Happy new year! Thanks to all of you, who make this blog a writer’s haven!<\/p>\n
For any who will be in the New York City area on January 17th, I\u2019ll be giving a writing workshop and talk at the New York Society Library. Details are on the In-Person page here on the website.<\/p>\n
Thanks to everyone who suggested titles for my expulsion book! I\u2019m putting together a list of possibilities for my editor, and I\u2019ll let you know what happens. If her answer turns out to be None of the Above, as I fear, I\u2019ll come back for more help.<\/p>\n
On October 12, 2018, Melissa Mead wrote, How do you identify your writing style? I\u2019m thinking of sending \u201cMalak\u2019s Book\u201d to an agent, and one of the things they want in the query letter is examples of authors with a similar style.<\/em><\/p>\n I know who I WISH I wrote like, but how can I tell if I actually DO?<\/em><\/p>\n Melissa Mead later added this: Many years ago I sold a series to a magazine, and the editor encouraged me to submit stories to the later issues anyway, but under a pseudonym. So I did. I also used a different address, phone #, you name it.\u00a0<\/em>Here\u2019s what happened:<\/em><\/p>\n Editor: \u201cNice story, Melissa, but I\u2019m afraid we won\u2019t be using it.\u201d<\/em> I had a style! I\u2019d only been writing for publication for 2 years, and I had a recognizable style! I was giddy.<\/em><\/p>\n MAN, I wish I\u2019d thought to ask him what it was.<\/em><\/p>\n Raina replied, CPs (critique partners) are a big help here. Often, they can see things that we can\u2019t, or see things in a different way than we do. You can also make a list of things that you write a lot or write really well; are your books funny? Do you write beautiful descriptions? Thrilling action sequences? Literary or philosophical things? (A CP can also help with this.) After that, just find authors who are a match for some or all of those attributes.<\/em><\/p>\n Also, do they specifically want you to list authors with a similar style, or just comp titles in general? Because with the latter, it doesn\u2019t have to be an exact match, just books\/authors whose readers might also like your book. Most people use the same ones, to be honest, which just shows how un-specific they are. For example, in YA Fantasy, Sarah J. Maas, Leigh Bardugo, and Victoria Aveyard are the big names I see in queries.<\/em><\/p>\n I love technical questions like this. Please send more if you have them.<\/p>\n My advice would be to not say your (or anyone\u2019s) style is like Shakespeare\u2019s! Probably not like Tolstoy’s, Faulkner’s, or Jane Austen’s, either\u2013even if it\u2019s true!<\/p>\n Seriously, though, sometimes I think we give the gatekeepers (editors and agents) too much credit. If you say your style is like, say, mine, I doubt very much that an editor will launch a comparative analysis of the two of us.<\/p>\n It\u2019s probably safe to name authors of books you admire in the genre you\u2019re writing in. It\u2019s likely to be true, too. If you read a lot of someone\u2019s books and tend to reread them as well, his or her style is likely to infuse your own writing, even without your awareness.<\/p>\n I would blithely list authors you aspire to be like. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s terrible\u2013or matters at all\u2013if we\u2019re clueless about whose writing is most similar to our own. There are aspects of the question that I\u2019m not crazy about anyway. It seems fraught with danger. Suppose you say your work is like the writing of an author this agent or editor happens to despise. Or, if you say it\u2019s like someone on the New York Times<\/em> bestseller list, the editor or agent may suspect your motive for the comparison–implying that your manuscript will also land on bestseller lists. What if the editor has never heard of the author you name, and he feels stupid?<\/p>\n You might do some research and find out what writers the editor has worked with or the agent represents. Then, being a conscientious person, you can read the books of those writers and see if you feel an affinity. That\u2019s not a bad way to go. I would be straightforward about it, though, and say what you did in your query letter.<\/p>\n Another option is to ignore the question. If I felt I could get away with it, that\u2019s what I would do.<\/p>\n However, editors and agents aside, I think there\u2019s value in inquiring into our style, though I tend to think of the term as voice<\/em>. What follows is full of prompts, so there won\u2019t be any at the end.<\/p>\n For one of my poetry school craft classes, my classmates and I had to read a poetry collection every week and write an analysis of the poet\u2019s style and an imitation poem. I loved writing the imitation poems!<\/p>\n To do them, I examined each poet’s work on both a micro and macro level. On the micro level, I looked at things like line and sentence length, where line breaks occurred, sound devices (like alliteration and assonance), formal elements (like rhyme and meter), punctuation, capitalizing, metaphors, similes, etc.<\/p>\n On the macro level, I paid attention to tone, subject matter, how personal or not the poems were. Were they, in poetry lingo, confessional? Intellectual, idea poems? Were they easily understood or the opposite or somewhere in the middle? Did they tell a story?<\/p>\n Then I used what I\u2019d discovered to write my imitation poem. Some of it was mechanical, but it was also creative to get inside someone else\u2019s approach and make it, at least briefly, my own. By the end of the semester, I had new moves I could apply to my own poems, approaches that hadn\u2019t been natural to me but became part of my repertoire.<\/p>\n We can do the same thing with a fiction writer we admire. We can look at what she does on both a micro and macro level. Try it! Open a beloved book to a random place. How does the page look? Are there lots of paragraphs or just one or two? Is there dialogue, or just narration? Or only dialogue? Open to a different page. Is the same still true? Do you see a pattern?<\/p>\n Examine a paragraph of narration, or a few if they\u2019re short. Look at sentence length. Are they long, short, or varied? Do the beginnings repeat? Do words repeat? Do you see any italics? When you go to the next paragraph, does the beginning repeat from the one before? Is the vocabulary difficult? Do you notice exclamation points? Many questions? (If you\u2019re reading my books, probably yes, many questions\u2013I have to pull myself back.) Do you sense a rhythm in the prose? (There needn’t be any.) Do you see many or any parentheticals? Dashes? Colons? Semi-colons?<\/p>\n Zooming out, think of the book as a whole. Look at POV, tense, first-person or third. Do any of these switch? Does this writer use flashbacks? Are there big time jumps? How does the book start? With action, description, dialogue, setting? Do you see a lot of thoughts? Much emotion and emoting? Does telling or showing predominate? Humor?<\/p>\n Examine your own writing in the same way, asking yourself the same macro and micro questions. I\u2019m pretty sure you\u2019ll make discoveries about your voice\/style.<\/p>\n Returning to the micro level, pick a paragraph\u2013any paragraph that\u2019s long enough to work with–in your own WIP and rewrite it as an imitation of the voice of the writer you\u2019ve just studied. Have you learned something? Do you feel that you broke out of your mold and acquired new options?<\/p>\n When you\u2019re about to start a new project, think of the macro level of the admired writer. Is there anything you can incorporate? When I wrote Ogre Enchanted, I\u00a0decided to make Evie choose the guy I believe Jane Austen would have chosen, if she wrote fairy tale fantasy. She may have rotated in her grave, but I didn\u2019t hear her bones rattle.<\/p>\n If you try my suggestions, please post how the process went. What did you learn?<\/p>\n Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Happy new year! Thanks to all of you, who make this blog a writer’s haven! For any who will be in the New York City area on January 17th, I\u2019ll be giving a writing workshop and talk at the New York Society Library. Details are on the In-Person page here on the website. 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\nMe: \u201cHow\u2019d you know it was me?\u201d<\/em>
\nEditor: \u201cI recognized your style.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n