Archive for the ‘The Writing Craft’ Category
Entry 1225 — Writing Style, Part 4
Thursday, September 26th, 2013
I’m writing this a day ahead, knowing I’ll have a busy day tomorrow–tennis and a doctor’s appointment. I should probably do some marketing, too. I need milk and orange juice. I have two poems I ought to have prints made of at Staples. (Actually, it’s two versions of a poem for a pet, with the name of the pet all that’s different in each.
I have only one new thought about writing style: that since one’s anthroceptual (people-centered) awareness has a lot to do with one’s personality, especially the area of it devoted to the socioceptual awareness where one’s understandings of others develop and behaviors with them established, it and the temperament are probably most responsible for what most people think of as a writing style. How a writer uses words to express his personality.
Ah, writing that released a little more: that choice of subject matter, entirely dependent on the organization and interaction of a writer’s awarenesses, is not part of a writing style. What, then, is it part of?
I think I would consider expanding the above so it includes choice of all a text’s content–subject matter, ideas . . . More, I’m sure, but my mind’s blanked out.
Where would a choice between narrative, argument, lyric go?
Intellectual level, entirely determined–I believe–by a writer’s temperament is a third element of . . . whatever writing style is the main element of, and what choice of subject-matter contributes to, a second.
Element number four is choice and use of literary devices. That would involve several different awarenesses, perhaps all of the. And temperament. Temperament, I now suspect, may contribute significantly to every element.
Ha, “literary style” would be just the right term for choice and use of literary devices. But too many people take it as a synonym for “writing style.” First suggested term “verbaesthetics.” Choice and use of visual and other non-verbal matter would be another element . . . “meta-verbaesthetics?”
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Entry 1224 — Writing Style, Part 3
Wednesday, September 25th, 2013
I was calling the subject of his series of (uncoordinated) thoughts of mine “literary Style.” I now think “writing style” is better for my purposes since it takes what I’m discussing out what’s just literary–also out of what might include more than the use of words. Maybe what I really want to discuss, at least to begin with, might best be called, “word-use style.”
Here, for a little foundational background, is what Wikipedia says about writing style:
Writing style refers to the manner in which an author chooses to write to his or her audience. A style reveals both the writer’s personality and voice, but it also shows how she or he perceives the audience. The choice of a conceptual writing style molds the overall character of the work. This occurs through changes in syntactical structure, parsing prose, adding diction, and organizing figures of thought into usable frameworks.
I have nothing against it, and don’t think anything I have to say is necessarily better, but do feel I have things of value to add. I will skip personality and voice as items I am not prepared yet to deal with. The first sentence above is okay, except for the moronic “his or her.” The way I’d put it is, “Writing style refers to the manner an author chooses to use words to reveal himself.” That being so, it makes sense to turn to what “using words” might mean. A hit&miss list followeth:
USING WORDS
(1) choosing words
(2) choosing syntactical structures to put them in–i.e., sentences, clauses, broken sentences, isolated single words . . .
(3) organizing syntactical structures
(4) punctuating
(5) forming individual words (i.e., infraverbal considerations)
Anything else? There is quite a bit but most (all?) of it would be secondary to the above–each, that is, would be a sub-category of one of the above. It seems to me.
I suppose punctuating should come under “organizing syntactical structures.”
Oh, there’s (6) choosing an over-all form for a text, such as the sonnet set-up.
At this juncture, we need to consider what else happens in a text presents besides word-use. I want to take what one does with individual words away from word-use and make it a kind of literary-device-use, along with the use of what I call equaphorations for figures of speech and the like. Choosing a form, too, maybe. I vaguely feel that there is a significant difference between the expressions of a personality and the expression of a mentality. I’m aware that everything in a text expresses its author, but . . .
Where does choice of a subject come in? Would it include choice of level-of-discussion?
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Note: “uncoordinated thinking” is very likely the best term for what I mostly do here, and so often elsewhere–meaning to more of the time than not, I hope. I mention it because I believe I’ve never until this entry used “uncoordinated” to described anything but physical actions. I find that odd.
Passing thought: cerebral overload is much more of a problem for the unusually intelligent than it is for those not so blessed/cursed–because only the unusually intelligent have a need fully to assimilate data. By that I mean do more with it than storing it, and its accompanying context, I mean storing in more than one of one’s understandings-in-progress, sometimes as is, and/or sometimes altered to fit, perhaps more than once–and probably a lot more. Yeah, no doubt I’m rationalizing the effect of high school on me–which I do believe combined with puberty to overload my brain. Connected to this is the greater openness to data of superior minds.
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Entry 1223 — Writing Style, Part 2
Tuesday, September 24th, 2013
I’m too confused about writing style to do more now than play around with disconnected thoughts about it–beginning with the idea of it as that which expresses a writer’s personality in something he’s written. A main element of my confusion is that I’m not sure what I mean by “personality.” I’ve never been too clear about it. In my psychology, for instance, it took me a long time choosing among personality,” “character,” and “temperament” as what I would call what it is in a person that most makes him what he seems to be to others, going, finally, with “temperament” (generally spelling it “temperament”).
Re-thinking what a person is (mainly because I can’t remember previous conclusions), I think it possibly that the interaction of the configuration of a person’s awarenesses with his temperament may completely define him–beyond what he is as a physical object. My terminomania is now urging me to find a term to represent the configuration I am speaking of. What it is, simply, is how a person’s different awarenesses (audioceptual, sagaceptual, verboceptual, etc.–or auditory, narrative, verbal, etc.–compare with one another in size and effectiveness, and how well each of them gets along with the others. The “Awarel Profile?”
I now perceive that I may just have defined what I mean by personality: it may simply be the combination of his awarenesses. But, no. That’s because his temperament has a large say in the way a person expresses his emotions, and uses his awarenesses. Nevertheless, I think I have a start toward making some sense of this–whereupon I just may get around to tackling writing style.
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Entry 1222 — Writing Style–What Is It?
Monday, September 23rd, 2013
As I was thinking about this entry, it occurred to me that I don’t really know what the term, “literary style,” means. My impression is that it’s to a literary work what “personality” (whatever that is) is to a human being. So I looked it up on the Internet.
I didn’t find much. It seems to reduce to the selection and arrangement of words. This seems supported by the following 11 Elementary Principles of Composition that Strunk and White provide the readers of their famous Elements of Style:
- Choose a suitable design and stick to it.
- Make the paragraph the unit of composition.
- Use the active voice.
- Put statements in positive form.
- Use definite, specific, concrete language.
- Omit needless words.
- Avoid a succession of loose sentences.
- Express coordinate ideas in similar form.
- Keep related words together.
- In summaries, keep to one tense.
- Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.
This all makes sense, but . . .
And there I will leave it for now, ’cause I’s having another bad day. It included getting rained on.
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Entry 1221 — Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules
Sunday, September 22nd, 2013
I’ve been meaning for a while to discuss “writing style” here, something I consider interesting but infuriatingly complicated. Then, when Elmore Leonard died, I read his list of ten rules for writers somewhere on the internet and though them fatuous . . . until I just now visited this at the Detroit Free Press website where Leonard introduced them (to some writers’ group, I gather) as follows: “These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.” In other words, he isn’t telling us how to write, only giving us rules he has personally found useful and believes others may.
Moreover, at the Detroit Free Press website, he undogmatizes his rules with short commentaries (they’re annoying assertions by themselves, for me–although they do help you think about writing if, like me, you argue with them rather than just dismiss them. Here they are, with my thoughts about them instead of his (to get me started on my discussion of literary style, however obliquely):
1. Never open a book with weather.
First, “book” needs to be defined as “novel.” Counter-Rule: always carefully reconsider whether or not you really want to use the word “never” (or “always”) in a sentence. But his real point is to quickly get to your plot and/or characters. He doesn’t prohibit a little weather to begin with for atmosphere.
2. Avoid prologues.
This is really a restatement of the first rule. I tend to agree with it but have read effective prologues. Usually they are really first chapters their authors call prologues because it takes a while for their connection to what follows to become apparent.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
I disagree. There are times when ungeneralizing an action of a character can help portray him or contribute to the plot: e.g., “Here comes Herby,” Felicia groaned.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .
I say use as many adverbs as you can get away with.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
I love punctuation marks, myself.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
I’ve never used, “All hell broke loose,” but I use “suddenly” all the time. I’m not sure how to avoid it. It’s probably a good idea to try to find another locution when you do use it, though.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
This, generalized, reduces to stay where the reader can keep up with you. Jane Austen versus the James Joyce of Finnegans Wake. Gotta say to each his own.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
It’s hard for me to describe anything in detail (except ideas, which I have trouble not describing in detail), so I’m for this.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
See Rule 8.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
In his comments about this rule, Leonard examerates, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” Sure, but who’s to decide? This is another example of the one rule too many makers of writing rules make: “Write good.”
I now close with a thank you to Elmore Leonard, an excellent writer I was sorry to learn has left us.
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