I'm really excited to share another great article by my friend Jeriel Ng, author of The Syndicate.

Find Your Writing Niche
By Jeriel Ng

In this day and age, the world is populated with a plethora of writers and novels, and each day, that number continues to grow. So how do we find a way to stand out from the crowd? Being unique certainly goes a long way. Finding your niche in writing can help out tremendously, as you find a certain style that caters specifically to your knowledge and talents. So how exactly do you find your niche? There are several things you can determine about yourself, and of course, discovering them will only come from experience and trying different things each time:

1)      Genre
2)      Point of View
3)      Voice

The most obvious – and perhaps the easiest to pick out – is the genre in which you want to write. Simply think about what kind of books you enjoy reading and work from there. Or perhaps you may not even want to write from your favorite genre. It’s really up to you.

To consider another case, the point of view from which you write can have a serious impact on how you write. For the most part, you would choose either first or third person. Of course, we all know the specific details each one entails. However, some people work better writing in first person, while others thrive writing in third person. To determine which one would work best for you, consider some of the following factors:

If you want a more personal, more conversational connection with your readers, if you want your readers to have a much deeper connection with your protagonist, or if you want to delve deeper into a more emotional aspect of the novel, first person works well.

If you want to impose a sense of omniscience over all your characters, if you want to be able to focus on any given character at any given moment in time, or if you want to feature a larger cast of characters, you may want to turn to third person.

And then there’s your voice. Every single writer has a unique voice. Of course, there may be those who write similarly to others, but it’s safe to say that no two writers have identical voices. Unfortunately, voice is a completely intangible aspect – there’s no absolute way to measure a writer’s voice. Fortunately, once you have figured out a voice that is unique to you, you will know. This idea involves several factors, ranging from the words and phrases you use to the way you vary your sentence lengths. Each word you use plays a crucial role in characterizing the individual you want to present to the public, and as for sentence length, the way you handle your variation will ultimately define the mood you create for your stories. For example, if you want to focus more on action, shorter, more abrupt sentences would work best. If you prefer to write more on emotions, longer sentences should be your forte. Aside from those two aspects, another thing you could test to determine your voice would be your narrator’s tone. If you are writing in first person, you would naturally create your protagonists as a separate entity from yourself. Ultimately, however, each narrator you create, whether written in first or third person, would embody the core of your likeness as a writer, and what you want to do with that is create a unique tone that is common among each narrator.

Of course, there are quite a number of other factors, but those listed above should serve as the core springboards to determining your preferred style of writing. If you really want to delve deeper, perhaps consider the way you divide your chapters, and even the form of publishing you want to use. All of these aspects will work together in shaping your identity as a writer and in helping you find the niche into which you will fit perfectly.
 


Comments


Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply