[Editors’ note: This article was originally published at Nieman Storyboard. It has been slightly modified to reflect TON‘s style.]
Growing up in a family of Chinese immigrant mathematicians and scientists, then ditching my PhD in biology for a career in journalism makes me somewhat of a maverick. But that transition was fun. My left-brain love of science’s rigor and logic found solace in journalism’s Five Ws and the inverted pyramid. For a wannabe creative who didn’t like to make up stories or write about herself, news writing was just the ticket. There was a template, and it worked.
But after awhile, I started itching for the next adventure: shifting from straight news to longer, narrative forms of writing. This transition beckoned because longform suits my analytical mind and preference for a less frenetic writing pace. To my relief, there are templates for these magical, more cinematic stories, too. But applying and adapting them has proven tricky.
Now throw in “voice”—that signature mark of every writer which, to me, has always seemed utterly mysterious and undefinable. Plus, voice smells of personality and opinion, which I’ve learned to suppress when writing news and feature stories. (A side note, though perhaps significant: In my experience, many Asians, whether immigrants or American-born like me, seem more comfortable following rules than speaking out and drawing attention to themselves. Which might explain why writing with voice feels, I dunno, self-indulgent and unnatural?)
So when I went to the National Association of Science Writers (NASW) annual meeting in Washington, DC last month, it felt like a eureka moment to find an entire panel focused on voice. The all-female lineup—chosen for their expertise in deploying voice in their own writing or drawing it out of the writers they edit—spoke to an audience of journalists, press officers, educators and other science communicators. But the conversation had insights and practical takeaways for all writers wanting to learn how to find and hone personal voice and infuse it into stories that face institutional constraints and ingrained writerly habits. (more…)
