McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Pacing of information in a fictional world
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: meg_evonne on June 18, 2010, 02:17:57 AM ---ah geez! With all your writing experience and you still feel your style varies. That sucks. I hoped that tendency faded w time.
--- End quote ---
Well, sometimes variation of style is what I am aiming for; i have written a fair bit in deliberate Dumas pastiche, for example. (Which you know is cooking when your average sentence length for a chapter hits fifty words.)
svb1972:
--- Quote from: neurovore on June 18, 2010, 03:35:53 AM ---Well, sometimes variation of style is what I am aiming for; i have written a fair bit in deliberate Dumas pastiche, for example. (Which you know is cooking when your average sentence length for a chapter hits fifty words.)
--- End quote ---
Wait, you mean not everyone writes sentences that are fifty words long? I seem to do that on a regular basis, especially when I'm trying to explain something to someone, the words just keep coming and coming.
meh:
Too much fiber in your sentences.
Enjorous:
--- Quote from: svb1972 on June 18, 2010, 11:29:36 AM ---Wait, you mean not everyone writes sentences that are fifty words long? I seem to do that on a regular basis, especially when I'm trying to explain something to someone, the words just keep coming and coming.
--- End quote ---
Sentence length is associated with education; the more education you have the longer your average sentence. That just means you're edumacted svb.
meg_evonne:
"With all your writing experience and you still feel your style varies? That sucks. I hoped that tendency faded w time."
The thing is--although style is different from author's voice, ultimately the writer is seeking a style and theme that represents what is in the writer's soul, which is the writer's voice. Once you find the style and theme that best expresses that voice, I don't see it changing or being swayed to match others. In other words, once you've found your unique writer's voice, which is made up from style, theme, techniques, writer craft tools, it may age like a fine wine, but won't change that much. Maybe a more audible image rather than fine wine in needed. Think of your writing as the quest for the perfect bell that will resonate in the reader's mind. Most, perhaps for the vast majority, that bell is slightly off key and the work fails to reach its full potential. Thus the quest is to find that perfect pitch in our writer's voice that is at last--right. I am perfectly willing to listen to other viewpoints on this, but inside it rings true for me (to keep up the metaphor LOL).
Brett Anthony Johnston from Harvard says that in a life time an author may have only one true theme or voice. (Like God only gives you one voice or maybe more correct would be to say S/He gives you lots, but its up to you to find the absolutely right perfect voice from those S/He gave you.) Brett bases that on well discussed writing advice that stems from F Scott Fitzgerald, ie that a writer has one underlying voice that s/he is compelled to tell--the writer may change the presentation, but ultimately there is only one.
So my comments were to author's voice and its style, which with a mature author, I see as steady and reliable and once found it won't desert or be swayed.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version