeding the soul and the mind, emerging as voice in the latter.

The ability to enhance vocabulary beyond imagination. I'd claim there's almost a "poetic" touch to that capacity but it sure isn't the only aspect - much like a series of thought conditions. Voice is minimally a sustainable rush of rational facts that express more than emotional content with a gamut spanning all five senses. Can you smell a fire burning? Not only that, you also feel and fear the heat, the wavy yellow shapes - a quick taste of the pain or the windy sound of oxygen molecules that feeds it. Thus... fusion of mind.

I still to this day have no idea what "voice" really is, but people say I have it, which confuses me even more. I think if I was pressed for answer, I would say that voice is the intangible thing that allows us to write our own version of an idea that is completely unique from the way everyone else would write that idea. It's basically why studios and producers pay us -- for our voice.

"I would say that voice is the intangible thing that allows us to write our own version of an idea that is completely unique from the way everyone else would write that idea." That is really well put. Thank you Scotts - Frazier and Meyers

I don't think there is a way to quantify one's voice. It's an ephemeral thing. But if you have a specific genre to which you are really drawn, if you find yourself immersed in a specific type of movie, if that's the stuff that rumbles around in your head when you conjure story ideas, then follow that as it would seem that is your cinematic bliss. And if you follow your bliss, my guess is your voice will emerge. Think of Shane Black. Quentin Tarantino. Joe Eszterhas. David Lynch. Nancy Meyers. Just off the top of my head, writers who I think you could say have a distinctive voice, or at least have certain key themes and dynamics that run through their movies. And they pretty much write genre pieces. So that would be my first piece of advice. Find your genre. Then follow that 'bliss' to your [hopefully] develop your voice. Hint: Once you discover that niche, watch EVERYTHING, read EVERYTHING in it. Immerse yourself in it. That can only feed your development as a writer with a distinctive slant on things.

Vic, you read my mind [see above comment].

Debbie, again I think if Adam Kolbrenner were to read this, he would be nodding his head. Similar but different. That's how Hwood operates, so there is value on both parts of that equation: Similar in the ability of a writer to deliver a story that is familiar to what has been successful, different in part because of a writer's unique take on the content.

I like your list, but the part of the brilliance of filmmakers like Billy Wilder is that he covers so much territory in terms of subjects and genres: Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Blvd., Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment. We can identify a Wilder style and approach in each, and that certainly is a part of voice, but what an amazing range of stories. Wilder and his writing cohorts was amazing.