Know Your Style and Own It
Welcome to BRB, everyone! It’s been a very
long time since I’ve written an actual article. Lately, I’ve only posted
reviews and promotional material. Anyway, not this time and, no, the article
isn’t about fashion. Style is in
reference to an author’s syntax, the way in which he or she creates sentence
structure. Some prefer more description, while others use more dialogue. And
drawing on a finer point, some authors go as far as to hate adverbs, while
there are those who embrace them. Another preference is POV. All these choices and
many more vary from author to author, which is what makes literature such an
exciting linguistic medium.
My interest in writing took a serious turn in
1997 when I started to pen my fantasy series. I wrote by hand, literally, and
I’ve got drawers full of paper that I’ve spent years transferring to computer.
At the time, I really didn’t understand more than the basics I’d learnt in
English class during high school. But it was the first stepping stone to finding my own style. I read a lot, everything from textbooks to
novels, and my favourites genres were and still are fantasy/sci-fi and mysteries. I gobbled up every book I could lay my hands on. In the beginning, in particular with my fantasy stories, I wrote in what would be classified today as third-person omniscient with an objective narrative, switching with ease from
paragraph to paragraph between different characters thoughts and emotions. The
POV came naturally to me, and from what I’ve researched this seems to be the
norm for most fledgling authors. Whenever I work on my fantasy books it automatically comes
back to me. Since then my writing style has improved drastically, and with improvement comes change.
Even though
I’ve written from a third-person perspective, I prefer first person, and have published both. I think first person is the most difficult because
the main character has to speculate what everyone else around them is thinking
and feeling. This point of view is more personal, but also restricted by a
solitary opinion, which can easily be used to mislead the reader, and more than
one crafty author throughout the years has accomplished it.
I think the author should stay true to what he or she is more
comfortable writing, and strive for perfection. I also believe that in order to
maintain a realistic feel personal experience is key along with proper research.
But, of course, it all depends on what genre. Generally, I don’t read too much
of what I write, for fear of influence, but at the same time it helps keep my
own stories fresh by providing a new perspective. And I try to stick to what I
enjoy the most, while constantly seeking to improve in areas where I lack: structural abilities such as grammar and tense. And the more I write the better I get, and now I can
honestly say I’ve grown into my own sense of style. My romance differs vastly
from my fantasy, but both work. That’s the beauty of writing in multiple genres
you can experiment and literally swap styles.
Blak Rayne
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