2021 Practice Thread - Creating a Style – Writing your own kind of sentences

[InkFinger]

Next week, we'll be working on sounding (reading) like ourselves. Every author has a voice, you are no exception. It's the special truth of storytelling. Give a specific story, even a known story, to two writers and have them tell it. Even though the characters, plot points, and resolutions are the same, the stories will have uniquely personal deliveries. They will be of their own. Part of being a successful writer is finding your own style. This comes mostly through repetition, the more sentences you write, the more those sentences are your own. It starts with imitation and grows.

For me, I tend to write short, sometimes brutal, sentences with little description. Whenever I stray from that, my words start to sound forced. I know quite a few storytellers who write beautiful, wandering, lazy sentences that lull you into a trap. What is your style? How did you find it?

I'll also point out that your personal style changes with time.

 

[Unimportant]

Are you going to give us a story and each of us write the same story in our own styles? Or are we winging it?

 

[InkFinger]

Are you asking for a prompt to build from or a specific piece of writing? I hadn't thought it through that far yet.

 

[Unimportant]

A prompt might be fun? It worked well the last times! Character, general situation, general resolution kind of thang?

But only if you have the time/energy/desire to do so. You do plenty for us here already!!!

 

[InkFinger]

Oh, I can ring up a good prompt on a dime. That said, what are your thoughts on writing sentences of your own?

 

[Unimportant]

I totally agree that trying to write against one's natural style is not just incredibly difficult, but it also creates unnatural-sounding prose. The reader can tell. And writing style seems to match story type for most authors. Ink, your stories seem to follow a theme of fast action, some brutality, tough-nut characters. It would fit, then, that your sentences are short and not filled with lyrical descriptive clauses.

I expect that my writing style, such as it is, is partly influenced by the way I have to write for my day job: long, complex, passive sentences.

I reckon, too, that part of an author's overall voice is the theme that they are drawn to again and again; the underlying 'big' question or issue that they repeatedly explore; the subliminal message that their stories convey. Those are things that only show up across a large body of work, of course; they can't be identified from a single story. Really dedicated beta readers and die-hard fans, I think, are likely to spot them before the author does themself, though! Because they are not, I think, a deliberate choice the way plot and setting are.

 

[ElaineA]

It might be fun, though, to do this with something well known. (ie, Unim's Medusa story)

Seeing different voices handle a similar tale can be instructive and fun. As a base story, any fairy tale could do. Erotic Elves and the Shoemaker, yo!

 

[InkFinger]

That might be fun. I'm game. Anyone for common fairy tales or nursery rhymes?

 

[Unimportant]

Elves and shoes??? I must need to get out more often !?!?

 

[Maryn]

I love the idea of each of us writing the same fairly simple and short story we all know, each voice different.

Fairy tales seem like good fodder. We could all do the same one, or the one of our choosing. Those are likely to run several thousand words, though, while nursery rhymes will be shorter. Too short?

We could also consider doing the same scene from a familiar play or movie.

Maryn, full of ideas for someone else to decide upon and execute

 

[InkFinger]

I chose nursery rhymes for length, but we should be able to spin a page or two from a nursery rhyme. And it feels kind of wrong, which makes it fun.

 

[ElaineA]

I am totally dibsing Mary Mary Quite Contrary. (Although Diddle Diddle Dumpling is tempting, too.)

 

[lwaxana]

I chose nursery rhymes for length, but we should be able to spin a page or two from a nursery rhyme. And it feels kind of wrong, which makes it fun.

Ink I’m a little confused do we pick our own nursery rhyme?

 

[InkFinger]

I think, we are agreeing on that now. I'll provide one for everyone to work from.

 

[lwaxana]

I think, we are agreeing on that now. I'll provide one for everyone to work from.

Okay Ink thank you for clarifying that.

 

[InkFinger]

Here are my suggestions for the nursery rhyme:

1. Jack and Jill
2. Baa, Baa, Black Sheep
3. Little Miss Muffet
4. Pop goes the weasel

 

[Maryn]

I'd think it could work just fine if participants chose any of the four. What are other people's thoughts?

 

[Unimportant]

I'd kind of like to see everyone's individual takes on the same single story, but I'm happy to go with whatever InkFinger sets up.

 

[CMBright]

I am ready for the nursery rhyme thread to go live in ESYW. I picked #1.

 

[InkFinger]

Up Jack got
And home did trot,
As fast as he could caper;
Went to bed
To mend his head
With vinegar and brown paper.

Jill came in
And she did grin
To see his paper plaster;
Mother, vex’d,
Did whip her next
For causing Jack's disaster.[

 

[InkFinger]

Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir,
Three bags full;
One for the master,
And one for the dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.[1]

 

[InkFinger]

Little Miss Muffet
She sat on a tuffet,
Eating of curds and whey;
There came a little spider,
Who sat down beside her,
And frighten'd Miss Muffet away.[2]

 

[InkFinger]

From Wikipedia

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle,
That's the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Every night when I go out,
The monkey's on the table,
Take a stick and knock it off,
Pop! goes the weasel.[1]

Up and down the City road,
In and out the Eagle,
That's the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel.[2]

 

[CMBright]

Up Jack got
And home did trot,
As fast as he could caper;
Went to bed
To mend his head
With vinegar and brown paper.

Jill came in
And she did grin
To see his paper plaster;
Mother, vex’d,
Did whip her next
For causing Jack's disaster.

I've never heard that variation.

I was going with the Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water version.

 

[Unimportant]

I've never heard that variation.

I was going with the Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water version.

Me too. I thought Jack fell down, and broke his crown, and ended up with a massive dentist's bill.