Looking For Writing Inspiration? Try Moodboards.
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Voice is one of the most difficult aspects to develop as a new writer. Your writing voice is the style in which you communicate — your genuine, interesting, and unique manner of writing. Think of an author who writes across multiple genres but still retains a certain something in all their books, or how one book might have a different tone and style from another but still fit in the same genre — that’s voice. While consistent practice and self-assessment can help you create a personal style over time, a more efficient and straightforward way is to create a moodboard.
Visual Moodboard
A moodboard (or inspiration board) is a visual collage that helps creatives focus on certain visual cues or styles for a given project. They are commonly used by artists like graphic designers, photographers, and interior designers who require a focussed aesthetic for the operation of their profession. While a visual artist would fill their moodboard with images, colours, and textures — a writer could build one focussed on text, called a voice moodboard.
A voice moodboard acts just like a visual moodboard in that it’s a collection of quotes and excerpts of text that you would like to emulate in some way to create a unifying general tone for your project.
For example, if you’re interested in writing a travel blog post, you may want to look up your favourite travel blog or other pieces of writing in the travel genre and copy and paste the best lines into a new document. This document will become your personal voice moodboard for this piece, so organize it in a way that makes sense to you visually. Take your time to add notes and analysis for future reference. For additional usefulness, underline or highlight the most noteworthy sections of each excerpt. Tools like OneNote (free) or Scapple (free trial) can be very useful here.
Once you’ve completed the first draft of your moodboard, push yourself to add to it from a variety of sources. Diverse content will prevent you from copying a single author’s writing style too closely. This will also introduce you to nuances and stylings you may otherwise have missed.
Voice Moodboard
When you’re happy with your voice moodboard collection, feel free to print it out. You’re ready to begin your developmental exercises.
To begin, create a short draft of text (or use something from your work-in-progress folder) and analyze how you could fit certain phrases or nuances from your voice moodboard into your writing, identifying what works and what doesn’t as you go along. Be sure to add these notes onto your collection to keep track of your findings.
Another approach is to find a passage by your favourite writer, read a few sentences, and attempt to rewrite them from memory. Compare the two versions and see if you can spot where the writer made different choices. Ask yourself: how do those choices affect the overall voice and style of the writing?
Now try modifying a selection of quotes from your moodboard to work with your own writing. For example, if you’re writing a humorous piece, try copying a punchline and editing it to fit with your text. Can you pick up how the original writer was able to smoothly introduce that particular line into their text, or why they chose a certain word over another? How do these changes affect cadence, rhythm, alliteration, or connotation? Take some time to determine why a certain phrase works so well. Pull it apart, remove or add words, or rearrange the phrase entirely to better understand its effect.
Perform these exercises for a few minutes every time you sit down to write as a way to get into the flow of writing in a particular style. With time and effort, you’ll absorb some of the mannerisms of that style and it will eventually become second nature. Keep in mind, the goal is not copying or mimicry, but rather an exercise meant to expand the range and improve the consistency of your own voice.
“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.”
