posted
As a novice writer, I sometimes find my passages sounding a bit like some of my favorite authors. This is certainly NOT my intention but seems to come from my subconcious. I need advice from all you pros out there on how to keep an original "voice" and "style."
posted
It all boils down to writing a lot. Sooner or later you'll get a feel for it. It also depends on the kind of story you want to write and the POV.
Check this podcast out, they have some great advice:
posted
You may well deliberately want to modify your voice/style according to the type of material you are writing - military SF would have a very different tone to magic realism, for example - but in general your voice and style will emerge over time as you grow comfortable with how you want to say things.
The more you write, the more comfortable you will feel writing, and the more individual your style will become.
posted
Style is what you write and how you write it. If you write enough, your own style shows up. The big thing is to write alot.
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.
posted
I have noticed the same thing abut some of my writing. Part of that depends on which person I write in too. I mean when I write First Person Urban Fantasy some parts sound like Jim Butcher. Some parts of third person Space Opera sounds like David Weber. Usually neither was done on purpose. Of course whatever style I copied wasn't as good as the writer's.
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.
posted
This can happen to me as well. Therefore, I starve myself of reading books when I'm in editing process so no one's style could come poking through.
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posted
another thing would be to read a whole lot more authors.
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.
posted
I spent the bulk of my writing career wishing I could write in the style of the writers I worshipped and admired...but with little luck. It wasn't till my Internet Fan Fiction days that I finally thought I had a firm grip on parodying them, and, to an extent, writing like them fell into place at the same time. But now I just want to write like myself---and clearly.
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posted
I always pull style bits from whatever writer I'm currently reading (provided I'm enjoying it, that is.)
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>
posted
I think of a writer's voice/style to be as individual as a fingerprint. It might come close to mimicking someone else's but will still tend to have something unique to the actual author writing the story.
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.
posted
I want to be a novelist. I like novels better for reading, I like writing novels. That being said, I really think that writing short stories has helped define my voice far more than an equivalent number of novel words. Though this could also be because novels are traditional fantasy (only completed 2 novels to be fair and one is a drawer novel, but other planned/ started and discarded midway are also fantasy) while short stories I explore a lot more. I have even written literary fiction in short story form (hate it, but did make the attempt). Being short, I explore more and try more genres which helps to break out from copying anyone writer's voice.
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.
posted
I have the opposite "problem". I've occasionally wished to imitate another's style, but found I couldn't do it -- when I've tried it, it makes me sound like an idiot. It sticks out of the rest of my prose like the proverbial sore thumb (maybe no one else would have noticed, but it made MY eyes bleed). So I stopped even trying to imitate any other style. Lo and behold, that let some of the style *elements* I'd admired become useful, but entirely in my own voice.
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.
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