I’m trying to understand the concept of voice: Does a writer’s voice differ when writing fiction and non-fiction? How do I keep my voice from intruding on the story telling of fiction?

Voice is one of those mystical concepts you hear tossed about in fiction circles. It’s up there with statements like, “The characters just came alive and wrote the story for me.” Okay, sure. That’s never happened to me. Now, I’ve come to understand my characters better and realized they would never do X or say Y, which would cause me to go back and make changes, but they’ve never sprung to life and hijacked the keyboard. I wish they would—writing is hard work!

But I digress.

Don’t let the concept of voice scare you. It just means how you write. It means your personality oozing out onto the page. You’ve gotten a taste of my voice, my personality, in the early part of this answer already. You’re getting a sense for my (attempts at) humor and such, plus you’re starting to become accustomed to the rhythms of my writing. The characteristics and trademarks of your writing—that is voice.

As far as voice differing between fiction and non-fiction, I’d say yes. Just as you would speak one way to a group of executives and another way to a group of preschoolers, so your writing style and level of formality will differ depending on your audience, topic, and medium. So voice differs even in different kinds of nonfiction.

Audience is a big determiner. As of this writing I’ve written two nonfiction books on the craft of writing fiction. One was for Christian novelists and was very informal. The other was for a general audience and a serious publisher. My rough draft for that one contained a lot of my signature humor and informal style, but the editor reined me in. More’s the pity! Enough of my voice is still in there that I think people would be able to see that the same person wrote both, but I think the one is a lot more fun than the other. (You should buy them both and judge for yourself!)

The question about not letting your voice intrude on your fiction is an interesting one. I think you want your voice to intrude. You don’t want your books to sound and feel just like anyone else’s. You want your books to sound and feel like they were written by you. In a sense, you can’t avoid that. Unless you’re completely copying someone else (hint: not recommended), the story you tell, the characters and situations you choose, the dialogue and settings you use, will all reflect your unique way of looking at the world.

But there’s kind of an “advanced fiction technique” way of answering this question too. Here I’m talking about character-as-narrator. Some people call it deep POV.

Most novelists use their own default voice as the book’s narrator. Here’s an example:

“Yo, homey, whadup?” Jazzy took his time investigating the burned-out Chevette. He was not going to let Yvette accuse him of being sloppy again. “Word, bro, this here’s messed up.”

Okay, well, the deficiencies of my homeboy dialogue aside, I hope you can see the distinction between the character’s voice and the generic narrator’s voice.

The way I think you should do narration is in the voice of the viewpoint character. The thoughts and description and other non-dialogue elements ought to sound and feel like they were arising from the mind of the character through whose eyes we’re seeing the scene. So maybe it would go like this:

“Yo, homey, whadup?” Jazzy dropped to the turf to check out that ol’ Chevette. Hoo, somebody done burned it out good. His belly told him to go out for them one-dollar tacos, but no way he was gonna skip out no how. Ain’t gonna give Yvette no call to call him Junior no more. “Word, bro, this here’s messed up.”

Right, well, it’s not going to win any awards (and I apologize to everyone I’ve just offended), but you see how I stayed “in character” while doing the narration. What he saw, the interpretations he made, and the way his thinking skewed were all determined by his character. We were in his mind the whole time. There was no out of body experience when a Disney narrator came in and broke us out of the moment.

In a different scene in the same book you might be in the head of a different viewpoint character. You’d give that character’s voice for the narration and description and thoughts in that scene, and it would feel very different from Jazzy’s.

Voice is how you sound on the page. It’s your personality—or your characters’ personalities—coming through by the words that leak out when you or they speak and think.

Do you want your voice—as in your personal voice—to intrude into your fiction? If you’re writing like most novelists do, then yes. Your voice will be the narrator’s voice. Pretty generic. Though your personality and the other aspects of voice will come out in what you choose to bring onstage. My two trilogies of novels are very different, but people can tell  they’re by the same author. That’s voice.

But if you’re attempting one of those very cool experiments in advanced fiction technique, in which the narration for every scene is provided by the viewpoint character, then no, you don’t want your voice intruding. You want it to sound like the character, not you. Now, the other parts of voice—the story, character, and situation choices you make—will remain. But the story will be carried by the characters speaking in their own distinct voices. And that’s a goal worth shooting for.