Your Style

In my previous post, I mentioned personal style, saying that it is who we are. This idea deserves more than a casual mention at the end of a post, so I am giving it one of its very own.

When I was in school, the major quest for writing students was the discovery of our style. In many books about writing, authors will say that all of the techniques and skills you learn are applied to your style, which implies that you need to have a style before you can really shape your writing.

So, what is your style? Everybody has their own opinions on the matter. Stephen King says that your style is a combination the last three authors you read. I agree with with him, but only to a point. The effects that other people's writing has on you are cosmetic. You may use different words, put in a few flourishes or tricks, but even if the skin of your writing changes color, the heart remains the same.

Your style is you. It is everything that you are deep down in your heart and soul. It doesn't matter what genre or what form of writing you do, your writing will always sound like you. If you want to know your writing style, then get to know yourself. What interests you? Is it people? Places? Things? Relationships? Mechanics? These are the subjects you will look for. If you like relationships, you will write stories about people's relationships, both simple and the complex. When you write about something completely unrelated to humans, you will still search for relationships. When you write about the rain forest, you will write about the relationships between plants and animals.

How do you talk with people? Are you blunt? Do you beat around the bush? Do you start from the beginning or jump right into the juicy bits? Are you thorough, or do you just cover the main points? This is how you will write. All of your technical aspects, including vocabulary, sentence length, and preferred construction, can be found in how you communicate with others already.

The point of reading other authors is to speed up the process. There are two ways to learn: research, and experimentation. Experimentation can take a long time to try everything, and you may taint your studies because you are experimenting on yourself. Reading other people's work is like research. When you find a piece of writing that resonates with you, you can analyze it and find out the parts you like. You find out why you like it and what that says about yourself. You will usually internalize that writing style, but with enough time, you should see that you never truly copy it. You may sound similar to the original, but it will never be the same. That difference is your style. It is your variation on a set of techniques and ideas.

One final note to point out, though. Remember that your style is a reflection of yourself. Your style will never change unless you change. And if there's one thing I know for certain, it's that people change. There's nothing you can do about it, of course, but you should be aware that if something significant changes who you are or how you think, your writing will reflect that change. That is how close it is to you. That's why it is your style.