I’ve seen too many times the erroneous command to find your writing style as if it were a misplaced twenty or a lost puppy.
You don’t find your writing style; you create it.
The first tip is to HAVE a writing style. Here we should probably agree on some general definition to put a leash on the subject without letting it wander off the page.
Fiction Writing Style, for our purposes, is a structure used, intentionally or not, by a writer that gives personality and tonal voice to a piece that is consistent throughout.
For that, it’s best to stick with who you are, your unique voice, or one of the voices in your head. We know you have them. We all do, and you’re just as bent and weird as the rest of us, so use the voices you talk to the most. Drop the reins and let them run. My muse is named Poindexter. He’s the creator I transcribe for. He gets to say things I would be called upon to explain in court. “You see, your honor….”
Structure is the basic parameter within which the story is dumped, the shape of the bricks. Writing and style guides profess the correct ways or choices in presenting numbers, time, dates, addresses, book and movie titles, and capitalizations. Those are well-established and not the meat of an author’s style.
WARNING: Sweeping Generalizations Ahead.
Just as everyone has a unique personality, so does every writer have a style, AND every genre has reader expectations for style limits.
Science Fiction readers want fast heroic action laced with amazing world-building that requires the willingness and capacity to suspend disbelief to the limit. Romance readers crave large doses of emotion and complex interpersonal relationships tossed in a blender made rich by improbable settings and forgone conclusions (the girl always gets her man, woman, or whatever they’d laid a trap for). Westerns hide behind knights-of-the-round-table philosophies to bring us into the grit, sweat, and smell of brutal frontier life where the winner takes all and never bathes.
Building blocks to Fiction Writing Style
Consistency—first and foremost. If your story starts in a conversational style with contemporary word choices, don’t drift into ultra-formal grammar and sentence structure as if you’re the 1830s Duke of (editor insert something British sounding here). Other than your eighth-grade English teacher, who uses whom anymore?
Voice—use your own. Unless you’re a ghost writer, don’t attempt to copy another author’s narrative style. When you drift from what your brain says is normal, you stumble, inserting mismatched styles to recover your dignity. Be consistent where you use active and passive voices. Some experts warn against using passive voice altogether, yet that throws half your options out in the street without due consideration. Sometimes you want and need to tap the brakes. That is the passive voice’s job.
Texture. Your narrative voice need not be restricted. It can be as loose and rangy as any character or a tightly controlled objective camera. The choice is yours, though it will take some experimentation to find a tonal voice that feels natural and refreshing to you. Speak directly to your reader. Don’t mince words, generalize, or hide behind obtuse wording. Say it. Say it clearly and directly, and show you want to be understood in a way that holds your audience’s attention. Drop the Reins.
Toward a Stronger Style
Sentence length has an effect. Reading a page, you experience not only the words but the white spaces. When a reader sees a page with stacks of short, single sentences and paragraphs, it signals to open the throttle full speed ahead across the open plains to keep up with the heroine. Use this to intentionally control the speed of your piece for the best effect. And not everything needs the pace of a gallop of Louis L’Amore or the Mach 1 of Tom Clancy. Occasionally, give the reader a placid ride down a lazy William Faulkner river.
Word choices — stay a step below your reader’s grade level. If you want to appear smart, join a debate club. If you want to be read, choose familiar and easily digested words for your chosen audience. In that regard, use strong verbs and concrete nouns. Weasel words such as almost, sometimes, occasionally, and actually blunt the impact of a sentence.
Pick a path. You are the reader’s driver. You get to pick how you get from point A to B to C. It may be one-way, one lane, dark, dreary, curvy, with drop-offs on either side OR…. you get the point. Your narrative voice drives the vehicle forward, and the tone creates the road. You control the speed and the scenery.
Avoid Reporting. It’s easy to slip into simple reporting of facts and events in a narrative: He did this, she did that, the weather changed, the bad guy acted badly. Your improved style needs to describe how facts affect the story and the characters. When those aspects are provided in subjective (non-factual) terms, they rub against the facts to create heat. Yes, Heat! Heat is what you want. Make the reader sweat.
Let the reader imagine. Keep descriptions simple and to the point of the scene. Overdone descriptions act like a boa constrictor to the reader’s imagination. Here’s a tip from my personal perspective: Men don’t notice a woman’s shoes. So why describe them? Yeah, you’ll remember I said that and said it that way. And so, you should want your readers to remember the important things you point out by not burdening them with the small observation about the color of the drapes.
Enrich the Reactions. Dig deep into the emotional state of a character. Avoid simplistic, pulp fiction reporting responses. “She recoiled in horror at the sight of the body.” Give the reader pealed back layers of what is happening to the character. To do that, imagine how she would later describe the event to her psychiatrist and then pick two or three emotional descriptions to thicken the reader’s experience. Don’t rush through those points. Show how the experience changed her both immediately and ever after.
Literary devices. The most common literary devices can flesh out your style. Metaphors, similes, imagery, symbolism, and personification are the most used. Adding a little hyperbole, especially in dialog, or irony in narrative prose are also stylistic choices you can add to your toolbox. But be careful not to turn your direct and effective narrative into a word salad.
On Stage. All alone, that’s where you are when a reader picks up your book. You better be entertaining in the presentation, using all the tricks of a thespian. A motionless, dry, vanilla, monotone delivery gets your book put back on the shelf or never placed there to begin with.
READ! To improve and free your Fiction Writing Style, read outside your comfort zone to find colors you never knew existed. Add those to your style pallet and experiment with them until they fit comfortably in your hand. Soon you will know whether a fifty-four word sentence is effective or not.
