Writing with my partner, Larisa has brought about the topic of writing styles. Hers is narrative and my strong suit is dialogue but I have a knack for combined dialogue and narrative. Being that my influences are Stephen King, the king of narratives that take six chapters to complete the description – I have that same problem Mr. King, and am always editing and re-editing – ask Larisa, she watches me in real-time on Google Docs!!
The narrative is easy, for the most part, I would say. As Larisa indicated, dialogue can be tricky and confusing at times. Even I have to go back and think and edit for dialogue at times. I was recently editing one of our other books (Shout out to our reader Tyree for all the help) and there was a lot of dialogue in the book. Even with my penchant for dialogue myself, it took me a while and I did have to go looking for the correct style on some of it because skills are learned and you never stop learning. Don’t forget dialogue and narrative also have a point of view to deal with as well. Not only are you working in a style of writing but possibly multiple points of view as well.
What’s your preferred style? Do you agree with my comments? Let me know down in the comment section what you think!
My Methods:
I’m an inner visual person. I see it in my head. Much like Larisa, I visualize what I’m writing. If you were to be able to look inside my brain the manuscript/story would be playing out on a projector screen as if it were a movie. However, that movie would back up, fast forward, bounce all around, change, get rewritten a few times. Become a jumbled mess then reorganize itself back into the proper order of things.
Observer-Narrator: I am very much capable of being not only the observer but I can jump into any character’s shoes at a moment’s notice. It makes for some difficulty in editing as I sometimes forget the different POV end up jumping with me. I’m a bit of a “matrix” it kind of writer and so most of my work ends up heavily edited before going out to the reader.
Going with the well thought out blog https://paperfury.com/the-10-types-of-writers/. I would say I’m a combo Shiny Idea, multi-tasking turtle.
I chase every literary idea that comes to mind while taking my sweet ass time and multi-tasking every project I can possibly throw on my plate. I’m the living epitome of that meme where the person is chasing all the balloon ideas around and gathers so many of them they float away.
“Writer or Storyteller?”I’m a storyteller, through and through. My storytelling stems from the fact that I’m a bit of a “bard” personality. I love the art of storytelling. The way a storyteller grabs onto their listeners (or readers in this case) encases them into the story, placing them alongside the characters. The way a story can elicit emotions from the reader. If a storyteller can make their readers cry with their character or laugh with the villain then they have done their storytelling job.