Why Do So Many Writers Suddenly Sound The Same?

The answer has nothing to do with writing ability.

A woman writing. Photo by www.kaboompics.com from Pexels.

I recently read a collection of articles from writers I’d never heard of before. But somewhere along the way, I found myself checking the byline because I genuinely couldn’t remember whether I was actually reading the same person.

The topics were completely different. One writer was discussing business. Another was writing about productivity. A third was telling a personal story about changing careers. Yet despite that, sections of each article felt like they could’ve been swapped around without anybody noticing.

I wish I’d paid attention to that years ago. Certainly before I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to develop a unique writing voice by reading articles about developing a unique writing voice. Because if everyone is learning from the same places, some of the advice that’s supposed to help writers stand out may be doing the exact opposite.

I’ve been writing professionally for around seven years now, which means I’ve spent a fairly large amount of time staring at blinking cursors and pretending the next paragraph would be easier than the last.

Some articles came together quickly and sounded unmistakably like me. Others sounded suspiciously similar to whichever author I’d been reading recently. After a while, I started wondering what separated the two.

My first assumption was that it had something to do with the subject matter.

“Maybe certain topics naturally fit my voice better,” I thought. “Maybe I was simply more knowledgeable about some subjects than others. Maybe familiarity explained the difference. After all, there are plenty of reasons one article might sound different from another.”

Then I started looking through them again.

I’d spend a week reading Malcolm Gladwell and suddenly find myself building articles around explanations and connections. Then a thriller would come along and my sentences would get shorter, the pace would pick up, and I’d start treating every paragraph like something needed to happen before the reader left.

That caught me off guard.

Because writers like my former self spent an enormous amount of time thinking about voice, style, originality, and sounding distinctive. Meanwhile, some of the biggest changes in my own writing often traced back to whatever book happened to be sitting on my nightstand.

From time to time, I get messages from Substack subscribers who want to become better writers. The circumstances are usually different. Yet the question they ask tends to be remarkably similar.

“How do I improve my writing?”

For a while, I assumed there had to be a sophisticated answer. Maybe I should be recommending specific exercises, breaking down article structure, or giving them a system for developing their voice. These days, though, I usually pass along something much simpler that I stole from Stephen King:

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

Then I wait to see how they respond.

More often than not, somebody mentions a biography they’ve been meaning to finish. Somebody else admits they’ve spent the past six months reading newsletters and little else. Every now and then, a subscriber tells me they want to become a better writer, and somewhere during the exchange it turns out they haven’t read a book in ages.

I wish I’d connected those dots earlier. A good book would often leave me with a page full of article ideas, half finished notes, questions worth exploring, and examples I wanted to revisit later. So, by the end of the week, I’d usually have a notebook filled with highlighted passages, observations, and article titles scrawled across the top of random pages.

Right now, the conversation is dominated by bestselling books on writing, popular newsletters, viral articles, podcasts, and creator advice that gets recommended over and over again. So writers study the same examples, save the same articles, follow the same experts, and spend hours trying to learn what successful writers are doing because that’s where they believe the advantage exists.

Part of the issue, I think, is that good advice spreads quickly. One writer recommends a book. That recommendation gets repeated in a newsletter. Somebody mentions it on a podcast. A few months later, thousands of writers have worked through the same examples, highlighted the same passages, and absorbed many of the same lessons. And sure enough, they all the sound the same.

That’s one reason I’ve become increasingly interested in what writers are putting into their heads in the first place. Over the years, I’ve come across plenty of writers who were clearly smart enough, disciplined enough, and skilled enough to build an audience. Yet when I read their work, I often found them to be boring, bland, and forgettable because they didn’t stand out from the crowd.

So how can writers differentiate themselves?

The answer is pretty simple.

They read outside their industry, become interested in unusual subjects, pick up ideas from unexpected places, and spend time exploring things that never appear on a list of recommended writing resources. Before long, those influences start showing up in their work, and the end result feels a little harder to confuse with everybody else.

That gives me a lot of hope, actually.

I’ve read work from writers who were every bit as talented as people with ten times the audience. The gap wasn’t always visible on the page itself. Rather, it was in the process, in the books they read, the subjects they explored, and the examples they reached for when developing an idea.

Those things can change.

Which means a writer doesn’t necessarily need a new personality, a new niche, or some revolutionary writing technique. Instead, they just need to discuss more unique ideas and share interesting anecdotes that nobody else is bringing to the table.

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