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What exactly is style? It basically has to do with the way a writer puts his words together. It’s not just what he says, it’s how he says it. Author Gary Provost in his little gem of a book, “Make Every Word Count,” talks about excerpts from two books he looked at on the human brain. He opened one at random and read this sentence:
“But does the increased spontaneity and speed of assimilatory coordination between schemata fully explain the internalization of behavior, or does representation begin at the current level, thus indicating the transition from sensorimotor intelligence to genuine thinking?”
He opened the second book and pointed with his finger. This is what he read:
“If a frog’s eyes are rotated 180 degrees, it will flick its tongue in the wrong direction to eat and literally starve to death as a result of an inability to compensate for the distortion.”
Provost asks, “What book do you think I read? What book would you have read?”
He points out that the second book uses visual imagery to convey what the author understands into a language the reader can understand. We can transfer that same analysis to fiction and show the effect it has on style.
Some writers immediately come to mind when considering style. Ernest Hemingway is one of the standard bearers. A passage read out of context is recognizable as his work. Such is the case with two of my favourites, James A Michener and James Lee Burke. Reading these authors, it’s not uncommon for a writer to hold their breath and think: Why couldn’t I have said that? Writing teachers frequently refer to Tom Wolfe and his yelling style. Others with distinctive styles include Raymond Chandler and the decisive detective writer, Mickey Spillane and his hard crime leading man, Mike Hammer. In 1947, a newlywed Spillane is said to have needed money to buy a house. He wrote “I, The Jurthere” in nineteen days and sent it to EP Dalton. It became an international bestseller with six and a half million copies sold in the US alone. Spillane laid the foundation for that genre forever, his style being the prototype for future detective writers.
Earlier we discussed adjectives and adverbs. When a writer packages his work with them, they become a mess, an unnecessary excess. Hemingway’s style is distinguished by the precision with which he writes. He cuts sentences to the core. He removes all the adjectives and adverbs from the novel you’re working on and you’re still not Hemingway. But if you avoid extravagance and adjust your writing, your own style will begin to emerge.
There are two steps to writing well. The first is to remove the lint. After taking out the adjectives and adverbs, look for the unnecessary words and sentences. This includes redundancy and back roads you could have taken that sounded good at the time but really just bogged down the story. The verbiage also includes those long expository passages. Get rid of them. The passages of the exhibition ‘tell’ the story and you already know that your mission is to show, not to tell. Write in the active voice, that is, make your sentences active, not passive.
Earlier, we discussed some examples. Here are a few more. Your character says, “I know a woman who is mean.” What if your character says, “I know a woman who beats her dog with a board until she howls.” In the first sentence we hear what the character said. We may have conjured up a vague mental image of some kind of bad woman. In the second we heard the character again but we also saw the woman hitting her dog, we heard the animal’s howls of pain and our emotions were immediately hooked. Although more words were used in the second example, they were words that deliver. They had an impact on us as well as providing information. You could write: “The wind was blowing hard.” But instead, you could say, “The force of the wind ripped the door off its hinges with a metallic screech.”
The second step to eliminating verbiage is to avoid or eliminate pretentious words. Don’t use a hundred dollar word when a moderately priced one would be better. Quoting author Gary Provost again, look at this paragraph from what he calls his “short novel, ‘The Rabbit Knows’.”
“So he stood drowsily on the cobbled edge of the lifeless road with his arm outstretched on the corroded asphalt and his thumb searching for some kind of concession to his anguish, and once more found himself making wild guesses.”
Zzzzz. The prize is bad enough, but awkwardly? Pooh-leeze. And do you know what “nugatory guesses” are? I’d love to tell you, but I’d have to go to my dictionary first. One look at that paragraph and both agents and readers would surely say: No, I don’t think so. Thud. tail 13.
When a writer uses fancy, fancy words that create stuffy, tense paragraphs because she thinks it will make her sound polite and sophisticated, she achieves an undesirable result. His writing suffers for it. He won’t become a writer with the kind of personal style that draws readers to his work.
Another caveat is to be specific. If you’re writing about your character, instead of saying his hands, say His long-fingered hands. Not his eyes, but his heavy-lidded eyes. He doesn’t go to a bar, he goes to the gin on Third Street. Don’t have him look at any house, but a specific house: a bungalow, a mansion, or a chalet. Instead of referring to his wit, talk about his ascetic wit or his dry humor. Details have the impact on your reader to help them get into the skin of the character, experience the scene, feel the story.
A writer’s style develops as he becomes involved in the discipline. He becomes a writer, a better writer, a great writer, through this triangle: writing, reading, and studying the techniques of the writing trade. These are the components and ignoring any of them will affect progress. The most difficult task a writer will face is writing. The easiest is to look at the computer, go make a sandwich, call a friend, or whatever other avoidance behavior you are an expert at. To be a writer you have to write. You have to do it every day. When you finish one project you must start another. Stopping writing “for a break” is a dangerous decision. A day turns into a week that turns into a month and beyond.
That is not to say that an author who has just finished the final edition of his novel, an impressive undertaking by any measure, should immediately begin another. A break or vacation could certainly be warranted. Sometimes we need to rest and recharge before we are ready to take on our next important task. But a period of revitalization should not be of considerable duration.
Gymnasts and runners who have stepped away to take a break report how quickly they lose momentum. In more ways than one. Almost everyone will mention focus, of course, but they also talk about muscle. The muscles necessary for your particular sport begin to break down from lack of use. Equally important, the person loses muscle memory, essential for athletes. When they go back to their workouts and training, they don’t come back in the same condition. It takes work to get back to where you stopped. The same can be applied to writers. Get too far away and you’ll lose focus, drive, and creative muscle memory.
The second component of developing as a writer is reading. Some writers say that they cannot read while they are busy with their own work. I hope that is not your case. Reading is part of the triangle, and if you set aside time each day to read, you’ll find that the activity keeps you in a literary frame of mind. Sometimes as you read, you will come up with new ideas for your own story. I like to have a pen and paper by my side when I read. I never know what’s going to come out of the blue and hit me. Try not to convince yourself that you don’t have time. If you examine your daily routine, you will find several ways to focus reading time. One is to give up an hour or so of watching TV. Television does not stimulate the literary juices; it’s passive entertainment. If you were to argue that reading is also passive entertainment, you would be wrong. Not in the case of a writer. When a writer reads, he gains more than just being entertained; he learns. You don’t even have to focus on how the author handles his ‘style’, you absorb the details and technique while you focus on the story itself. You also don’t have to read the same genre that you write. If your novels are crime thrillers but you like science fiction, read them. If you write romance but love snuggling with a good whodunit, by all means read it. Also read novels of your own genre. You want to know how other authors are approaching your favorite category. Reading has another interesting benefit. Rest your mind while being entertained.
The third part of the literary triangle, learning the craft of writing, is self-explanatory. That’s why she’s reading this booklet on tips and techniques. Don’t stop learning the trade.
As you develop as a writer, it’s important that you don’t become too analytical and therefore mechanical. Let your writing flow from you. You can and will make any necessary adjustments during the rewrite. For now, put your butt in the chair, turn on the computer and write.
Style, specifically from the point of view of agents and publishers, includes grammar. And that includes spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, and more. Even if you intend to hire an editor to “fix all that”, you, as a professional writer, should know how to spell and use basic punctuation. And you certainly need to know how to put together a sentence so that it says what you want it to say. Strunk & White styling elements“ It must be one of your good friends, as stated in the first chapters. This little ninety-page book is packed with easy-to-find rules.
Author William Zinsser said: “Writing is an act of the ego and we should admit it.” I agree. Believe in yourself, be confident, pay attention to the three parts of your triangle, and your signature, your style, will emerge.