Style
Your writing style shapes how your story sounds, flows and feels on the page.
Sometimes a style is not a conscious decision.
Who have you read, who do you like, how do you speak?
The style can dictate the entire character of the writing
Staccato, legato are not just musical terms.
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest HemingwaySpare, direct prose shows how relatively simple vocabulary and sentence structures can carry a great deal without decorating every moment.
Mrs Dalloway
Virginia WoolfThought, memory, sensation and the present moment flow into one another. A walk down a street can move into an inner life and back again.
The Road
Cormac McCarthyStripped punctuation, fragments, repetition and stark imagery give the prose a rhythm that is immediately recognisable.
Pare it back, let it flow, disrupt and destroy.
Make it Your Own!
Your style will develop as you work and it wont be like anyone else's.
Blindness
José SaramagoLong sentences, unconventional punctuation and dialogue embedded into the prose create a reading rhythm very much his own.
House of Leaves
Mark Z. DanielewskiWords do not always sit obediently in paragraphs. Position, direction and density of text make the physical page part of the experience.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas AdamsComic timing, absurdity, digression and a distinctive authorial voice show that wandering away from the point can sometimes be the point.
Grammar, dialect, punctuation, layout, rhythm, cadence and tone will all create a style.
Sarah heard the rain batter on the glass.
Thick drops. Echoing in the empty station. Pounding.
Silvery mist on the glass roof, shimmering, sliding down.
Same rain. Different style.