Your Author Voice · P2P Author Business Harbor

Your Author Voice

So over on Substack (you find and follow me without a link), I've been talking about author voice. Here's a question I want you to consider.

If someone ran the last five pages you wrote through an AI detector, what would it say?

Not because AI detectors are reliable. They're not. But because the question reveals something important.

If your answer is "I'd be nervous about that" — why? What is it about your prose that might read as machine-generated? Is it the sentence variety? The absence of specific personal detail? The way your dialogue sounds like everyone and no one? The way every metaphor is just competent enough?

If your answer is "I'd be fine" — what makes you confident? Can you actually articulate what makes your prose distinctly yours? Do your sentences have a rhythm? Does your imagery follow a logic that belongs to your particular imagination? Do your characters carry a worldview that only you could have given them?

I'm not asking to scare you.

I'm asking because voice is the only thing that AI cannot replicate from scratch. It can imitate and produce statistically likely prose. But it cannot be you, because being you requires living your specific weird irreplaceable life and then having the courage to let it bleed onto the page.

So: what bleeds onto your pages?

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Your Author Voice