This sounds… (insert adjective here.)

Tone. Voice. How it sounds. Is it good? Bad? Business?

Believe it or not, people can usually tell who wrote something when they’re reading. Lawyers speak differently than Wall Street. New Yorkers speak differently from Southerners. Certain words are British, some are Scottish, some were just made up by mom… and that’s okay.

Every writer has a voice, and separately, every brand has a voice. Which really gets interesting when, say, you have a casual southern writer trying to write for, say, a multinational billion dollar company. Or, say, when it’s something as simple as a man trying to write to women. While it sounds ridiculous, it’s amazing how many men don’t have a clue how to write for women. Why, you ask? My opinion? They’re not paying attention. But that’s another story.

It’s a fine line, and it’s tricky. So, as a writer, how do you find the right voice for your girlfriend/ screenplay/ love note/ brand/ client/ essay/ email/ personal ad? Well, it’s actually fairly easy. Ready?

Read. Read everything you can possibly get your hands on. For clients, look at websites, brochures, old ads. For dialogue, look at the character, and character motivations. Copy buzz words, watch how sentences flow. Look for action words. If the article you’re reading has words like “flow”, you know it’s to a softer audience than an article that builds itself off the word “flex”. Why? Because of the images the words drop in your head. Where as ‘flow’ automatically sends your mind towards water, ‘flex’ sends you to Arnold Schwarzeneggar.

And then what? Just write, really. Put your headphones on, and go to town. But for gods sake, don’t just guess. Branding is manipulating, it’s matching. It’s matching the history of the business, and the people that work in it. You’re writing for the public, yes, but your first line of defense is the people on the other end of the phone (in 2000, I would have said conference table, but se la vie…). Make them happy. Make them feel good. Make them feel like you’re on their side, because while there will be comments, while there will be changes, if they feel like you’ve written something that sounds like them, they’ll fight for your work, even when you get off the phone.

So how does this relate to the screen and the script? I’ll get to that in another post.

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