Thank you, Scott. This post comes timely.

Voice is something I’ve been thinking of recently. It occurred to me the other day that a writer’s voice is like an unseen character in a story, and as such I’ve started to ponder upon what type of character I am when writing any given tale (this, I feel, would tie in with genre). If the writer’s voice is an unseen character, I wonder if it would be beneficial for the writer to examine and build that character as closely as they would their protagonist, or any other main character in their story. I was reading the script to Aliens not that long ago. It conjured up an image of James Cameron sat before me, in a smoky bar, jacked up on 20 expressos, gesticulating wildly as he narrated the story to me with a wild look in his eyes, and me being completely swept up and carried away effortlessly by his enthusiasm for the story. Of course, I’ve only had 3 hours sleep so I’m probably talking complete nonsense, but I thought I’d jot my thoughts down – get it out my system. Onwards!

You've hit on several things here, Sean. Absolutely style (which is a reflection of a writer's voice) needs to be tied to genre. That's my little formula: Genre + Style = Narrative Voice. Now some writers will have the same type of NV from script to script. And almost assuredly, they keep working with the same genre. But if genres do change, we have to be mindful how that affects our NV. Also sometimes it can be helpful to think of NV as an actual 'character' distinct from us. I wrote about that here: Adopt a different writing persona. Good that you're thinking about this. Important stuff.