My ideal voice and tone that I not only strive to attain but to read also is relatable and casual but intelligent. I think this voice can be achieved by paying close attention to your audience. With the type of audience that we are writing for in these essays I think the tone that should be taken is one of simplicity and directness. When someone tries to sound overly intelligent or overly complicated it is blatant and looses the ideas and value of your paper. I used to make the mistake of trying to replace every word with a more intelligent adjective or adverb. This was a giant mistake because my paper lost the meaning and was drown out by this fluff.
The best advice that I could give about writing in a interesting tone is to write how you would talk. Write how you would tell someone what you know and what you would say to argue your point, except leave out the ummms and likes.
I hope this is helpful. I feel slightly hesitant about telling people how to write when I myself am struggling but hopefully this is of some use.
Im also discouraged about my third essay after our teacher slammed me with the second one. I read your essay last class and I thought it was good :)
ReplyDeleteI understand the feeling that tone and voice are somewhat hard topics to master. But I like that you mention to just write how you would talk. As I mentioned in my blog post, I think that a first draft should just be simply you putting ideas on paper, and tone and voice can be thought about later. Often the tone and voice that is necessary will be portrayed if you are interested about your topic.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think it is easier to piece the essay apart and read paragraphs seperately. If it sounds like the same person wrote it, you're on the right track! Mine usually sound like about 4 different people so I am working on getting better at having a consistent tone!
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