Dear Geist,
How do I go about developing my own unique style of writing?
—Charlie F., Burlington VT
Dear Charlie,
Three things:
1. Read. Read books, periodicals, online material, advertising flyers, appliance directions, kids’ books, everything. Study the writing you admire, in any genre or medium, and describe the style: tone, pace, word choice, syntax, point of view.
2. Imitate. Write in the style(s) you find particularly good. Write your own material, but cast it exactly as the expert writer has done: where they have four lines of snappy dialogue, you put in four lines of snappy dialogue; where they have a long sentence, you write a long sentence; where they write a wild verb, you write one, and so on. You won’t publish this work, of course; you’re imitating it to learn how the great ones did it.
3. Write. Write material that will not be read by anyone else: journals, freewriting, mind-mapping exercises, prompt-fuelled paragraphs, screeds, letters . . . (check out our posts Writing before writing and Inner critic). Write every day, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Write longhand and on the keyboard. Write in pen and in pencil. Don’t stop to think, or to dig up a ten-dollar word. The good stuff is what comes without being invited. In the words of the late great language expert H.W. Fowler: “Be direct, simple, brief, vigorous and lucid.”
It takes time to develop a strong, unique writing style, but if you read and write honestly to find out who you are and what you want to say, your style will be coming together from the get-go.
Some inspiring books:
If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit, by Brenda Ueland. Lightning Source, 2011.
On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser. Harper Perennial, 2016.
The Situation and the Story, by Vivian Gornick. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002.
Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, by Joseph Williams and Joseph Bizup. Pearson, 2016.
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, by Natalie Goldberg. Shambhala, 2016.
Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd. Random House, 2013.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott. Anchor, 1995.
—The Editors
