Okay so I’m not sure if other people will find this interesting or not, but I’ve always been very curious about writing style, and what it really means.
A while ago, I had the idiotic plan that I was going to break down pages of prose by famous authors and, in an attempt to define their style, I was going to categorize things like: average sentence length, frequency of adverbs, frequency of adjectives, sentence construction, use of figurative language, etc. I still think it would be interesting, but I think simply reading pages by those authors is just as beneficial, and it doesn’t require a calculator.
Anyway, what I’m curious about how you would define your own writing style. What specific things do you do that make your writing yours? They don’t have to be things that you do well, just things that you do.
I’ll go first:
A while ago, I had the idiotic plan that I was going to break down pages of prose by famous authors and, in an attempt to define their style, I was going to categorize things like: average sentence length, frequency of adverbs, frequency of adjectives, sentence construction, use of figurative language, etc. I still think it would be interesting, but I think simply reading pages by those authors is just as beneficial, and it doesn’t require a calculator.
Anyway, what I’m curious about how you would define your own writing style. What specific things do you do that make your writing yours? They don’t have to be things that you do well, just things that you do.
I’ll go first:
- I use the word “and” probably more than I should.
- I like starting sentences with the word “but.”
- I have a thing for appositive phrases—phrases that modify the previous noun—and sometimes I string two or even three in a row.
- When introspecting, I often start three sentences in a row with the same word/s. The third sentence often has a slightly more complex construction than the first two.
- I use fragments occasionally (often?) because I think they add voice.
- I select my verbs carefully and try to avoid word echo, where a word is repeated soon after its initial use, but even so, my word choice feels limited. I could use a vocabulary boost overall.
- I use figurative language, similes mostly, and I probably use them too much. Sometimes I’d rather say what it’s like than what it actually is, because I find the comparison more interesting.
