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Sometimes when I read a novel written in a distinctive style I start to write like that author. Is this just me? I just finished a novel. (Yes, during NaNoWriMo, got to keep up with my reading and I feel so far behind in the genre right now.) I finished it and went back to my own novel and started leaving off contractions even during dialogue, as this particular person did. (It worked to a strangely annoyingly satisfying affect in his book, but no so much in mine.) Anyway, just thought I'd make the observation and complain a bit. Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
i tend to do a similar thing, my "style" is actually just the combination of the styles of all my favorite authors...
with a little bit of my own "slow down and smell the roses" without going quite so slow as some of the antiques (hawthorne anyone? golly that guy annoyed me... he rambled at times, i believe, just to see his ramblings in ink)
[This message has been edited by dpatridge (edited November 10, 2004).]
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Does anyone remember the Doc Savage series? Well, after immersing myself in them some decades ago, I adopted one of Doc's annoying mannerisms, ignoring questions whose answers should be intuitively obvious to the questioner. Drives my wife and co-workers up a wall. The good side is that after a while they tend to think a question through before asking it.
Posts: 2710 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Of course we all do it. It's how we develop as writers.
But the thing you have to remember about style is this: Style emerges primarily when you rewrite. You shouldn't be worried about how you're writing during your frist draft. That's not important. You don't want to write awfully, either; that's not beneficial. During your first draft you should be focused on story, and during your second draft you should focus on the writing (among other things).
[This message has been edited by Balthasar (edited November 10, 2004).]
My dad had nearly all the old paperbacks with the awesome pulp-fiction painting style covers. I devoured them utterly. Fantastic stuff.
I think that once you've found your voice as a writer, you will only write like yourself. If you find yourself easily swayed by another writer's style, perhaps you're still searching for your own voice, and you have to try on the voices of others to see how they feel and to see if you're getting any closer.
I'm usually reading anywhere from three to four books at the same time. This does two things for me: one, it prevents me from immersing myself in any one writer's voice or style; and two, I can more easily compare different styles against each other (I thought I was comma-happy until I started to read Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman.)
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Yes, I have done that to some extent with some authors but not with others. Did you read this novel over a short period of time (basically cover to cover in just a couple of days)?
I used to go through that a lot when I was younger. I'd sit down and read through a novel in a couple of nights and through a series in a week. Often, it would have a similar effect. Now I have so little time to read that I usually only cover maybe 20 pages a day, and that only 3 or 4 days a week. At that rate, not much affects me anymore.
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I've noticed that effect as well, so I sometimes invoke it deliberately. When I'm writing a period piece I'll stick with literature from the same period while I'm writing.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited November 16, 2004).]
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I remember that manifesting quite obviously after reading Stephen King's "The Stand" (since it was so damned big.... I was seeing his words in my sleep). I think I've more or less established a style of my own, now, though. I don't know if that's a good thing.
Posts: 1621 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Susan Cooper really helped me explore the "dark side" of my nature and venture into topics and ideas I would normally avoid. Her mysterious, haunting style is fascinating to me! I found that a lot more poured out of me than I would have expected after reading her novels. Unfortunately, after her first book in "The Dark is Rising" series, her plots just went downhill from there.
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I think Lawrence Block said this, and I agree with him to the fullest extent: Your true style only appears when you write your story without any conscious attempt at style.
Posts: 151 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I don't think I've ever been particularly influenced by anyone's style. At least, if I have, I'm not aware of it.
Posts: 1750 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Yeah, it happens. I think your style is the sum of everything you read + a couple of other factors. And it never stays the same. There are stories I wrote five years ago with a style I'm no longer able to summon.
Posts: 1075 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Talk about waking the dead. I saw my name on this thread and couldn't for the life of me remember starting it. For a second, I thought we had another rcorporon clone running around.
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited October 13, 2005).]
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I think the effect is even stronger with audio books. I have a half hour drive to and from work every day. I used to listen to music or public news radio and such, and then I started getting audio books through subscription from Audible.com. Since then, I "read" as I drive, in a way. Anyway, when I write, I also started "listening" to my stories as I wrote, thinking of them as being read aloud as in an audio book. By doing that, some of the same techniques of style came through from the current audio book I was listening to.
I don't think it's necessarily bad, unless you find that you have shifting styles throughout a piece of writing.
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The thing is that, whether we recognize it or not, our style is a conglomerate of everything we've been exposed too--including the writers we've read. And THEY are/were conglomerates of everything they were exposed to--including the authors THEY read. And so on, and so on, and so on....
But I see your dilemma.
One of my favorite solutions is to write a scene, doing my best to copy the style of that writer who has influenced me. Often I even write within the universe of the story. Just for fun. It helps get it out of my system and then I can move on.
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This is only tangentially related. I know a lot of actors who will refuse to see productions of a show they've been cast in so that they aren't influenced by another performer's decisions. I was Wizard of Oz, my first professional production, and all of the other actors were talking about how they weren't going to watch the movie--which was screening on a big screen theater near us--so they weren't influenced. I was nodding along with them and then realized how stupid it was. I had been cast as Toto.
What, I didn't want to be influenced by a real dog? I was afraid of being too doglike?
As a writer I have to ask, who wouldn't want to be influenced by a writer whose work you love?
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The place I draw the line is when subject matter overlaps. I was working on a novel involving Neanderthals, and am now working on a similar screenplay. Along the way, I discovered Asimov's The Ugly Little Boy and Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids. Both look good, and I have a copy of each, but haven't read them for fear of being influenced.
Edit: Man, I hate typos. [This message has been edited by Spaceman (edited October 21, 2005).]
[This message has been edited by Spaceman (edited October 21, 2005).]
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I don't think it's really a big danger. Influences are good, not bad. It's imitation that is bad.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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I disagree. If you are deeply involved in a project and you read something else that is similar, there is a very big danger of unintentional plagiarism. Believe me, I caught myself and immediately put Sawyer's book away. I'll read it when all my related projects are finished.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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But by not reading it you put yourself in even more danger of totally unintentional plagerism.
I look at it as being like the "idea shelf" Card talks about. Reading stories that may have similarities to your own helps you stock your idea shelf with ideas that you can readily discard in favor of better ones. Throwing out your cliche ideas is an important skill, and it needs to be well developed.
Okay, so maybe Card didn't mean it that way
But people accidentally copy stories they've never even heard about all the time. Reading well developed stories that have similarities to the stories you want to tell helps you get a sense for what has been done before, what is a "signature" of a given work, and what has become common coin in that genre or sub-genre. I don't think that there is any other way to learn which ideas are cliches or will seem derivative.
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I know enough about Sawyer's story that I know that the limit of anything I would unintentionally lift would be descritive.
I think the problem for me is that it is too close. Had I read his book three years ago, no big deal. I just can't read something that close while I'm working on a similar project. It's just knowing what's best for me.
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Spaceman, if you want cool things about neanderthals, also read "The Inheritors" by William Golding (the guy who also wrote "Lord of the Flies"). It's a very interesting book.
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Wiliam Golding! I found The Inheritors very jarring to say the least. I couldn't quite get over the idea that he was trying to hide a lack of knowledge about internal psychic process by castrating his language. One would have to make quite a reach to copy his style.
Posts: 245 | Registered: Feb 2005
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