McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

What's your style?

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belial.1980:
What's your style?

I find that hard or answer—or at least articulate—but I'll give it a shot. I think the author I try to emulate most is Neil Gaiman. He's got a slick, captivating style of prose that's really amazing. I appreciate the way that he can enliven a fantasy story with very pertinent, very human aspects. I hope some day I'll have the storytelling skills to be able to do the same thing.

I like the way Jim can craft a fast paced story with lots of action. I try to follow suit, although my stories tend to be darker than his. I'm not as funny as Jim (few people are), but I try to use humor whenever I can. I love the strangeness that Michael Moorcock, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard bring to the genre. All three artists really have a talent for injecting a creepy, esoteric feel into their stories. However I do find those guys a bit icy. I write dark stories but I also try to toss some warm fuzzies into the mix. I've found this to be very challenging—how does one craft a tender moment without seeming trite? Hopefully that's something that'll come with time.

There's a part of me that's a natural iconoclast. I want to do things my way and create a voice that's different from what I've seen out there. I have a tendency to take archetypes and dissect them and mix and match pieces like a mad scientist in a lab, in hopes of creating something that looks familiar to the reader at first glance then ends up surprising them. I know what sells, but I want to do things my way. Derivative is the last thing I ever want to be. I hope I can keep that mindset and still break into the market someday.

Anyway, that's my style in a nutshell. How about you? (I showed you mine; now you gotta show me yours.) ;)

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
To me, realising you have a consistent predictable style means it's time to learn how to do something different.

I try to have the style vary to suit the work and the viewpoint character's voices, so an aristocrat in a quasi-medieval tech-level society on a lost colony will read very differently from a computer game designer in a socialist utopia of the 22nd century.  I have completed one longish novel (105,000 words) in the particularly florid style of late 19th and early 20th century translations of Alexandre Dumas, because it's one I enjoy immensely much myself and lots of fun to write.  (There are chapters in that with an average sentence length of fifty words.)

Insofar as anything is a recognisable recurring influence on my style that I can detect, it's Livy for description in general and Douglas Adams for the gift of conveying quite complex ideas precisely and simply in a few sentences, which I have tried hard to emulate - though not usually as Adams mostly did for the sake of a joke.

Looking back on what you read, though, it seems you are talking about tone and philosophy as much as literary style per se.  And there are definitely things that I do a fair bit in that.  I am very much not a romantic, and I do tend to write about strong loving relationships that are not romantic in the Western standard cultural sense.  I'm generally communication-positive, pro-taking responsibility for change within what you can do yourself, pro-understanding the ubiquity of evolutionary processes at every level in the world; pro-strong friendships, sex-positive, body-positive, opposed to gender essentialism and fond of non-gendered angels, AIs, and aliens; I do not like simplistic happy endings, I like my victories to be hardfought and realistic and, well a character in something of mine being someone you like and care for does not guarantee they won't die abruptly half-way through if they're the sort of person who is silly enough to repeatedly put themselves in dangerous situations.

BobForPresident:
I'm feeling really close to Paul S Kemp's style - very moody and bloody. But my stuff's a bit more romantic, I think.  :)

KarlTenBrew:
My style actually comes down to how I would tell the story to another person face to face.  Read my posts on any given forum, and you'll probably come to recognize my 'vocie', despite lack of facial expression and gesticulation.  Which can be hard to do, seeing as this tends to make stories somewhat predictable stream-of-consciousness type of work.  Although I'm actually working with this on the book I'm trying to write, I try not to use it with other writing.  The trouble is, it's hard for me not to fall into 'narrator mode'...so when I'm not writing a narration...oi.

I agree that regardless of having a standard style or 'voice' in writing, it's good to practice multiple styles.  You don't have to write a book ;), but just occasional one-page exercises can be very enlightening.  Trust me, it doesn't just help you become better with that writing style, it helps you make your 'true' style better.  You get a better feel of what you tend to do without thinking about it, even when it's not really what you want.  It can really help you improve your own style to keep fresh with the basics of others.

LizW65:
I try to tailor my style to whatever I'm writing.  My first instinct is toward lush, Byzantine, quasi-Victorian prose with long sentences and paragraphs and very little dialogue, so I've had to actively fight that while working on my "film noir lite" novel.
Much of my first re-write consists of simplifiying and condensing.  One-third of the way through the revision I've already cut something on the order of thirty thousand words from the manuscript.
As for stylistic influences (as opposed to format influences, which I'll get to in a moment) I think I spend more time trying not to be influenced by anyone else's style than otherwise.  I adore Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman in particular, but I don't try to emulate them -- the moment I consciously imitate someone else my writing sounds stilted, trite, and unnatural. 

My love of complex plots that escalate to the point of insanity but never, ever get out of the writer's control probably comes of devouring everything by Donald Westlake, PG Wodehouse, and Georgette Heyer that I could lay my hands on in my early teens.  (I blame Heyer for my tendancy to write in convoluted nineteenth-century style prose, which I've had to fight against ever since; much of what I initially admired about her style I now find annoying.)

For now, I think my style is dictated largely by getting inside the head of my POV character and working out what motivates him or her in a particular scene -- what I think of as Method writing.

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