In Your Own Voice
Guest post by SEÁN McNICHOLL
With the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025 being open for submissions until the end of June, I’ve invited some great proponents of the short story to offer their insights on the form.
Today’s guest post comes from Seán McNicholl, a good friend and an excellent writer. You can read Seán’s Pushcart-nominated story A Different Day in Issue 1 of Frazzled Lit.
Voice is truth.
You can invent plot, experiment with form, play with structure, manipulate emotion — but you can’t fake voice. It’s individual, instinctive, and essentially you.
When I started out, I used to imitate writers I admired. Writing stories like karaoke — trying to sound like someone else. And to be honest, it took a long time to find the confidence to shed all that and write in my own way: out of time, off-key, mis-notes and all.
I remember an interview the late great Larry Cunningham gave, talking about how he got his break on the showband scene. He was auditioning for an agent, singing Jim Reeves’ He’ll Have to Go. Larry said he put everything into it — warbling with emotion, trying to be Reeves. He thought it was the best he’d ever sung. But the agent wasn’t impressed, and asked him to sing it again — this time in his own voice. Larry tried, the agent sighed. Again and again, with the same reply: sing in your own voice. Finally, fed up and fecked off, Larry sang it straight — no frills, no performance, just the notes as they were.
As the last word rang out, the agent clapped and said:
There’s your voice.
Writing is much the same. It’s not about adding layers — it’s about peeling them back. Voice lives in the rhythm, in the breath, in what’s unsaid. It hides in the verbs, the syntax, the absence, the shame, the pride. When we force another’s voice into our work — when it’s inauthentic — we write loud. We write cluttered. We write to be heard, not understood.
The first time I realised voice mattered was with my story Night, Joxer. I received a rejection from a well-respected literary journal with a note that said it was “too Irish.” I took it as a compliment. I leaned into it, amped up the dialect and rhythm, let the story sing in its own accent. That revised version went on to place as runner-up in the From the Well competition, with the judge, Patrick Holloway, praising it for its voice.
That moment taught me to trust the way I hear the world.
The voice of a story is all-encompassing. It draws the reader in, holds them, paints the world around them, and lets them live it. The power of voice always hits home to me when I read Donal Ryan — a true master. Every line speaks in harmony, pulling you deeper into the narrative he weaves, consistent and true. Paul McVeigh’s The Good Son is another masterpiece, submerged in the Belfast lingo of the Troubles. Page after page, word after word, it’s steeped in time and place, bringing you there — Ardoyne at the height of the conflict.
Your voice is already there. Waiting.
Not to be found, but remembered.
The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025, judged by Irish author Nuala O’Connor, is open for entries until June 30th, 2025.