Uncertainty Regarding Style

I'm not sure what's wrong with a book being an easy read. So a 12 year old could read it and understand it... what's wrong with that? If the voice is right for the main character then stick with it. Don't throw in difficult words or metaphors or any other things just for the sake of making it more complicated. As you say, you do that, and then it sucks. So don't do it.

If you feel it needs a little more description, then put it in, through the main character's eyes. What he or she would notice. Leave it at that. You don't need to describe everything, just enough to make the setting clear to the reader.

Maze Runner said:

Have you tried to read novels that were praised by others, and not been able to latch on so you put them away?

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Yes, many many many times. I've put down books for a hundred different stylistic reasons. Some of the most common ones are too much telling instead of showing, too much description to wade through OR not enough description to visualize the world, and too much internal monologue. There really should be a writing rule against internal monologues lasting longer than one medium-sized paragraph.

As a writer my style is pretty consistent, though, so I can't really offer you much advice on that. I know what I like and what I'm good at and stick to those things.

I've learned that the style should exist to emphasize the story, and if the story cannot be understood due to the style, the style must change. However, this does not mean that if style is not preferred by a reader it is not working properly.

Osulagh said:

I've learned that the style should exist to emphasize the story, and if the story cannot be understood due to the style, the style must change. However, this does not mean that if style is not preferred by a reader it is not working properly.

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If it isn't preferred by the majority of readers, it isn't working properly.

The best advice I can give is to stop thinking about style. Thinking about it usually means you'll have an affected style, and these are usually very difficult to read. They're dense, or stilted, or purple, or wordy, etc. They happen when writers try to sound like writers. Good style usually happens when you don't have a style at all, when words are there just to tell the story, and don't draw attention to themselves.

Sounds like you should give your manuscript to some beta readers. That'll give you time away from the manuscript and feedback for when you get back to it. I'd say work on something else like your synposis in the meantime.

Jamesaritchie said:

If it isn't preferred by the majority of readers, it isn't working properly.

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You're correct when you see it from a business point of view. If you wish to make money, following the popular styles at the time is highly recommended. The best way to sell a book is to sell safe, familiar writing style.

However, radical writing styles and authors willing to advance both language and writing have made modern writing what it is today. If they didn't take risks, the "popular" style of writing that we revere today wouldn't exist in the same form.

I read everything from James Joyce to Dan Brown and all the shades (Except grey. Erotica with women in it isn't my thing) in between. But yes there are books I can't read. The first book I put down was "The Hobbit" and the second was "Catcher in the Rye." And to be honest you have to be exceptional or David Tennant in tight leather trousers to convince me to do anything with vampires - I find the whole falling in love with a dead thing weird. For the same reason zombies don't float my boat.

Decide what you want from your book and where you hope to get with it. Don't try to sound like someone else. You're unique and as a result you should be able to write with a distinctive voice.

It's OK to disagree with your critics (unless you have several saying exactly the same thing then that should be considered). You have to be happy with the work you put out. When I get feedback I allow myself to shout at it but then I consider it with a more level head.

There is no one single "popular" style of writing today.

I remind myself a lot of this quote. I don't know if it's helpful but it sometimes keeps me going when I'm getting worried about style or overcomplexity or just about anything else.

Steven Moffat said:

"It's funny, everyone thought it was too complicated for someone else, not them," says Moffat. "I don't want to be mean, but eight-year-olds seem to have no problem with it. Doctor Who is unashamedly a clever show. There have been calls for us to dumb it down but we just don't. We're dealing with children who can read long, complicated books while tweeting and playing computer games all at the same time. You've got to be ahead of them."

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From an article in the Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/nov/18/steven-moffat-doctor-who-interview

A writer once told me that I had an 'easy writing style.' That concerned me because I equated 'easy' with 'unsophisticated'.

I don't anymore. It's the way I write. Sometimes my style seems to be the only constant, the one aspect of my writing I can count on. Maybe that holds true for you, too.

Perception is subjective. Think of Warhol, Picasso, Banksy. Each has a unique style, and each has a devoted following. Is one better than the other? Your writing style is your signature. When it works, it flows naturally. It feels right. You can't buy that. Embrace it.

Jamesaritchie said:

The best advice I can give is to stop thinking about style. Thinking about it usually means you'll have an affected style, and these are usually very difficult to read. They're dense, or stilted, or purple, or wordy, etc. They happen when writers try to sound like writers. Good style usually happens when you don't have a style at all, when words are there just to tell the story, and don't draw attention to themselves.

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And here I thought you were a fellow Koontz lover He's the densest, stilties, purplest, wordiest, floweriest giant of today. That's the main reason I love his books. Without his impenetrable style, it would all be just another James Patterson/Richard Laymon fast read with no texture...

dondomat said:

And here I thought you were a fellow Koontz lover He's the densest, stilties, purplest, wordiest, floweriest giant of today. That's the main reason I love his books. Without his impenetrable style, it would all be just another James Patterson/Richard Laymon fast read with no texture...

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Dean Koontz? Dense? Wordy? I admit I haven't read a Koontz in ages, and only a few total, but we're talking about the paranormal guy, right? I remember them being light little things - and there was always a dog... am I mixing him up with someone?

There is frequently a dog since 1987 onward, but light little things... plot-wise, perhaps. Prose-wise, it's like Lovecraft got a schooling by Robert Ludlum. Typical openings:

The Bad Place

THE NIGHT was becalmed and curiously silent. A faint scent of smoke hung on the motionless air though no smoke was visible.
Sprawled face down on the cold pavement, Frank Pollard did not move when he regained consciousness; he waited in the hope that his confusion would dissipate. He blinked, trying to focus. Veils seemed to flutter within his eyes. He sucked deep breaths of the cool air, tasting the invisible smoke, grimacing at the acrid tang of it.
Shadows loomed like a convocation of robed figures, crowding around him.
[FONT=&quot]Gradually his vision cleared, but in the yellowish light that came from [/FONT][FONT=&quot]far behind him, little was revealed. A large trash dumpster, six or[/FONT][FONT=&quot] eight feet from him, so dimly outlined that for a moment it seemed[/FONT][FONT=&quot] strange, as though it were an artifact of an alien civilization. Frank[/FONT][FONT=&quot] stared at it for a while before he realized what it was. He did not [/FONT][FONT=&quot]know where he was or how he had gotten there. He could not have been[/FONT][FONT=&quot] unconscious longer than a few seconds for his heart was pounding as if [/FONT][FONT=&quot]he had been running for his life only moments ago.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Fireflies in a windstorm....[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]That phrase took flight through his mind, but he had no idea what it[/FONT][FONT=&quot] meant. When he tried to concentrate on it and make sense of it, a dull[/FONT][FONT=&quot] headache developed above his right eye.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Fireflies in a windstorm....[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]He groaned softly.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Between him and the dumpster, a shadow among shadows moved, quick and[/FONT][FONT=&quot] sinuous. Small but radiant green eyes regarded him with icy interest.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Frightened, Frank pushed up onto his knees. A thin, involuntary cry[/FONT][FONT=&quot] issued from him, almost less like a human sound than like the muted wail [/FONT][FONT=&quot]of a reed instrument.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The green-eyed observer scampered away. A cat. [/FONT]

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Breathless

A moment before the encounter, a strange expectancy overcame Grady Adams, a sense that he and Merlin were not alone.In good weather and bad, Grady and the dog walked the woods and the meadows for two hours every day. In the wilderness, he was relieved of the need to think about anything other than the smells and sounds and textures of nature, the play of light and shadow, the way ahead, and the way home.
Generations of deer had made this path through the forest, toward a meadow of grass and fragrant clover.
Merlin led the way, seemingly indifferent to the spoor of the deer and the possibility of glimpsing the white flags of their tails ahead of him. He was a three-year-old, 160-pound Irish wolfhound, thirty-six inches tall, measured from his withers to the ground, his head higher on a muscular neck.
The dog’s rough coat was a mix of ash-gray and darker charcoal. In the evergreen shadows, he sometimes seemed to be a shadow, too, but one not tethered to its source.
As the path approached the edge of the woods, the sunshine beyond the trees suddenly looked peculiar. The light turned coppery, as if the world, bewitched, had revolved toward sunset hours ahead of schedule. With a sequined glimmer, afternoon sun shimmered down upon the meadow.

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Koontz's mastery of the suspense pace makes his style invisible--it becomes a blur as the reader's heart races and the brain commands the eyes to read as fast as possible to find out what happens next--but if you slow down--the prose comes into focus in all its flowery glory.

This is something I find myself worrying about sometimes too, because I also write with a pretty simple style. But, really, style is only one of the things that makes a book complex, and, in my opinion, not the most important one. I personally find the most effective novels the ones that are written simply, but have so much depth and emotion beneath that superficial "simplicity." I can't yet provide any insight into what the publishing world thinks of my own approach to this, but I do certainly know and love many books like that, including critical darlings and award-winners.

I don't worry about style. If I worry about it, I will try to fix it. That would be a waste of time. I write how I write, and I try to add bits of description because I tend to leave it out. That's it.

I guess that's my "style".

Osulagh said:

You're correct when you see it from a business point of view. If you wish to make money, following the popular styles at the time is highly recommended. The best way to sell a book is to sell safe, familiar writing style.

However, radical writing styles and authors willing to advance both language and writing have made modern writing what it is today. If they didn't take risks, the "popular" style of writing that we revere today wouldn't exist in the same form.

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I don't think I agree with a single word of that. I don't care if you were a writer a thousand years ago, or today, writing is about communication, about giving readers a good, meaningful story that says something about the human condition, and does so with good, empathetic characters readers want to spend time with.

Popularity, ease of selling, or any other such thing, does not happen because of some "safe" style, but because the writer is doing a great job of communicating, of telling a story readers want to know, or filling that story with good characters, not because writer has some grandiose idea about advancing language, or using some style that does not communicate effectively.

I'd be willing to bet I've read as many classic novels from every age as anyone alive, and I've also read a boatload of the classic writer's contemporaries. Pick the era, and writers wrote to portray characters and tell a good story in the clearest way possible. With the writers who have lasted, style was never affected, never anything out of everyday language and culture. Even Shakespeare, who "coined" so many words and phrases, took most of these from, as he called them, the drunken masses. He used words and phrases they all knew to tell a story that lasted, and to give us characters that lasted, to communicate in the best and clearest way. He not only wrote for the drunken masses, he took his writing from the drunken masses.

It has nothing to do with making money, nothing to do with following a style, nothing to do with being "popular", though if you're unpopualr, you're probably can't write well, tell a good story, fill that story with good characters, or say anything worthwhile about the human condition.

The best way to sell a book now is the same way those classic and long-lived writers from the past did, which is telling a story and filling that story with characters readers want to spend time with, and not allowing pretentious style get in the way.

Language advances in writing as it advances in everyday culture, and this is as it should be, but I don't even know what "safe' style is. I do know what good, clear, meaningful prose is. I do know the best way to communicate. I do know that story and character matters, and that the moment your style gets in the way of these things all you advance is how soon your writing will land in the history's dustbin.

How do you determine what your style is? Not as in 'how do I make my writing into a particular style', but 'how do I define the style that is my writing?' I have to admit, I'm a bit style-ignorant. One person said my style was cinematic, and that I should write screenplays. Is there a 'style manual' somewhere that helps you find which box you might be in? That could help me decide if I'm consistent, at least!

Re: Osulagh and Jamesaritchie

Thomas Mann, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon. To them style was not merely a means of communicating the substance (like, say, for Asimov), but an integral part of the substance, which would cripple said substance, if it were to become 'clear' prose that does not repulse 99 readers out of a 100.

Not everyone can or needs to write like that, nor make music like that, nor make films like that, but it does happen, no use saying it doesn't, and it does add to the overall cultural treasury and it does advance culture and influence the next generations.

Culture needs a constant dialogue between core and periphery to survive, and the periphery is not made up only of heroic working class drunks and decadent drugged artists, it is also made up of the aristocratic and/or pretensions outsider weirdo who deconstructs and reconstructs with glee and skill and bravery.

Focusing only on the invisible hands of the market as a way to measure quality will mean Titanic was the best film of its generation and 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight are the best books. It would take a lot of self-hypnosis to honestly believe this, although I do not doubt some of us will try.

greendragon said:

How do you determine what your style is? Not as in 'how do I make my writing into a particular style', but 'how do I define the style that is my writing?'

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To me, the short answer is that you don't, or shouldn't try. Leave it to others to determine and define your style.

Style happens while you're not paying attention. In fact, it happens even faster if you don't pay attention. Style is the way of writing that comes naturally to you, and it happens in the subconscious. You can try to affect it consciously, but you will be fighting yourself, and ultimately, you will be dissatisfied with the results. Why? Because the conscious writer brain too often clashes with the subconscious writer ear. The conscious brain tells you a sentence if fine the way it is, but the subconscious ear tells you the sentence still seems wrong for some reason. That is your style--your natural style--speaking to you.

I tend to edit as I go, getting each passage as near to perfect as I can before moving on. This is my conscious brain at work. But if I return to a passage after some time--perhaps a week or more--I might wonder why I wrote something the way I did. Wouldn't the passage flow better if I changed this or that? That is my style speaking to me, and you can bet I pay attention to it.

So what is your style? My advice is to ignore the question altogether and just write. The longer you attempt to control your style, the longer it will take for your natural style to appear.