After last week, we know that we’re going somewhere; we even have a rough idea of where it is. Style requires that we know what we’re saying, that we not waste time in saying it, and that we make sure other people understand what we’ve said (“Say it plain, short, and clear”). Style is built off of this foundation, built out of habits with using the tools of communication: sentence structure, word choice, imagery, description, more. Today let’s consider the means we have to get there, some possible pitfalls, and get a little better idea of what the goal actually is.

The practical path to a personal style has two branches we’ve got to walk down at the same time: practicing and observing. There is a third branch- learning from somebody else and from resources- but I’m leaving that aside, except to say that it’s worth doing, especially at the beginning or with a good teacher (or a good book). As for today’s two methods, practice is the first and the simplest and the most painful.

Practice has two parts: drafting and editing. In drafting a piece of prose, you will be developing and reinforcing a personal style. The words you choose, the formations you choose to put them in, the way you communicate. When you go back and read it, there’ll probably be a few things that baffle you. I know I once wrote something that I looked back at four days later with complete incomprehension. Still, though, this is an application of your personal style, particularly its intuitive aspect, and an important part of the development thereof. Be intentional about how you tell the story, and over time you’ll see benefits.

Compared to drafting, editing is to me the easier (but also the longer) process. Note here that I’m using editing to mean cleaning up and modifying prose on a sentence-by-sentence or possibly paragraph-by-paragraph basis. If you start replacing large segments, adding new plot points, or otherwise doing large scale renovation, that goes under re-drafting. When you sit down to grapple with each paragraph and sentence and word, though, that’s editing. Here is where you’ll be not only using but refining style. Here you will make the conscious decisions that shape your style in one direction over another. You’ll have to way tangible and intangible factors, some of which you are only intuitively aware of, and come to decision. Sometimes it’ll be right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes it’ll be a choice I or another author with a divergent style from yours would not have made but which is right for your style nonetheless. As you make these decisions, you’ll get better at making them, both consciously and unconsciously, and your drafting will improve under the effects of your editing.

Overall, this path is one of practice, and practice, as the saying goes, makes perfect. It is complemented, though, by its brother: observation. Observation means interacting with the style of other people, understanding it, and borrowing the parts which, being understood, are good. When I say ‘good’, though, understand this: sometimes the element may be perfect for the original author’s style and still be poison for yours. View it not just in its original light but in the new light you which to place it in. Perhaps it is worth modifying your style to fit it; perhaps you will develop a variant of your usual style which you use when you wish to incorporate this new element. Perhaps you will abandon it, cannibalizing from it what little you can before you relegate it to memory instead of application.

Observation takes several forms. First, we can merely receive stories and communication. This is the normal way of interacting with a piece of media: watch the film, read the book, hear the song, and move on, with only superficial thought about it. This path does have some effect on your writing; your surrounding will rub off on you eventually. It’s not the ideal path for a writer though. Second, we can interact with stories. This is how attentive readers deal with stories and poems. They read the story, think about its ideas and plot and themes and characters. They compare and contrast, coming to a deeper understanding of the book and the book’s relation to them.

Third, we can analyze as authors. At this point, it is not merely the story that is considered but the story-as-story. We now look at how the story conveys the meaning it conveys, and we consider how the story works as a story. This is an important part of every author’s toolbox, and I cannot emphasize enough that this is a skill which will benefit not only your understanding of style but your understanding of every part of story. Find good examples and figure out what makes the good. Then, take that new understanding and make your own work better.

The fourth part of observation is not so much an extension of the other three but a different mode, one that can coexist with all three paths (except possibly the first) and magnifies the benefits of the second and third. The fourth path is memorization. Memorization forces an intimacy and familiarity with a work, helping build your writing-muscles and helping form the metaphorical muscle memory for good writing. I particularly recommend memorizing poetry; poetry, more than any other word-art, is built around form, and by memorizing poetry you incorporate that concentration of good examples into your mind.¹

With those basics of learning out of the way, let’s get to two stylistic pitfalls it can be all too easy to fall into. First, how not to do emphasis. If you want to emphasize something, it’s easy to try either format changes or extra words. Format changes can be italics, bold, underlines, capitalization, and the like. These aren’t precisely wrong, but be aware that italics and maybe bold are the only two of these that can evade looking childish or amateur. Also be careful to avoid using one of them for two different purposes- emphasis and thought-dialogue, for example. As for extra words, Strunk and White have the right of it: unless the word actually adds something, it’s taking something away. Adverbs in particular have a tendency to look like easy methods of emphasis while actually sucking away the power of the verb they’re attached to (hence the common writing advice to avoid adverbs).

Second, learn to distinguish between redundancy, repetition, and accretion. Redundancy is the bad one of the bunch. It’s when you include something twice without a good reason, and requires that you remove one of the instances. Repetition is a larger category which includes, but is not exhausted by, redundancy. Repetition can be justified by several reasons: need for emphasis, necessity of juxtaposing the fact to two different, necessarily separated parts of the narrative, staying in character, etc. If, however, it is not justified sufficiently, it becomes redundancy. Accretion is a form of repetition where instead of just reiterating the first statement, something is added on. A good example is Isaiah 63:2, “Why is your apparel red, and your garments like his who treads in the winepress?” In this verse, the same concept is given twice, but the second one adds detail to the plain statement of the first, while the first makes sure the impact of the second can be felt. Accretion is a reason for repetition, but if the detail and emphasis can be added just as well without repetition, it can easily become redundancy.²

The final promise I made was to give a better idea of where we’re actually going, now that we’ve got the tools to get there and a general idea of its traits. What does it mean to have a personal style? A personal writing style is a set of preferences for how you use the mechanics of prose to communicate a story; it is a sub-set of what people will learn to recognize as your signature if you write enough, the types of plots, characters, and settings you prefer, how you establish tone and what tone you establish and how you change it, your preferred pacing, etc.

Once you establish a writing style, you won’t stop developing. You can change your style naturally, growing and refining it under the weight of experience (there’s always room to grow). You can change it intentionally, choosing parts you dislike or like and treating them accordingly. You may even choose to adopt a different style altogether, whether for a specific project or just in general. How you express your style in your writing will vary too. Some people write in a very deliberate style, choosing their words and phrasing for a certain stylistic impact. Others adopt a certain style instinctively, giving little conscious thought to ‘style’. Many of us, myself included, will fall in the middle, having stylistic concerns, taking care to cultivate a better stylistic mind, and relying on habit and intuition for a fair amount of the practical work. May God guide all of us, though, to create beauty in His name.

God bless.

Footnote

1 – I highly recommend memorizing parts of Scripture, such as Isaiah or the Psalms, both for practical religious purposes and for reasons of writing. However, if you want an easier start, find some poetry with a strong rhythm and rhyme scheme. G.K. Chesterton is a good start. Above all, though, choose good poetry. Memorizing slop will only hurt you, so don’t just dig out the lyrics to Christian worship music. Go find classic poetry, hymns, and the like.

Don’t read Walt Whitman, though. The man was a narcissistic, self-worshipping pantheist.

2 – Biblical poetry, such as Isaiah or the Psalms, is amazing to build your accretion and parallelism muscles.