Thanks!
Lis
Check this podcast out, they have some great advice:
The more you write, the more comfortable you will feel writing, and the more individual your style will become.
sit down and write a whole lot of rough drafts in a row, short stories throw away story ideas that you can fix up later.
One year I spent the entire summer trying to write a two page story, no longer I actually accomplished it once. I did several dozen stories. The practice fixed a few writing problems I had. A few of those still cause problems for me but nothing like when I started.
You will find what you like to write about most, and how you like best to write it. It won't take long for people to recognize your work just from a few passages.
I found this even with notes on line.
I say usually because some times I would try to add the same type of situation as Weber or Butcher would put in. Like Weber would sometimes out of the blue zero in on a new character for a few pages. Usually something happened to that character: a crew member gets killed in a battle or some other crew member may discover the cafeteria is now completely missing or tiny winged, glowing human-like figures flying in and out of a crew mate's cabin.
I think this is natural and easy to do, especially subconsciously. As someone said just practice and you will get your own voice.
The suggestion to reads alot, works to show you what you like that has been pubished so you write that kind of thing,
also it introduces you to a whole lot of authors so you don't get stuck on one writing style.
quote:
It all boils down to writing a lot. Sooner or later you'll get a feel for it.
I feel like it's part of the writing process, and provided I'm not actually TRYING to mimic any one writer's style, it's not a problem. Rarely am I reading only one author for the entire duration of a story, anyway, so it's often just a little mishmash of a few words that aren't normally part of my vocabulary, or use of metaphors/similies, etc. And truthfully, my own style is interwoven and most others can't really see the influences in there, it's only obvious to me.
I have noticed with my in-person writer's group that each writer has a really unique style and voice, and most of these writers have not been professionally published, at least not in fiction (many make their careers in writing of some sort or another, but not fiction writing, lawyers and ad guys and the like.) Their voices are REALLY unique, and have to do with things like thematic elements, turns of phrases, plot mechanics. This I've picked up in listening to the short bits we write in free-writing exercises we do each week. I think each writer's voice is quite unique and just comes through no matter what they write, could just be a grocery list but I think I'd still be able to tell. <shrug>
I've been paying more attention of late to writing styles in books I've read. And I must say I haven't finished the last three books mainly due to this. No one author had the same style, but there was something in each book that turned me off. Only one is a popular author. I've tried reading three of his series, and liked only one of them. He dropped that particular series to start another and never went back to the one I liked. I disliked how he spenT forever in description and characters' thoughts. I read about a third of the book, and he hadn't done anything but bring the two main characters together. The story probably took off from there, but by then I'd tossed the book aside.
I thought I had good style until Hatrack educated me. Only now has my writing transformed into something much better. My individual style is still there, but it reads 100% better. I tried not long ago to read one of my earlier manuscripts and quit because the writing was terrible compared to how I write now. I still think the story is great but know I'll rewrite the whole thing before I let anyone else read it. And at the time, I thought it the best writing I'd ever done.
Voice, I feel, is unique regardless of how you write. It's who you are... your beliefs, how you look at the world, even your own individual personality. Style is how you put this down on paper. You style may improve and be much clearer to your readers as you learn how to bring your story across, but the core, your own unique voice, will come through every time. Something that's you alone and nobody else's. At least that's how I've learned to think about it.
One of my current problems is that I look at the voice in my short stories and I like it better than my novel that is in editing, but adding in voice is hard. For me, best way to do that is rewrite without looking at what I wrote before- keeps the plot points but improves the voice and flow and all that. But, that takes a lot of work and feels like going back a step, so hard to get the momentum to rewrite. Except I really like these characters and I want to tell their stories and I want to get this one published and I really think that is what I need to make this work.
However, I *can* imitate another's style if I'm editing their work. Then, of course, their style FITS.
Funny story: I once set out to study a particular author's style -- specifically, why it was so *invisible*. So I began re-reading one of her books, with an eye to studying its structure and style. 200 pages later I remembered why I was re-reading that book.