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This is the nonfiction story of one man's quest to publish a fiction novel:
Chapter 32: Echoes of the Greats
funEvery artist has a certain style. Van Gogh's paintings look strikingly different from Monet's. It's easy to spot a Kevin Smith film in comparison to one by François Truffaut. John Grisham has a different writing style than does John Irving. Every artist - authors, even big-time bestsellers like Grisham, included - need to find their certain style so that they can stand out from amongst the ever-increasing crowd.
Ernest Hemingway writes in short sentences. He often breaks up sentences. Puts long thoughts into short phrases. Combines ideas. He's a big fan of the periods. Uses them all the time. Must have worn out the key on his typewriter while his comma key was barely ever pressed.
Tolstoy is different; in fact, almost all the Russians writers, Dostoevsky being perhaps the most famous, are different. They prefer long, flowing, intricate sentences; broken up by pauses, by stops, but not by actual breaks: Not finite periods that seem to bring the thought to its full conclusion, almost as if they can't commit, as if they refuse to end the sentence, because then they won't be able to get the next one started: They need their momentum to continue or their creativity will be completely drained.
Cormac McCarthy's most critically lauded work, Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, is a combination. He used short sentences. But he's also very frugal with his commas and often builds long sentences made of many seemingly random thoughts and he piles them all into one sentence and combines actions with descriptions and often mixes in beautifully written paintings of nature and includes unique metaphors like comparing the sun resting on the horizon to a huge phallus or someone's murder to the horrific nature of war itself. He'll cram anything into a sentence - like a group of schoolboys creating the most disgusting combination of food for a friend is eat for five bucks - as long as he doesn't have to use a comma.
Scott Smith's latest page-turner The Ruins is something entirely different, existing in an odd sort of limbo between past and present tense, using commas to work almost as periods, melding many thoughts and actions together, keeping the verbs as "ing's" so that they seem fluid, always moving, always forcing the reader's eye to the right until the last word is read, ending with one deep, black, triumphant period, signifying the satisfying confusion.
These are all examples of a writer's style, and sometimes that style is dependant on the book. Lisey's Story, for instance, is Stephen King's latest work. And as he is trying to be more literary in it, the language is more appropriate for that tone. The New York Times called it Joycean (as in James Joyce), which is a far cry from his preceding novel before that, Cell, about horrible zombie slaughter with gore serving as a substitute for prose.
Take my novels as another for instance - all three are different. The first takes on a purposely silly detective story tone, reading like a film noir spoof. My second is narrated in the first person by an advertising copywriter who was taught to write in short sentences with quick paragraphs, and therefore does so in his story. My third is supposed to echo two types of Shakespearean plays, switching from a sad romantic comedy in the first half to a terrible tale of violence in the second, and is written in an appropriately poetic manner. Sure, my particular style of writing still sneaks its way out of all three of these books, but they stand on their own as well.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give aspiring authors is to write as much as possible, as often as possible, until they find their own style. It exists somewhere. It's almost certain that when you first start you're going to find yourself borrowing from other authors, maybe some of the ones mentioned in this post, and using their style to make you feel like you are a real writer, like your books are real books because they sound like published authors' real books. But you don't want to mimic other writers. You don't want to copy what already exists - you can never do it better than the original, no offense. So find your own voice. Use your own style. Let your words flow out of you.
You don't want to end up as an impressionist novelty act in Reno; you want your own original spectacle in Vegas.
Ernest Hemingway writes in short sentences. He often breaks up sentences. Puts long thoughts into short phrases. Combines ideas. He's a big fan of the periods. Uses them all the time. Must have worn out the key on his typewriter while his comma key was barely ever pressed.
Tolstoy is different; in fact, almost all the Russians writers, Dostoevsky being perhaps the most famous, are different. They prefer long, flowing, intricate sentences; broken up by pauses, by stops, but not by actual breaks: Not finite periods that seem to bring the thought to its full conclusion, almost as if they can't commit, as if they refuse to end the sentence, because then they won't be able to get the next one started: They need their momentum to continue or their creativity will be completely drained.
Cormac McCarthy's most critically lauded work, Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, is a combination. He used short sentences. But he's also very frugal with his commas and often builds long sentences made of many seemingly random thoughts and he piles them all into one sentence and combines actions with descriptions and often mixes in beautifully written paintings of nature and includes unique metaphors like comparing the sun resting on the horizon to a huge phallus or someone's murder to the horrific nature of war itself. He'll cram anything into a sentence - like a group of schoolboys creating the most disgusting combination of food for a friend is eat for five bucks - as long as he doesn't have to use a comma.
Scott Smith's latest page-turner The Ruins is something entirely different, existing in an odd sort of limbo between past and present tense, using commas to work almost as periods, melding many thoughts and actions together, keeping the verbs as "ing's" so that they seem fluid, always moving, always forcing the reader's eye to the right until the last word is read, ending with one deep, black, triumphant period, signifying the satisfying confusion.
These are all examples of a writer's style, and sometimes that style is dependant on the book. Lisey's Story, for instance, is Stephen King's latest work. And as he is trying to be more literary in it, the language is more appropriate for that tone. The New York Times called it Joycean (as in James Joyce), which is a far cry from his preceding novel before that, Cell, about horrible zombie slaughter with gore serving as a substitute for prose.
Take my novels as another for instance - all three are different. The first takes on a purposely silly detective story tone, reading like a film noir spoof. My second is narrated in the first person by an advertising copywriter who was taught to write in short sentences with quick paragraphs, and therefore does so in his story. My third is supposed to echo two types of Shakespearean plays, switching from a sad romantic comedy in the first half to a terrible tale of violence in the second, and is written in an appropriately poetic manner. Sure, my particular style of writing still sneaks its way out of all three of these books, but they stand on their own as well.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give aspiring authors is to write as much as possible, as often as possible, until they find their own style. It exists somewhere. It's almost certain that when you first start you're going to find yourself borrowing from other authors, maybe some of the ones mentioned in this post, and using their style to make you feel like you are a real writer, like your books are real books because they sound like published authors' real books. But you don't want to mimic other writers. You don't want to copy what already exists - you can never do it better than the original, no offense. So find your own voice. Use your own style. Let your words flow out of you.
You don't want to end up as an impressionist novelty act in Reno; you want your own original spectacle in Vegas.
Matthew Ulmer @ BookSay
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