Are you guys saying you really don't have a writing style? I mean obviously each story is going to be different, but I think all short story writer have a style based on the many different collections I've read. Style does come through when I'm reading. I would like to think I have some sort of style, but I guess I'm still trying to figure out what that is. And even though, as I mentioned, I think my style has changed along the way some of it's carries over. I think most of the stories I write sound like I wrote them. I guess what got me thinking about this is that the last story I wrote sounds like someone else could have written it. Maybe that's just weird. I don't know.
I'm sure we all have a personal style. I suspect we all have a favorite kind of story to tell, and favorite types of characters to put in these stories. Such stories will have a style that is probably recognizable as ours, though a unique style is really rare.
I don't think about personal style, and I don't work on it. Somewhere I read a quote that went something like, "Good style is what you have when you don't think about style." I think this is true. Pace, rhythm, flow, syntax, character language, and mood and tone all change when I need them to change for a particular kind of story, and what else is style? But when I sit down to write such a story, I go into the infamous "zone", and there I channel character, mood and tone. Mood and tone are drastically underestimated by most new writers. Anyway, I channel these things, and all else takes care of itself.
Some writers do stick to one style, and often to one type of story, throughout their careers. I rarely see Stephen King's style change, but I find it a pretty generic style, anyway, so why should it change? But I doubt he thinks much about style, either. I don't even know how to think about style. For me, character, and mood and tone, are the be all and end all of story.
But if I tell a humor story, it will be written in a way I think is funny, and will have characters I know well, and think are funny. I don't have to think about style, I have to think about what's funny, and about making those characters realistic.
If I write a dark mystery, I don't think about style, I think about what I find dark, about using mood and tone to make the atmosphere dark, and about making these characters dark. I don't think about style. This is true for every type of story I write. Style just happens, and I think this is what good style always does.
Voice, on the other page, seldom changes. Voice is who I am, and it's what I believe. It's what my stories say about some aspect of the human condition, or about what I think is funny, about what I think people are like, or about how I think the world should be run. It's rare for a writer to go against these things, partly because many writers have no idea they're even doing this. But when was the last time you read a far right wing writer whose story praised far left wing principles? What a writer thinks and believes usually comes through in a story, even if the story has nothing at all to do with politics, or religions, etc. What a story says is what the writer thinks and believes. The characters speaks in the foreground, but the writer still speaks in the background in every piece he writes. This is voice.
Anyway, were I to think of myself as a minimalist writer, or a florid writer, or anything else like this, it would be in hindsight, not foresight. I would never sit down and intentionally write short, choppy sentences with minimal description. Nor would I sit down and intentionally write long, complicated sentences with pages and pages of description. Nor would I ever think of myself as a minimalist writer, or as the opposite.
I just don't believe thinking about your style is a good idea. I certainly don't think sitting down and saying, "Well, I'm a minimalist writer, so I need to write short, choppy sentences with very little description" is anything but a horrible idea. If this is what comes out when you aren't looking, fine. Such a style sells as well as any other, if it's done well, and if story and character are there. But I don't believe style is something we can affect, and still be any good.
I think an even worse idea, though most new writers do it, is when you write
I tried being plot driven. I tried being character driven. I tried being funny. I tried being serious.
How can you possibly
try to be plot driven or character driven? You is or you ain't. And if you're really any good, you're going to be both, and without thinking about being either. Nor, I think, can you
try to be serious, or
try to be funny.
What you can do is try to write stories you would love to read if someone else wrote them. This, I think, is all any of us can really try to do, and it's all that works. Whether it's a humor story, or a dark mystery, or a light MG, all you can do is try to it the way you would love to read it if someone else wrote it. Fiction is all about what
you like, what
you want to read, and the way
you want to read it.
If you can do this, and if what you like to read matches what a lot of readers out there also like to read, then you'll succeed. If you can't do this, or if you can do it, but what you like to read is not what a lot of other readers enjoy, then you won't succeed.
I concentrate of character, and on mood and tone. But this is just a way tow rite a story I would love to read if someone else wrote it. If you have to worry about such things as being plot or character driven, you're just stirring mud. You're lost in the forest. As the cliché goes, you literally can't see the forest for the trees. Don't try to be funny. Write something you would find funny. Don't try to be plot or character driven, just tell a story you would want to read.
Others, after you start selling, can write length critiques about how funny is yo or ain't. and how plot or character driven you are, and how your style is better than beans and rice, or worse than cottage cheese and ice cream. None of this is any of your business.