How do people have different writing styles?

Question

I asked a similar question quite a while ago. Most of the answers I received said that people had different styles because:

-some may have more advanced vocabulary than others
-people prefer different genres

And a few more which I can't remember (can't be bothered to look back at it XP).

But I was wondering. How are these different ''styles''? Like in art, someone could just generally be better at drawing than someone else. Doesn't this apply to '' some people have better vocabulary than others '' in a similar way? So it's not really style, is it. It's just someone who can write better, right?

And as for the preferred genre, I don't see how that is a ''style'' either. It's just what kind of stories people enjoy writing.

So, does anyone know how you can actually have your own style of writing? xxx

Answer 1

Because most people write in unconscious imitation of another writer.



Take recently deceased Elmore Leonard. He had a lot of rules for writing, such as never use anything but said. He was a great believer in simple writing, with great dialogue. His goal was cut anything that a reader my skip when he got bored. If it wasn't action, he didn't want it.



That is a style.



Or take Hemingway. Hemingway hated descriptive writing. He thought it was lazy. He once wrote a novel, where the only descriptive sentence of the woman in it was "She took off her hat and set it on the table." Other than telling you she had a hat on he didn't say a peep about her looks, how she was dressed, or a play by play of her facial motions.



That is a style



Bret Easton Ellis saturates his writing with the minutiae of consumerism, explicit detail of fonts and thread counts, till you feel the ennui of his characters. He floods you with detail, a glut of facts.



That is a style.



Hunter S Thompson wrote of his own life in an overblown style a mixture of Bukowski and an exaggeration of the minor incident into the epic. He's the reason so much rock writing sucks eggs.



yet that is a style.





How do you get your own style? You mix and match other people's style like a Chinese menu. You rewrite your own work, because when you read it, it sounds like you're imitating Steinbeck or Hemingway, or Tolkien. Then you rewrite again, because you realize you lifted too much from another writer this time.



You read good writing and then you write, till your own style emerges, a blend of a hundred authors, rather than a teenager's hero worship of one.



It is no different than art or music, where every artist gets his start imitating others till he starts to take his own steps which aren't just "Ok I'm going to sing this like Neil Young." or "let's do another Van Gogh rip off."

Answer 2

As an aspiring writer myself, this is a really good question that I sometimes think about. What makes one writer better than another?



I think the vocabulary one may be true, but it is just one factor. For example, if someone was writing a short story, they need a few components. A plot, for one. Characters, setting, conflict, a problem. Often times there will be a theme as well. A writer needs to be able to organize their thoughts and make the writing come to life. Make it seem so real that you can see the world described and feel like the characters are right beside you.



Some writers can do that. They create a whole new world and make it feel as if it is just somewhere else on earth, somewhere you haven't seen yet but can through the pages. Others can't. Their writing is....lacking.



When I read, I can tell a good writer from a bad one easily. Am I interested? Do I want to keep reading even though it's 2 A.M?



Writing style is how the author chooses to write to their audience. I think it could be based on personality, life experiences, imagination, passion for the topic, knowledge on the topic, and yes, vocabulary and experience with writing as well. It is a manner of how you write.



Example- George R.R Martin (song of Ice and Fire series) creates almost a spiderweb with his writing. It is fascinating and gripping. Everything seems real. His work is extremely different when compared to other writers, such as J.K Rowling.



Every person is different, so every writer is different.



Does that help?

Answer 3

Obviously vocabulary is quite an important feature of any piece of writing, but I don't think it's the only element that makes up a style. I don't think preferring a different genre directly relates to an author's style. Though I suppose there are some generalisations that can be made of different genres.



Anyway, here's what I think. Choice is what really distinguishes one author's style from another. What I mean to say is that there are hundreds of different ways to write the same sentence. Each way, of course, has it's own subtle nuances, and it's up to the author to choose the words he wants to convey his meaning. One author might favour the short and simple. Another might choose to be lofty and eloquent. It's this personal choice that gives an author their own style.



There are other things as well, I think, more subtle ways authors distinguish their styles. For example, in Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' he writes as though he his telling you the story himself. These subtleties can come in many guises, but they all help to make an author's work her own.

Answer 4

Writing, like in all aspects of art, is impossible to judge on being good, better, or best. Since it is an art form, it is all up to interpretation. Someone may think that "Starry Night" is the best damn painting in the world while another praises "Girl with a Pearl Earring".



Style as a whole is not a reflection of one's vocabulary. Vocabulary is technical, it is the tools by which we create, not our creation. Style is born with you and is a process within one's cognition. In short, it is who you are unconsciously. Although you may change your sentence structure and your vocabulary as you learn to do so, your style is something that you've picked up somewhere along the way.



Take Shakespeare. The world's greatest playwright. He invented his own language and sentence structure in order to present his style. It's not that he was super great at spelling (although scholars argue he knew what he was doing when he misspelled some things) its just that his style appealed to people and continues to appealed to people today.



What I'm trying to say is that your style is like how you breathe; unconsciously. It can be similar or the same as someone else's but its still yours in the end, you know? Every word we speak is one that has been spoken before, every breath is air recycled but its still ours, right? A style of writing is abstract.

Answer 5

It's not about genre or vocabulary. Those are "symptoms", things that happen differently for authors because of their writing style. They are not the cause.



Writing is an extension of one's self. Sometimes, in fiction, you write from the perspective of someone else, but there is always a little bit of the author in it, no matter what you do. So really the question is "Why are people different?" The answer to that is complicated genetics stuff. :P



Writing is a form of communication. Different people communicate differently, duh. That's where writing style comes from, the person behind it trying to communicate with an audience.

Answer 6

Well, when I think of style, I think of an author who may use dry or dark humor to tell their story, or a writer who usually writes in first person, or a writer who uses words like someone who is writing their story for a creative writing class assignment. Vague, maybe. But sometimes knowing what actually constitutes style is fairly vague. You can distinguish it between two sets of manuscripts just by seeing the words that are used (not necessarily vocabulary) and the tone the words set in a reader's mind.

Answer 7

There so much more to it. Yes, some people have different vocabularies, and yes, some people like different genres. It has more to do with the pattern they use to put words on the page. Take Stephanie Meyer for example. Think what you want of her, but the Twilight series was so popular because she's very good at conveying emotion through narration. Even in New Moon when all Bella did was mope around, she still was able to convey that in a way that wasn't 100% boring...though I would consider it the most boring book of the saga.

I know someone who writes his stories in exposition, like he lived his characters lives and is telling us like we're a bunch of kids listening to him around a campfire.

James Patterson is famous for his short chapters filled with mostly action without a whole lot of description.

Anne Rice goes deep into description, trying to define every detail.





We all have a different way of writing. Some use more dialogue, some use it less. Some lean on description, some are action-oriented. It all the way we choose to convey the scene and the pattern of writing that we use.



Hope that makes sense.

Answer 8

Well, using the art analogy, there's different types of art, right? Anime versus cartoons, for example. Remarkably similar, but with some glaring differences. Not better, per se, just different.



Some people write in first person, some people write in third person. Some people have the 'three disasters plus an ending' structure, some people do the Hero's Journey thing, etc...

Answer 9

It's how you write the same sentence. This is word choice, sentence structure, concentration of adverbs and adjectives, excreta.



"He looked at her blue eyes." By one author can be "He gazed upon her azure, oval eyes that had slight grey flecks in them" by another. Neither one is inherently better.



As for genre, different genres have different conventions. Sci-fi is full of infodumps, fantasy has tonnes of description, romance has long expositions on the character's emotions and how hott their love interest looks, ect.

Answer 10

I think it depends on the type of books you read. When you read other authors "style" you start to kind of combine the things you like to create your own. Also, when you keep practicing at writing, your style kind of just . . . i don't know, develops itself.



I don't know if I made any sense, but yeah. :)

Answer 11

Your writing is automatically your own style. Don't be copying other people.