Sara Shepard: The Voices in Your Head

Hi HarperTeen FanLit readers!!! How's everyone doing? Writing lots?

So the other day, I was watching a rerun of America's Next Top Model. (I know, I know—bizarre intro. But stay with me.) The models were at a photo shoot in Thailand that involved posing on top of an elephant. One girl got creative and posed with her foot wound around the elephant's trunk—and the photographers loved it. Lo and behold, when the next model got up for her shoot, she wound her foot around the elephant's trunk, too—the photographers praised the first girl for doing it, so she'd get bonus points for striking the same pose, right? Wrong. The photographers rolled their eyes. Tyra Banks had a lesson for the copycat: It's okay for someone's else's style to inspire you…but copying it is lame. You have to make the style yours.

And I thought, Huh. Tyra's advice applies to writing, too.

Now, I'm not saying you should rip off someone's writing style. No way. But I am saying it's okay to be motivated by someone else's style—and then make it yours. When I started writing a lot in tenth grade, I found some writers voices infectious—my writing style would change according to whoever's amazing book I'd just read. I felt weird about another author's voice seeping into my fiction—did it mean I was stealing? But in the end, I reasoned that it was okay. All these great authors had given me a starting point and had encouraged me to write. And write. And write.

After a while, I stopped imitating what I read and found a voice that was just, well…me. And I think that doing tons of reading and tons of writing helped me get there. And don't worry: Your own unique voice is inside you somewhere. You just have to keep writing to find it.

What about you guys? Can you think of any favorite books or writers' voices that you’ve used as a jumping-off point? How have your found your own signature voice or style?

Sara Shepard
Author of Pretty Little Liars #2: Flawless