All writers are mimics, and I'm not interested in picking up somebody else's style or voice.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It's a dead give away of an inexperienced writer if every character speaks with the same voice.
I'm not a bad mimic, and I can pick up speech cadences that I would not pick up if I didn't hit the road.
I feel it's very important to let individual writers' voices come through. But the character has to be consistent.
I'm more concerned with getting them to find and strengthen their original voice as writers rather than imposing my own subjective tastes, judgements or sensibility on the project.
Try as I might, Agatha Christie is unique. The actual writing style can't be exactly the same, so instead of trying to replicate it exactly, the way I got around it was by inventing a new narrator.
If I think about the writers I love or might be influenced by, I can't write at all, so I pretend there aren't any.
My preferred style is to write in first person, so I always have to play around with possible narrator voices until I find something that works.
All writers start out mimicking other writers. I've never relinquished that. I have a good ear for speech and writing patterns.
It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.
When I'm writing, I'm writing for a particular actor. When a lot of writers are writing, they're writing an idea. So they're not really writing in a specific voice.