Improving on your own unique style of writing

It’s one thing to sit and silently read your work to yourself, and another to read it out loud. Reading aloud highlights awkward phrasing, superfluous words, boring or long-winded passages, incorrect punctuation, mistakes with grammar, head hopping – and many other errors and imperfections.

Always read your work aloud and listen to the poetry or euphony of each sentence. Pause only where your punctuation indicates it. If your sentences sound awkward or ugly, then re-write them, it might only be a matter of a slight re-arrangement, or the addition or deletion of a word or comma, but it may make all the difference to how your work sounds.

In any piece of writing it’s important to cut away any superfluous words and reading aloud will quickly let you know if something is becoming tedious and needs to be made more succinct – snappier in other words! Getting into the habit of reading your work aloud will certainly improve your style.

Drawing on your own unique experiences

What helps to make our style unique is that we all have different experiences in life and different opinions. As we write, we draw on our experiences, weaving those memories and emotions into the thoughts and actions of our characters – sometimes deliberately, sometimes subconsciously.

Our knowledge of the world and its inhabitants reveals every possible human trait: anger, jealousy, love, hate, friendships, betrayal and so on. What we haven’t experienced personally, we will have seen on TV, read about in newspapers and witnessed through other people’s actions. Our take on all these things can be portrayed through the way we write our stories.

So, whatever your style, make sure you produce smoothly written work, which is easy to read, without spelling and grammatical errors. You can have metaphors and similes, if you wish – but as mentioned earlier, make them your unique metaphors and similes, not old clichéd ones.

Your plotting has a lot to do with style too, taking the reader on a journey with your characters, adjusting the pace so that there is only enough let up for the reader to catch their breath before moving on.

Your style should feel natural to you, rather than trying to emulate your favourite author. Your style shouldn’t come across as trying to impress with the vocabulary you use. I’m not saying a thesaurus doesn’t come in handy at times, but words searched for from a thesaurus rather than taken from your own stock of words in your head, will probably stick out a mile.

You style is in the dialogue and how you blend dialogue with thoughts and narrative. And your descriptions – the length or brevity you go to in the way you describe characters, places and mood.

Remember, no one can create that style for you. It’s individual – unique to you. And the more you write, the more your style develops. 

Today’s Exercises:

• If you did yesterday’s exercise, take another look at it and read it aloud, or select any piece of your writing. Check your punctuation and see if you have created an easy to read passage. Read it aloud to yourself, pausing only where you have put a punctuation mark – not when you need to take a breath. Listen to the poetry or euphony of each sentence and adjust so that each sentence flows.
• Here’s an opening line, see where it takes you: I’ll never forget that smile… Write for 10 minutes, and then read it aloud as suggested above. Are you pleased with the way your writing flows or could you improve upon it?

Tomorrow:  Bring in your characters.