DEVELOPING YOUR PERSONAL STYLE

Twilight fan-fictioners, beware.

Have you ever listened to a cover band and thought to yourself man, why don't these guys just write their own songs?

Writing is the same way. When people see a piece of writing that sounds exactly like another book by a famous author, just with different words substituted in, it loses all personality, originality, readability, and a plethora of other big words that end in 'ty'. In essence, it's bad.

Chances are, you have become a writer because you like to write. If you just copy off someone elses work, you're not writing, you're just regurgitating someone esles words. Another point I'm grinding down.

When analyzing what your personal style is, you must, of course, look at yourself. How would you describe your personality? A deep thinker would include their characters thoughts and alterior motives more often than, say, dialogue. An aggressive person would probably devote more time to a characters actions with strong adjectives and such, maybe some fight scenes. A person who is interested in style might focus on a character's fashions and appearances. And someone who likes art would devote more time to exterior description and sensory detail, which would be my type.

Think of what your type may be (not all are listed above, obviously). What are your strengths in the real world. Then, when you know what you do best, write a story. I don't mean jump into a huge project with carefully plotted characters (unless you think that's your strength), but a quick story that doesn't even need a beginning or an end. Just jump to a scene in the middle and go wild with it. Just don't make it too long. After that, write a few more about completely different things. Eventually, your style will be discovered and you'll be ready to move on to bigger projects.

Side Note: fan-fictions do not have their own personal style. They're ripping off someone else's story, and no matter how original your writing style might be, that's not an original idea, so the entire thing is rendered unoriginal.

Comments

Langley Serra

Posted 11 Years Ago This is strange...I've taken different 'which writing style are you?' quizzes from different sites, and no matter where I go, I've always ended up with getting compared to Ernest Hemingway. The strange part is, I don't know who that guy is, or what he writes. Should I consider studying him?

jackie

Posted 11 Years Ago a good point to keep in mind.I'm thinking that my style is more of a person interested in style, cause I focus on a characters fashion and appearances.

jackie

Posted 11 Years Ago

spiritwind

Posted 12 Years Ago a good point

The Water Queen

Posted 14 Years Ago fanfictions do help get people to understand their own personal styles though so there should be no hating on fanfictioners. sometimes that is how kids get into writing.

Miss Coral

Posted 14 Years Ago Interesting thoughts.. personally, I really need to work on this. I have no idea if I even have a personal style yet. Need to look into it more. Thanks for the words of advice. I've been working on random scenes randomly, so I guess I can continue on that. :) Another great addition. :) Thanks. -Coral-