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A question of 'Style'
Posted: 2005-01-28 04:03pm
by Stravo
In another thread about plagirism a question concerning style comes up. RedImperator makes a statement about writing styles and how diffocult they are to change.
Does anyone recognize that they have a writing style? Do you read a work of fiction or even a fanfic and say "I likehis/her style" or "That's so Mike Wong." "That's so Durandal." "Wow, that was kind of Kujaish."
Personally I never thought about it until now.
Posted: 2005-01-28 04:08pm
by El Moose Monstero
My writing style in terms of the stories I write on Moose Rebellion stuff is always very wordy, I don't even think about it anymore, it just comes out like that. It's difficult to say how it reads, there's lots of additions and comments, it can lead to some long sentences, but for the most part it seems to work ok. But I'd know my own stuff almost anywhere, partly because there aint much of it, partly because of the wordiness and the structure.
Posted: 2005-01-28 05:35pm
by brianeyci
Hasn't every writer had the nightmare of sitting in a "creative writing" class, and being asked by the Professor,
"What is style"?
I don't know about others, but I feel almost naked when someone asks me that. What is style? That's like asking what is art to an artist. Excepting obvious attempts at differentiation like silly punctuation or the like, style forced is style contrived. Style only emerges after the writer has a certain maturity IMO, and is more a blend of what techniques the writer has seen used... for example, read "The hero with a thousand faces" and realize that style is not so ambigious, yet at the same time always different. There are an infinite number of ways to combine the finite number of English words into a sentence.
Brian
Posted: 2005-01-28 05:37pm
by Ghost Rider
I see patterns in how people write and see what they change over time. But I've seen styles which usually implies more then one person...though over a grade of decades of writing rather then in a single writer.
Posted: 2005-01-28 05:47pm
by brianeyci
To give my point, here's how Gary Provost defines style in "Make your words work",
Make your Words Work wrote:Once upon a time I wanted to learn about the human brain. On one of my exciting trips to the Landromat I stopped at the library and grabbed a couple of brain books off the shelves without browsing through them. A few days later when I found the time to sit back and look at them, I devised a simple test for deciding which book to read. I picked up the first book, flipped to a page at random, and stabbed my finger at it. I landed on this sentence:
"But does the greater spontaneity and speed of assimilatory coordination between schemata fully explain the internalisation of behaviour, or does representation begin at the present level, thus indicating the transition from sensori-motor intelligence to genuine thought?"
Then I grabbed the other brain book, flipped it open, poked in my finger, and landed on this:
"If a frog's eyes are rotated 180 degrees, it will move its tongue in the wrong direction for food and will literally starve to detah as a result of the inability to compensate for the distortion.
Which book do you think I read?
Which book would you have read?
Both were written by experts on the subject, but unless the reader is also an expert, there is no contest in the fight for reader attention. The second one is just better writing.
The author of the second book used visual images to put what he understands into a form that I understand. I can see that confused frog's eyes rotating and his tongue shooting off in the wrong direction, while assimilatory coordination stuffled into a sentence with schemata, internalisation, and sensori-motor intelligence leaves me more confused than even that frog.
The second author also won me as a reader for the same reason that you will make more frends in Burundi if you brush up on your Swahili. He spoke to me in my language. The expert who wrote the first sentence wrote to me in his own language.
The author's use of visual images and accessible language should establish more firmly in your mind something that you already knew when you picked up this book: Style does make a difference. It's not just what you write that matters; it's how you write it.
Although too many editors these days emphasize the story, the content, the subject, over the technical abilities of the writer, good writers can make any subject interesting, while incompetent writers can make anything dull.
So there you go folks, you're lucky that I type fast and I had the patience to type out a whole page for you... If you want a short answer, style is technical ability to write. And that's not referring to grammar either -- it is the ability to make writing interesting. I see this as cultivated from the writing that the writer has previously read himself -- not plagarism, but if a writer knows that using images to communicate an idea works and uses that in his writing, that's use of a certain style. Since style is a technical ability, you can learn it, but a writer is likely to use many different "tricks", so no one style is exactly the same as the other unless the writer is conciously trying to emulate it.
Brian
Posted: 2005-01-28 07:34pm
by JME2
As I see it and as the saying goes, all art is made of borrowed elements. This applies to pictures and stories and is the result of the level of exposure to the craft. In my case, my current writing style has been influenced primarily by authors S.D. Perry and Clive Cussler.
addition, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. I develop my stories through descirptions of the surroundings, expressions and reactions primarily, leaving little time for character dialogue. But I'm working on it. Like everything else in life, it is an ongoing evolutionary process, one that with all writers and artists can change it for better and for worse.
Posted: 2005-01-28 08:05pm
by Knife
*shrug* I see people having a 'flow'. So I guess that would be style.
Posted: 2005-01-28 10:14pm
by Lusankya
I know that anything decent I wite has a kinda gothic style. I find it quite odd, because my writing style is completely different to anything I read.