Writing Style

[heredoncove]

I'm full of questions lately it seems.

Do any of you have a specific writing style? Has your writing style changed over the course of your writing? Do you write differently in your blog than your other work?

[dinuriel]

Hmm... that's a good question. Looking at other people's work, it seems that most writers have a specific style, so I would assume that I do too, but I'm not sure I'm in the best position to define it or even say if it's changed very much, so I'm not sure exactly how to answer that.

I do, however, think that I write my blog stuff differently. With my Sims stuff, I tend to lean on the pictures and skip out on descriptions. I let myself get away with a ton of crap that I would never dream of doing with my offline work. I consider my Sims stories my "leisure" writing; while I enjoy working on my other projects too, I know that I would go insane working in any sort of nine-to-five environment for the rest of my life, so I feel as though I have something to gain (or lose) with my offline stuff and therefore have to take more care with it.

[thelunarfox]

This is a good question. I was actually thinking about this as I was leaving anon comments.

I do think I have a particular writing style. It's very plain as I don't tend to use a lot of adjectives and I favor short sentences. For the most part, I think that's always been my style. But I enjoy writing in first person, so how I write varies a lot when I'm doing it right because each character voice is usually (hopefully) unique or at least different from one another.

[Stacy]

Nov 23, 2010 23:24:21 GMT -5 @thelunarfox said:

This is a good question. I was actually thinking about this as I was leaving anon comments.

Yep. Some people definitely are not anonymous, lol.

I have a style. Sometimes I'll notice when I keep doing the same things and try to change them. One thing I've been doing in 10 lately - trying my best to not rely on the rule of three. I go through and slash any group of three that does not absolutely need to be there.

Ooh, an example from 10.07!

Err. Went to copy and paste it and realized it was a list of three, cleverly disguised by comma placement. Alas. Rereading it - the whole thing is riddled with lists of three.

But...OH! I remember now! That one needed the threes! I remember expounding on that, on how I'd been trying to get away from threes but they worked in 10.07 because of its structure - the heart, blood, and lungs. So I needed everything in threes to reinforce that image.

I have in my hands a copy of an essay I wrote in 8th grade, when I was barely 14. The subject - What is Beauty? I got a standing ovation when I read it out loud in class.

Oh god - too embarrassed to post it. But yeah - even there there's lists of three and parallel sentence structure and grand philosophical declarations, lol.

I found a My Little Pony fanfic I wrote when I was barely 18 - it's still on the internet somewhere. You can see my general style there - no dialogue tags, short quick paragraphs.

I think I've had the same basic style all my life, but as I've gotten older and gotten more writing practice it's become more sophisticated. And I've become more aware of my tics and habits and tried to change them if I think they've gotten stale.

[sb]

I'm always very very reluctant to say anything on these threads about writing because I have no idea what I'm talking about. I didn't even know a dialog tag from something I cut off a dress until about a week ago.

What is a writing style? If it's something you're sort of born with (and I think it is), why is that?

I write the same way in my blog and in email to attorneys and relatives and in the old letters I saved and when I write fiction. It's all the same voice.

Lunar, you use first person very effectively. I like it too and would prefer to use it more than I do.

[celebkiriedhel]

I know I have a style, but I'm not sure what I'd call it, or how I would define it.

I haven't got a lot of my really old stuff - I once wrote a piece on the 'Average Australian' that my English teacher took and never gave back. I think it was funny, and he had to share it with the staff... or at least that's what he said.

I would say that my best stuff is dialog, and active rather than descriptive. I adore writing in first person, because it feels so much more real. But I'm writing in 3rd person at the moment, and it's do-able too.

[infinitygoddess]

It depends on what I'm doing. If I'm writing a regular novel or my Sim stories, I get very descriptive, particularly with a regular novel. With my Sim stories, I do get descriptive, especially if something happens that I just can't use pictures alone to tell that story. Sometimes the pictures do speak for themselves, though.

I'm more of a graphic novel-type of person, though. If I'm doing that, obviously the pictures and the dialogue tell the story.

Although I have to say, I have no idea what style I'm doing. I'm a sci-fi/fantasy writer by trade. That's all I really know.

[laura]

We do all have a writing style. I was noticing that a bit too as I was reading the "anonymous" comments, lol!

But to answer the original question, yes, I definitely think I have a style of my own. I was very happy to finally find it over the years. It's kind of always been there, really, if you consider it more the flavor of the writing, the sentence structure, the word choices, the sound of it. Even looking back to my college work and blogs there are similarities. But at some point, a few years after I left uni, after years of writing on my own, I think it finally "came of age", if that makes any sense, lol!

I don't think I write much differently between LH and my other work. Though because it's an illustrated story, there are some instances where I'll let the images carry the story, so for that reason the writing might be different. I really *try* to hold myself to the same standards with both, because I consider LH my practice writing, so when I do my best in practice, it helps my other writing grow. Though I will admit that my LH stories get less revisions than my "serious" work, and I don't have beta readers for it either.

Beth, your writing style comes from your own voice and personality. Yes, I think you're born with it too. And then it's developed over the years through your experiences and education. But underneath, it's still the same voice. And why? For the same reason we all have different personalities, I guess.

Illandrya, I try to do that too, writing without the pictures first. I think it helps me get the most out of the writing before I throw the pictures in there and get lazy, lol!

[mdpthatsme]

I find that though all my writing has certain little phrases and such that I use, that I write different writing styles for different types of pieces.

[heredoncove]

I meant to come back and answer this thread. The only thing I can pinpoint in my writing is that I tend to like long sentences and use a lot of descriptive language. I like to engage all the senses or at least that's my goal.

My creative writing tends to be all in the same style because that's what I'm used to. Any experimentation I do is usually for the blog.

[mdpthatsme]

I'm horrible with fragments! It's true, there's no complete thoughts, well mainly just no verb. Why does everything have to have action?