What Does
“Voicey” Mean?
Why editors keep putting it on their wish lists—and how it shows up at the structural level.
Writing
#04
Hi friends.
If you’re in the querying trenches, or follow any agents or acquiring editors, you’ve likely seen the word voicey popping up a lot. It sounds vague and subjective, yet it’s one of the most common qualities editors say they’re actively looking for in their manuscript wish lists for genre fiction.
So what does voicey actually mean? And why does everyone want it?
What voicey means
When editors say a manuscript is voicey, they’re responding to writing that feels like it belongs to the person telling the story. It isn’t just relaying events, it’s filtering them. The sentences carry a point of view, a set of instincts, a way of noticing. You could reduce the story to its beats and still recognize who’s telling it because of that consistency.
Common traits editors are responding to:
A distinct perspective. The language reflects a mind, not a neutral camera. Word choice, rhythm, and focus feel chosen rather than default. And if there are multiple POVs, they differ.
Consistency. The voice holds steady across scenes and emotional registers. It doesn’t vanish during exposition or flatten when the plot is picking up and pressure increases.
Judgment embedded in the prose. Opinions, biases, humour, restraint, or bitterness are implied even when nothing is stated outright.
Authority that comes from inhabitation. The prose feels lived in because the narrator is consistently present—deciding what matters, what doesn’t, and how much to say.
Why “voicey” feels more concrete than “authorial voice”
Part of why the term feels vague is because it’s usually discussed in the abstract and lumped in with the idea of authorial voice.
Authorial voice is often framed as something innate: your natural style, your instincts on the page. That framing makes it feel intangible, personal, and hard to develop intentionally.
Voicey, by contrast, is concrete. It points to what the prose is actually doing. It’s not a fingerprint you’re born with, but a tangible piece of craft that you can apply to your work.
When editors use the word voicey, they’re not diagnosing a writer’s identity or talent. They’re reacting to on-page behavior: narration and dialogue that feel actively claimed by the character or narrator telling the story. The voice isn’t just present, but performing.
In other words:
Authorial voice is something a writer is said to have.
Voicey is something the text actively does.
That’s why voicey feels more actionable. It describes prose where the narrator and characters are putting themselves directly on the page—through sentence structure, emphasis, omission, and rhythm—not just through plot or premise.
Why editors keep asking for it
From an editorial standpoint, voice is one of the hardest things to fix after the fact. Editors can help with structure, pacing, plot logic, clarity, and the artistry of the writing. But what they can’t reliably do is invent a compelling narrative voice where none exists.
That’s why voicey manuscripts stand out in submissions and slush piles. Voice scales in a way that premise alone doesn’t.
In most commercial genres—fantasy, horror, romance, you name it—the plots are increasingly familiar. Voice is how two books with similar premises and structures can feel completely different.
Where voice actually comes from (craft, not vibes)
Writers often try to “add voice” at the sentence level. That rarely works on its own. This can make prose louder, but it rarely makes it voicey in the editorial sense. That’s because voice isn’t just how sentences sound—it’s what the narration consistently attends to, values, and withholds.
Sentence-level flair—quirks, fragments, heightened diction—can express voice, but it doesn’t reliably create it. Without deeper structural alignment, those choices sit on top of a neutral narrative core.
Voice tends to emerge from a few underlying craft decisions that shape how the story is filtered before any sentence is written:
POV discipline. Staying rigorously anchored in what the narrator can perceive, interpret, and care about. Voice weakens when the narration knows or notices things the character wouldn’t.
Psychic distance. How close the narration sits to the character’s thoughts—and when it deliberately pulls back. Inconsistent distance breaks the sense that the voice belongs to anyone in particular.
Patterns of attention. What the narrative habitually notices, lingers on, or ignores. Voice emerges through repetition: the same kinds of details, judgments, and preoccupations surfacing again and again.
Judgment and bias. How the narration frames those details—what it treats as normal, suspect, admirable, or beneath notice.
Restraint and omission. Knowing what not to explain. Voice often strengthens when the narrative trusts the reader to infer rather than spelling everything out.
If voice feels inconsistent on the page, the fix is usually structural before it’s stylistic. Once the narrative lens is stable—once it knows who is seeing and how—sentence-level choices start to matter more. They stop feeling decorative and start feeling natural.
When editors ask for voicey manuscripts, they’re not asking for originality of premise or personality. They’re asking for narration that asserts a perspective and sustains it.
Not louder or flashier. Just consistently, intentionally filtered.
Happy writing!
