Hey everyone! Back again with another post for this week. I hope you are finding this series interesting and entertaining. There are only a few more posts left to go and I’m hoping they will help to round out your basic knowledge of Prose for future writing endeavors especially for those of you who will be participating in the upcoming July Nanowrimo prep camp. So, without further ado,
Prose: Style
Style is an important part of writing prose, and it isn’t just one thing that every writer does to create a style. There are a lot of different small parts of writing prose that work together to create a writing style. Because of this each writing style is unique to each writer. Some writers build their style without really realizing it and in cases such as those usually the readers are more familiar with the author’s writing style than themselves.
Whatever kind of writer you are – whether you are aware of your writing style or aren’t sure if you have one – understanding some of the aspects of writing style can help you to understand or discover what your style is and what that means for you as a writer. I’m going to try and discuss just a few areas of style that are some of the most common and one that might not be just to give you an idea of what to look for when determining what your style is.
Writing Rhythm
If you were to look up the elements of writing style on the internet a wide variety of sources pop up. Writing style is so unique to each writer and so varied among genres that there are hundreds of different definitions of what a writing style is (I tend to lean more towards the broader view of many characteristics unique to each writer). However, many of the sources will say either rhythm or punctuation is one of these characteristics of style.
The punctuation you use in a sentence can really affect the rhythm of your writing. The way I use punctuation can help to make my voice clear when I’m writing things such as this blog. I tend to have long narrative style sentences along with lots of side thoughts or semi related add on sentences that cause me to have a lot of punctuation to indicate these thoughts such as – followed by words or () in which I include a thought.
Some writers’ rhythm is shown most strongly in the way in which they use little to no punctuation while maintaining grammatically correct sentences. I had one writing friend in the past who would constantly use semicolons in her writing without much other punctuation except for the typical ., ?, or ! at the end of her sentences. This made it easy for me to pick out her piece of writing among our friends. So, what kind of punctuation are you using and what kind of rhythm in your writing does that make?
Point of View
Point of view is a widely discussed area of writing, cinematography, and debate in recent years. With the new trend on social video sites like TikTok of putting POV on videos a filming a certain perspective there is a wider misunderstanding of what Point of View actually means with the shortened acronym POV meaning a variety of things on the social internet. In writing point of view still refers to the writing style of the narration.
The two most common writing points of view – as many writers may already know – are first person and third person. First person is very straight forward. A story written where the narrator says I, me, and we is a first-person point of view. Third person has 3 different third person points of view that are all similar but not the same.
Third person limited is the closest to the first-person point of view. This is when the narrator is not the person the story is happening to (so it is written with the character’s name and she/he/they to indicate the character) but they are only in the mind of a single character. Third person omniscient is similar to it but the narrator knows the thoughts of many of the characters – not just the one. Third person objective is not as common in writing prose and that is when the narrator knows none of the characters’ thoughts and only their actions – like watching a film.
Second person is the last point of view but it’s not as common. This is when the story is written using ‘you’ and the person in the story becomes the reader. Whichever point of view you use can help your reader to determine what your style is. So, experiment and find the one that fits you best or fits your genre the best to help to develop your style more.
Symbolism
Another mark of a writer’s style is how they use symbolism in their writing. There are a lot of different forms of symbolism. Some writers always use real objects in the story to represent things, such as a characters stuffed animal or the jacket another character always wears. Some writers always use animals as symbols in their stories such as to represent other characters, ideas, higher beings, or spirits.
The type of symbolism that a writer uses and the way that they use symbolism can affect the writing style that the writer uses or how the reader recognizes the writer’s style and consequently how they recognize one of the writer’s books.
Unreliable Narrator and Other Unique Voices
There are a lot of other narrator voices that can help a reader to identify a writer’s style or that a reader can come to expect from a certain writer. One of the unique voices that more readers might be familiar with is an unreliable narrator. Unreliable narrators are when the narrator (usually written from the first-person point of view) lies, omits the truth, or misdirects the reader.
A writer that I usually associate with unreliable narrators is Megan Whalen Turner. She is very very good at writing unreliable narrator characters. She does it so well that you don’t know what or how the character is lying to you until the last few chapters of the book when everything is revealed. And even though every book I’ve ever read by her has had an unreliable narrator, each book is different and catches me a little bit by surprise at the end. Unreliable narrators is a large part of her writing style.
These are just a few areas that can affect a writer’s writing style or that readers might look for when trying to identify a writer’s style. I hope that this list helps you to start thinking seriously about style in prose. There are a lot of other elements and characteristics of prose – if you can think of any feel free to post them in the comments below.
That’s all I have for this week. I hope you enjoyed it. Next week will be our last post in the Prose series but there will be a few stand-alone posts before I take a short hiatus to prepare the next series. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, become a blog page member, share, and follow me on social media at the link on the bottom of the page. And remember,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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