Writing style : What's the mystery?

Could it be that many great writers never finish books? Thus one explores greatness by the partial measure of finished books written by in-the-box personalities that enjoy getting things done and ticking off their progress. (Or are goadable.) Then of course we cull again for the portion appealing to editors and publishers--or written by those with the cash and will to self-publish.



I think they should start publishing anthologies of partially-written books and stories, collected by door-to-door canvass in a variety of neighborhoods and encampments.

"Um, excuse me, sir/ma'am. We're looking for manuscripts--you know, stories you have started writing but may not have finished?"

-Sal

guys.. i really dont get this "voice" thing for writing.. im learning english so yea.. my pros told me my voice isnt strong enough... i have no idea what she 's talking about...

Welcome to A2K, englishnewb. A writer's voice is nothing more than the way the writer exresses him/herself, the style, the choice of words, etc. etc. It's not something that can be pinned down with a clear definition. One way (not the only way, certainly) to test your "voice" is to read something you've written out loud. If it sounds good, it probably is good.

that would be scary! I hope no one discovers my "incompletes" until long after I am a member of the "Dead Poet's Society."

As far as a writing "voice".....well...that too scares me a little. Sometimes where I write the most powerful "voice" is one of a sick mind. I write freely upon the cyber paper in my computer and store them in the folder entitled: "Dreams." I have great plans to one day use the insanities within these writings to weave them into the plots and characters of future books.....that is if I can ever write for a living instead of having to punch that stupid time clock each morning when the creative muse is actually at its best!!!!

Advice: write even it is a sentence......each day. If you do not undestand "voice" it will eventually call out to you and you will understand it.

Oh, all right.

If your "voice" isn't strong enough, it probably means you have not established a strong "perspective." If you were drawing a picture of something real that was supposed to look real, things would have to appear in the "normal" relationships we perceive. If you were a cubist, your perspectives might vary, but what took place would have to be consistent with at least one of them, one way or another. If you were arguing, you would need to make a plausible argument that didn't sound like an astrology printout. If you were bullsh*tting, your bullsh*t would need to have a shape or structure that cohered.

If you are just writing and writing and don't portray a clear sense of what you are trying to say or what you think about it, your instructor might say you lack a strong enough voice. Or not.

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Dear Charles,

When we went to the dance last night, I mean I drank a Martini, and then only to discover today there are lots of calories in Martinis. Calories I didn't know about--I could've drank a beer and I thought THEY were full of calories.

So why don't you come over tonight and we can go dancing again and I'll order a beer this time.

Marcia
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So what do you think? Is there a strong voice there or not? I'm inclined to think there is, but I can't say why--and that's not writing for your average English teacher.

Sally

Re: Writing style : What's the mystery?

Well for one thing, it's greatly overrated. If you have something to say, think it through, and write what you mean, the `individual writing style' will take care of itself.


I agree with your friend. If you write in a tone that doesn't come naturally to you, you won't necessarily sound as if you fake your voice. But in practice, you probably will.


I disagree. Just look at the many `exceptions' provided in this thread.


Writing is best learned by doing. There are some nuts and bolts to good writing, which William Strunk has summed up succinctly in his wonderful book, The Elements of Style. For persuasive and analytical writing, I also found Bryan Gardner's Legal Writing in Plain English helpful. (Only 20% of this book, if that, is specific to legal writing. The other 80% apply to writing in general.) Once you master these nuts and bolts, which you may already do, the path to even better prose is to write a lot, revise a lot, and have good English speakers revise your text a lot for you, too. It may also help to read your texts aloud to audiences and observe how they react to which paragraph.

Good luck!

Good sound advice, Thomas. I like it.

Herema

wow.. that's some deep advices..

I tend to bullsh*t a lot if I run out of good ideas, but even when I don't bullsh*t, I still find it hard to write. It's the choice of words that gets me everytime when I have a pencil in my hand.

Oh. There is good advice for that finding-the-word problem, my friend. One possibility--just think of any-old words, keep a steady forward pace, and keep up with your urge/thoughts. This is free-writing or a first draft.

You can revise later. My view is the next step might be to organize/structure the ideas and not even worry at the second go-around about the exact words (and certainly not much grammar). After your thoughts are put into words and the words are structured into the thoughts you would like to share, assembled so that your reader is likely to understand them without to much straying--then you can start considering this word or that.

It may help you very much to write-write and then lay aside the day's writing for a while--hours, days--even a week--so it's not so embedded in your brain. You can work on another part the next day or in the afternoon.

thanks alot, but I still have one little question.

Often when I write, I don't know if the reader can understand what I'm trying to say. I mean, I can understand it because it's my own idea, but for other people.... I'm not too sure. Is there anyway to prevent that?

My pros told me it's either All or nothing; that's I have to take a wild gues. It's not rather what the words say, it's my voice that shows the reader.

It's pretty much the same as speaking, isn't it? Whether one understands what you meant, often depends on how you say it, your "delivery", rather than the words themselves. You can say "I could kill you" and have it immediately understood as (a) a joke; (b) a threat; (c) any number of other things, depending on when, where and how you say it. Same exact thing with the written word.

If memory serves, English was at least the second... if not third language of Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbuam. While usually bashed by fools who haven't actually read her Magnum Opus (and some really, really smart people who didn't really read it either), she still managed to write well enough to sell over twenty million copies of her books (despite scarce few good reviews). I think it was 1991 when a joint study by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club described "Atlas Shrugged" as second only to the bible for influence on American Culture (don't quote me... but that's pretty close). That's right folks: Ayn Rand.

Ps. Get ready to hear some bashing... mostly by folks who started, but never finished Atlas... no matter what they say (skimming doesn't count :wink:)

Sally,

Your advice on putting up the first draft is really good. I am in the middle of a story I am writing for a national glossy, and I have found this approach very helpful.


I think Englishnweb has an interesting question. Looking forward to what others have to say.

Oh, and I wanted to know how others build on their vocab store.


Thanks everyone, this thread has really come off well.

that's the thing... if I write it as if I'm speaking it, then it's too... em.. not formal enough? It's writing after all, it should have some degree of formality.

Atlas Shrugged is one of the best books written in the English language, at least in the 20th century. I have no quarrel with Ayn Rand as a prose stylist, quite the contrary. It's her politics that sucked like a Hoover vacuum cleaner.

For Joseph Conrad (don't have his birth name handy), English was a third or fourth language which he learned only as an adult. Yet he wrote for publication in no other language and wrote beautifully. Take Heart of Darkness or Lord Jim or The Nigger of the Narcissus. Fantastic books.

Spidergal (and others), I'm glad you liked the advice of "putting up" (which I think in US means "laying aside") one's work for a while and returning to it fresh. That has really served me well. If time permitted, I tried to lay it aside long enough that I had forgotten what I wrote. Then fixing the prose or tweaking the content came much more easily. There was a beer company that advertised "kreusening" as their process, which meant letting the beer age. I used to call laying-aside my work "kreusening."

Meanwhile, our friend asked about how to know if someone will get your meaning. I think it best to assume they won't get one's meaning entirely. But there are ways to make their getting your meaning more probable, including:

*proper grammar and usage (where is the modifier, etc.?)
*avoiding ambiguous indicators (and phrases) for key references and important meaning--make it explicit
*being specific about what we mean in real-world terms ("It was a long time..." is not as specific as, "The train passed twelve times before she knew its whistle-voice bawling in the distance."
*careful editing (write once for meaning and then prune, prune, prune)--let it stretch to fit where your meaning lies and cut out distracting tangents

I think tangled prose can cross the sentence barrier so you can think about the entire paragraph, too--at first they usually come out inductive. You might want to put the last statement first and rebuild when you know you said what you wanted. It's counter intuitive to not tell the shaggy-dog story first, but really it often helps readers to get to the point first:

"She held him harmless, but after a terrible battle within. At first she wanted him dead. That ended with the nightmare--the dream he was dying and only she could let him live. She waved him on, but then left and never returned. She grieved and wished he would change, for twelve full years, but finally allowed herself to quiet and count the opportunities he had missed--too many for chance. Subtle but deliberate. She then confronted him to no avail. He said "yes" and did "no." More tears, more confusion--but eventual release. He may love her but never on terms she can endure. It was not his fault--but certainly not hers.

"Some things can not be fixed. Rich had told her that, years ago. And he was right. But Rich is dead. Floundering and weak, yet unburdened for the first time, she simply left him behind, closing the door on memories of both--for a new beginning untortured but alone."

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OK. Nobody will know exactly what I have written about, because it comes from my life and from my imagined-life (fiction). Men may take it very differently; women may embrace it as the story of their life and still be right--passive-aggressive men are a dime a dozen and ambivalent relationships are hard on everyone. Most of us have a Rich or an Aunt Susan, whose words cut through the chaos but can't be heard until they've lain cold awaiting their moment.

Assuming you read this, did you think "He" was also Rich? If I wrote it right you will simply KNOW Rich was someone else. If I muffed the structure you will miss my meaning. What if I had put the opening sentence at the end? I think it would have been too dragged-out to finish reading. In my view, writing is always persuasion--persuading the reader to read on.

-Sal

Oh! Another thing to do if you don't have time to let your work rest a few hours or days is to send it to anyone else--you see the warts when you review what you sent or posted (to this list, for example--I've edited several times, since my comments were fresh).

But really that's hard on the server.

A similar, and often effective, thing is to change the type face on your document. Change to something really different and read it again. Sometimes that makes it seem unfamiliar and frees you up to see the difference between the TV-screen in your head and what's really available to readers on the page, from your words and general structure.

-S

sometimes I feel my arguement is really weak, and off topic sometimes. But, its only the feeling; I'm not too sure if it's just my mind playing tricks on me or there are somethings really wrong in my essay. Whenever I tried to change it, it turns into something even I don't understand. One of my friends' parents is an english teacher, she said that if this happens, I should stick with the first idea that comes to my mind. Is this true? I find that kind of... a rush.

Make an outline of your argument or logic, based on your current draft. If you can't outline it clearly, it's not in coherent order. If there are gaps in the logical flow of ideas and support after you rearrange it, or if arguments or development don't fit the central idea, take your pick--change the thesis or drop irrelevant arguments/statements.

-s

Thanks for all the great advice, Sal!