# Developing a unique voice



## Gorgemind (Nov 29, 2012)

Most of my favorite authors have their own unique voice. You could tell it was their writing from a few paragraphs on a blank page.
I feel that saying things in a unique way, developing your own style, is one of the most important parts of writing. Anyone can put word in a linear storyline down on paper. The voice is what separates author and typist.

Sometimes I feel that my writing style may make my works unreadable by any but the smallest audience. A few weeks ago I sold a copy to the proprietress of a local inn. She was very excited to read it. The next week I show up to this "I tried to read it. But I couldn't understand any of it".
This is not the first time this has happened. Other say it takes an adjustment period to get into the style.

Just wondering:
Does anyone out there give much though to this?
Do you have ways of developing your voice?
Does your style of writing get in the way of being published?
Do people have trouble reading your writing because of your voice?
Do you think people are interested in being challenged by reading or would they rather just have a regular storyline?

Thanks


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## Jeko (Nov 29, 2012)

Funnily enough, this is one of the biggest things I'm thinking about at the moment.

I've spent months working on my introduction just to get my voice right. Writing in first person, I needed the character to be attractive to the reader without being bland or predictable. What I've got at the moment is something I can't quite put my finger on, but it's running through everything I'm writing. I may actually have my voice, or I simply can't comprehend how much I suck at the moment. Either way, the only way is up.

This would be a good example of what I can't put my finger on:



> Welcher!’ I snapped. ‘If you’d stop talking about your stupid films, you’d notice I’m not in the mood today.’
> 
> Welcher shrank in his seat. ‘You’re never in the mood, you know.’
> 
> ...



Then again, maybe the reason I can't put my finger on it is because it would damage the computer.

Yes, voice is a weird thing. I think, if you can sum up your voice too quickly, it's not as good as it could be.


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## Foxee (Nov 29, 2012)

Either you've approached the wrong audience or your writing may lack clarity.


> Does anyone out there give much though to this?


Not very much, no. I think that the unique voice develops with practice but without being forced.


> Do you have ways of developing your voice?


I know that when I read over my writing to edit it, certain things hit me just right and other things need to be adjusted to get that same pass. The more I write, the easier it is.


> Does your style of writing get in the way of being published?


This is possible to have happen if you're inflexible in how you feel that something should be written. Not all markets will fit what you do. Sometimes you can compromise and sometimes you should pass on a market.


> Do people have trouble reading your writing because of your voice?


That has depended on the person. I've shown the same story to multiple readers and found that if you've got a relatively low reading level or a mild difficulty with reading, my writing is probably not for you. It seems like people who are the most comfortable reading my work are enthusiastic readers anyway.


> Do you think people are interested in being challenged by reading or would they rather just have a regular storyline?


Unfortunately, I don't think that people in general want to be challenged. However, if you take the smaller number who are avid readers, I would guess that you'd find more people in that group who do like something challenging and view that as a rewarding read.

Not sure if that helps. Hope so.


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## qwertyman (Nov 29, 2012)

Hi Gorgemind,

I have often wondered the same thing myself. Has my work been rejected on style rather than content? Consider that the innkeeper might be too polite, or not clear herself to tell you why she couldn't continue reading. 

Not having read anything of yours this is purely a guess; could you be certain the innkeeper isn't referring to flow? Reading a jerky or lumpy paragraph is like dropping a cannon ball on your foot, you don't want to keep on doing it.


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## Gorgemind (Nov 29, 2012)

Here is a small sample from my last novel _The Frailty of Bone. _I think it shows some of my "voice".

Red.
All Red.
And violent.
Flaming tridents stabs out at all, jagged and forked, sharp and vile, and Is see not. Sound of a roaring blast separating, a dredgered earth crushing sound and Cassandra lays.
Head down in the heat, redness and flashes. Blues and purples welt around her like loose moths flapping at night, wings granting little whooshes in the silence. Broken only by the crackle of occasional flame that seems to be the only non variable here. She lays head down but does not see, eyes are open but she does not hear. Her paled marble skin shines transparent and through it organs pump and transpire. Blood boils in veins and bile and offal shuffle and dance in waltzes and sambas, boleros.
Distance, a mountain rise, spires up into heavens past the layers and atmosphonics, into void and darkness and absence. Burst from, seismic and violent and they shake these plains below bellow.
Away in this dessert of flame the lion looks back to her. Just for a moment. Looks back at what he has done. She lays head down and her neck twists in a barbed manner. Flecks of red human oil spout loose and sizzle as they ride down the marble to the flame. Smoke and steams float uppers and create an ozonic layer darkening, making light from below.
The lion stops at the door. Begins to close then backs again. He comes to her and she senses but does not see him. The lion prides down to one knee and pushes close. She can hear the heavy breath, feel the dampness of it, interpret its heat and scent and when she feels the paw on her arm she tries to recoil. But the statue does not move. She lies with her head down. The lion strokes at arm with paw and she feels layers o skin retracting, peeling back, sinew and ligament burrow away, but she can not move.
The lion closes to her ear, sniffs and whispers in growls and roars.
“Cassy… I wish this hadn’t happened.”
She turns neck but nothing happens, she fires neural pathways but the tunnels are block, road closed, detour ahead.
Lion sighs out breath, move to face close to side face, sniffs at her hair. Brings hand to her and gently pastes finger down lock of brunette. Closer and on top of ear he lisps.
“You stupid derogatory term.” 
And the lion ups and aways out of the fire red desert of its homelands. Out the door of this and behind. The slam starts her, send a shock of awareness through her limp form. Her eyes open, placed straight down into comfort down and sheet and she feels a wetness oozing from face. One eye seems to be bursting, pressure and swelling. A balloon filled with whisk warm pudding about to be pierced, needled, and swallowed out. She tries to lift, to up, to move, to swallow, to breath. And when not happens, her mind fills with fast moving vibrations and deep speeded edges. She tries to scream, to cry out, to obligate, and her eyes flair wild. She leaves herself behind, she passes threshold and fills with a blurred stuffed hue of sheer excrement. Finally she does, shake more than move, and bodies pressure ups, her head falls to the side, face facing wall, swollen eye pus filing downward, covering all sight. And she sees in the distance that great debate of ages, that gentle genteel light of time. The sand around her grows less coarse and her panic and shudders turn to warmth as she spies the mountain growing upward. 
She opens facial orifice to speak but only those tiny grains, no words warm and sun bleached, fall out and she lets eyes clamp in a peaceful and bright celebration of life relief. They close, her gazers, heavy and absolute and air become less and less, squeaking out into the surrounds.


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## the antithesis (Nov 29, 2012)

Gorgemind said:


> Sometimes I feel that my writing style may make my works unreadable by any but the smallest audience. A few weeks ago I sold a copy to the proprietress of a local inn. She was very excited to read it. The next week I show up to this "I tried to read it. But I couldn't understand any of it".
> This is not the first time this has happened. Other say it takes an adjustment period to get into the style.



This interests me. Writing, like all forms of communication, is for transmitting understanding. So if your work is difficult to understand, that's a problem worth examining. Is it possible you could post and excerpt, preferably the part she found difficult to understand. I'd like to see what was such a stumbling block that it caused her to stop reading. But failing that, another excerpt might do if we can see what in your style is so hard to follow.

Oops. Well, I'm a silly bunt. I'll give that excerpt a looksee and let you know.


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## Jon M (Nov 29, 2012)

Gorgemind said:


> She opens facial orifice to speak ...


Trying _way_ too hard. 

The writing in the excerpt is not clear. Lots of description, seemingly little of actual story. I think at this point worrying about style is to your detriment.


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## Foxee (Nov 29, 2012)

Okay. At each turn of writing something I have to make decisions as to how to write what I'm writing. If you ask me about it, I should be able to give you some explanation of these choices.

So can you explain why you've chosen to write this scene in this way?


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## Kyle R (Nov 29, 2012)

In my opinion, the best voice a writer has is the one you use every day--every time you open your mouth to speak.

It's the voice you use when you write a discussion post, the voice you use to respond to an email from a friend. It's the voice I'm using right now. It's the voice you're going to use to respond to my post.

That's your best writing voice. You've been honing it and developing it your entire life. Use it, I say!

Then, when you get to the editing phase, you can polish it up and turn your rocks to gems, to twist your words and juggle them around to produce elegance and color. But you have to start with a natural foundation and the easiest way to do that, from my experience, is to use the best voice you have--the one that is unique to you and only you.


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## Deleted member 49710 (Nov 29, 2012)

When I write I try to make the style conform to the story I'm telling -- the mood I want to set, the characters, the setting, the events that occur -- which means that it's going to vary. I'm not saying I don't have a "voice" (maybe I do, I don't know, nice to think so) and I'm sure I have certain patterns and tics in my writing. But I care more about getting my ideas across than about getting "me" across, if that makes sense.


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## Gorgemind (Nov 29, 2012)

This is the truest expression of how I see the world. A jumbled, twisted, hard to understand thing around me with beings I can almost at times understand.

I have to try _*Way* _to hard to not write this way.

This is also maybe not the best example as she is just waking up from being unconscious and in a semi dream state. She has been beat up by "the Lion" aka Boyfriend. It has parallels and connotations to writings that come before and after it.


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## Terry D (Nov 29, 2012)

I feel that voice in writing is a lot like a speaking voice--you don't really have a lot of control over it.  Yes, I can write in a different style, attempting to emulate Poe, or James Joyce, but the choices made will still be mine and reflect my voice.  Worry first and foremost about telling a good story, and telling it in a way that connects with the reader.  The author's voice should be like background music in a good movie--there affecting how the story is perceived, but not dominating the tale.

That's my opinion anyway.


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## Foxee (Nov 29, 2012)

Fair enough. If it is hard for you to NOT write this way, you have some work to do because it's not clear at all. While I got the overall gist you weren't helping me, the reader, to understand your story or even why I'm reading it. 

When we learn to write we learn the simple mechanics and as we go we discover how we can bend that to make it sound uniquely like us. I think that you may be doing as Lasm mentioned here and we're seeing you ("I am confused by the world") rather than having what you're writing conveyed clearly, seasoned with that confusion.

Bend the scene, don't break it. Make the reader question reality by all means but don't confuse them to such an extent that they give up.


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## Jon M (Nov 29, 2012)

Gorgemind said:


> This is the truest expression of how I see the world. A jumbled, twisted, hard to understand thing around me with beings I can almost at times understand.


You can still communicate this idea without the prose itself being a jumbled mess of ideas that nobody (but you) can understand. I mean, I get it: I also feel that way about life. But there are so many ways to put forward this idea and still write clearly. 



> I have to try _*Way* _to hard to not write this way.


Well then you do so at your own risk. I wouldn't be surprised if you're rejected across the board if this is indicative of the rest of the text.

*Off topic*



> “You stupid derogatory term.”


:lol: Funny Potty edit.


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## the antithesis (Nov 29, 2012)

Gorgemind said:


> Here is a small sample from my last novel _The Frailty of Bone. _I think it shows some of my "voice".
> 
> Red.
> All Red.
> ...



Right here is where I wanted to stop reading. Two sentences in and my take is "I know all those words, but this doesn't make any sense." This is all very confused. I'm not sure if that wasn't the point, though. 

This reads like the opening of a movie that shows disjointed imagery of trident and flames as the credits roll before we get to the first proper scene. This, unfortunately, doesn't work in text. Film doesn't take much effort. Well, some films can take quite a bit of effort to sit through. But reading takes a bit more effort. So the first two sentences left me not wanting anymore, but I did promise to plow on, so I will and that's the only reason, I'm afraid.

...

I... I honestly don't know where to begin. I had hoped that when I read an excerpt that I would say that my opinion and the innkeeper's are a wash because I don't see anything wrong with it, but this is not the case.

If I were to use a single word to describe your writing it would be "confoundingly verbose." But even that doesn't do it justice. You have a very, very strange structural style. It seems that what you're doing is hooking fragments together to try and make a complete sentence out of it. That doesn't work.

You also have things like this:



> The lion prides down to  one knee and pushes close.



You can't pride down on one knee. It's not a verb that works and I wonder why you used it. It seems like you're trying to dress up your prose to make it sound fancy or something. I don't know what to tell you except that it is hurting the reader's ability to understand. I still don't know what is going on. I have bits and pieces, but none of it hooks together. There was flaming tridents and exploding earth, then suddenly there was this chick. Then there was a mountain. Then there was a lion with the aforementioned chippy. I don't know what the exploding earth, flaming tridents or mountain have to do with this scene or one another. It's also not completely clear if it's a lion or a man whose name or title is lion or if the girl was turned to stone or frozen in time or what. It's also not clear if this is taking place in a desert or a room with a door.

Now, some of these elements could be confusing, like it is a desert and it's a magic door type thing, but with _all_ of these elements being confusing, the reader doesn't have any context to get a foothold. So I'm afraid I have to say, yes, your writing style does hamper your writing. But this sounds like an effect you're putting on more than just being the way you write. Your OP wasn't like this. Try re-writing this passage the way you wrote the OP and let's compare.


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## Foxee (Nov 29, 2012)

This excerpt is easier to understand though if you write 'Throws his head into the pot' know that sounds like he's been beheaded somewhere along the line and yet retains the ability to slam-dunk his own head.

You can stick to your guns, by all means, and tell the world that the problem is with them. You can write any way you please and be content with it.

But your original question was regarding whether your style may block your chances of being published.

The short answer is: yes.


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## Newman (Nov 29, 2012)

Gorgemind said:


> Do you have ways of developing your voice?



When you go into a debate and someone puts forward a motion, e.g: Obama is good for the healthcare industry.

And you have a point of view, which you stand up and present. Your voice comes through.

Forget "your voice." Focus on theme and it should come through.


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## Gorgemind (Nov 29, 2012)

What about this:
Sniffer of carrion, premature gravedigger, seeker of the nest of evil in the bosom of a good word, you, who sleep at our vigil and fast for our feast, you with your dislocated reason, have cutely foretold, a jophet in your own absence, by blind poring upon your many scalds and burns and blisters, impetiginous sore and pustules, by the auspices of that raven cloud, your shade, and by the auguries of rooks in parlament, death with every disaster, the dynamatisation of colleagues, the reducing of records to ashes, the levelling of all customs by blazes, the return of a lot of sweetempered gunpowdered didst unto dudst but it never stphruck your mudhead's obtundity (O hell, here comes our funeral! O pest, I'll miss the post!) that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit, the more murphies you peel, the more onions you cry over, the more bullbeef you butch, the more mutton you crackerhack, the more potherbs you pound, the fiercer the fire and the longer your spoon and the harder you gruel with more grease to your elbow the merrier fumes your new Irish stew


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## Jon M (Nov 29, 2012)

Try not to get so butthurt, Gorgemind, and we can have a better, more productive, _fruitful_ conversation. Thing is, you are not Joyce. You are not Burroughs. You are not Lynch. There's another person on this forum currently who thinks she is Harper Lee, but, alas, she is not Harper Lee.

It is discouraging that you would blame your reader, insult his intelligence, suggest it is his problem, his inability to understand what you have written. Your writing is deliberately obtuse. Most reading this thread agree. Your real world reader agrees. 

My suggestion, prior to your (now AWOL) rant, was just to tone down the style, write with an emphasis on clarity. Sorry you feel this is pandering. It is not. It is just 'good writing'.


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## Gorgemind (Nov 29, 2012)

"good writing" lol.
I am none of them nor would I want to be. But I am not you nor cater to your ideas of good.
I have nothing more to say. I do not subscribe to commonality. That it must be good because it is popular. I enjoy a book that challenges my very notion of what writing is and what it can be; and they are out there. Try the literature section of the book store.
No one has said any thing to me beyond pampered store bought blathers.
I thought I'd find about as much insight here as I would fine food at a WalMart. 
Which seems to be where most here buy their books.


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## Deleted member 49710 (Nov 29, 2012)

Gorgemind, you are speaking to and judging a group of people who you do not know, some of whom both read and write at a very high level. It's generally good to know your sources before you dismiss them.

Not long ago I posted a piece here that was difficult for others to understand though not of bad quality as far as the writing went (at least that's more or less the response I was given). Now I could blame others for not "getting it," but I think really, it was an inhospitable text that demanded a lot of interpretation without meeting the reader halfway or giving them a way in. My point is, you can write however and whatever you want, of course; but if you want to have readers, you have to welcome them.


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## Nemesis (Nov 29, 2012)

Condescension hasn't a place in a discussion thread, you can disagree with people’s opinions, you are, after all, entitled to your own, but this is a discussion, isn't it? Expect to come across people who may think differently from you.

Also, after reading the piece myself, I have to concur with the others.

Just because the writing is purposefully complicated and/or convoluted and nearly impossible to read or understand doesn't mean it's better than a story with a clear plot that anyone can pick up and enjoy. Writing that way also doesn't mean that the writer is smarter than everyone else. It could just be exactly what everyone says it is, frequently beyond comprehension and, frankly, uninteresting.


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## the antithesis (Nov 29, 2012)

Gorgemind said:


> "good writing" lol.
> I am none of them nor would I want to be. But I am not you nor cater to your ideas of good.
> I have nothing more to say. I do not subscribe to commonality. That it must be good because it is popular. I enjoy a book that challenges my very notion of what writing is and what it can be; and they are out there. Try the literature section of the book store.
> No one has said any thing to me beyond pampered store bought blathers.
> ...


Which do you care about more, your work or your ego?

This has been a rhetorical question.


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## Kyle R (Nov 30, 2012)

Please your readers, and you're probably doing something right. :encouragement:


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## Kevin (Nov 30, 2012)

Follow the form and go for the money, or... The work is crap. Take your pick. I don't subscribe to any of these. I really don't know what to make of it. It is work, and it is not ordinary. I bought a book by Joyce. I put it down. Nothing happened; no insights. That is jmo.


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## Gamer_2k4 (Nov 30, 2012)

the antithesis said:


> Right here is where I wanted to stop reading. Two sentences in and my take is "I know all those words, but this doesn't make any sense."









I dunno, it seemed relevant.


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## Kyle R (Nov 30, 2012)

Lol!  Thanks Gamer. I needed a laugh.


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## Bilston Blue (Nov 30, 2012)

> I do not subscribe to commonality. That it must be good because it is popular.


Is he on about _Twilight_? Wait 'til Sunny finds out.


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## FleshEater (Nov 30, 2012)

I can semi-relate to Gorgmind...but the truth is, is that it is far more difficult to hone brevity in writing than it is to write endlessly like the drunkard Poe or the shut in Lovecraft, etc.

Gorgmind has obviously left "butt-hurt" as JonM pointed out, and it's a shame he feels as he does. I suppose he's never read anything outside of Dunsany and the like...if he had, he would have found excellent writers, writing legible, clear stories that are breath taking in their ability. 

I started out as a lovecraft, Poe, Machen advocate, and now...I can't even pick these authors up and read their stories. Ultimately it's because they don't have their place for aspiring modern day writers. 

However, Gorgmind might also be content being the only one superior enough to "get" his writing, and that is fine...he just can't expect the public EVER to get it.


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## ppsage (Nov 30, 2012)

*Stardate 121130.1024a… Re: Voice*

Hi Gorgemind… In analyzing the excerpt which has been posted, it seems important to me to keep in mind the difference between an author's style and the narrative voice of her piece. What has been mostly talked about in this thread is style and the bit offered is exceedingly stylized. Nothing wrong with that, per se, that I can see. A lot has to do with the purpose of the writing. I, for one at least, do not assume that the only purpose writing has, is to be sold. I also do not assume that ease of reading and understanding is a measure of the communication a piece of writing can potentially achieve.

I have read this piece twice. My main difficulty is with the innumerable grammar errors it contains. [My actual *main* difficulty reading here, is that the trouble has not been taken to format it correctly in the post, always a disturbing sign, regarding the author's intention.] Subjects do not agree with verbs, tenses are mixed up and the writer definitely needs to learn the difference between _lay _and_ lie._ A great deal of the problem with this comes not in the style itself, but in the lack of command of English grammar. My experience is, that the more stylish one's approach becomes, the more vital grammar's role. 

Another difficulty with the piece (as an excerpt at least) is that very little transpires; it is almost entirely description of the elements of a very limited action sequence. This has the effect of putting the reader into a sort of slow-motion POV, but in a piece where she has very little context to care about so intimate an examination. With more context, such a passage could be effective. As an aside, the work here, with its lush and suggestive imagery set against elusive flux, reminds me of works which have their basis in a Latinate milieu; South American, or southern European, a literature perhaps less concerned with the explicit concretization of narrative than English.

Finally, there is the actual narrative voice itself, which I would say is obviously a major element in this sort of effort and which I find highly inconsistent in a piece where it's recognizable consistency is a critical factor. This voice does not know if it wants to be the hyper-cool hipster which makes up terms like _dredgered earth crushing,_ or the indifferent noir character who drops cliché like _boiling blood._ Other times it resorts to the mock technical as with _facial orifice._ The narrative voice has here also many instances of syntactical anomaly. It could be beneficial, to think of the voice as a character, who is recognized by conformity to type, in vocabulary mainly and also grammatical construct. 

If the desired effect is to put one's hand in the pocket of the popular reader, thereby to extract remuneration for one's authorial effort, then the clear explication of an absorbing plotline is almost certainly paramount, at least for the English-speaking audience. I delve into this arena, as a consumer, to a slight degree and find some encouraging signs, but passages such as offered here will for long continue to be a very rare spice, in a highly homogeneous pudding. But that is certainly not the whole of literature and one can find many examples of writers working in a stubborn obscurity who have sometimes found publication and limited readership and have, unbeknownst to the majority of consumers, expanded the art, and who, at this very moment, lie in wait for the unwary on library shelves. pp

Edit: Please realize, much, apparently, has transpired in the thread since I set myself to making a reply.


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## the antithesis (Nov 30, 2012)

Jon M said:


> Try not to get so butthurt, Gorgemind, and we can have a better, more productive, _fruitful_ conversation. Thing is, you are not Joyce. You are not Burroughs. You are not Lynch.



More importantly, there are few people who read _Finnegan's Wake_ who aren't doing so for a class. There is a reason why the post-modernist movement hasn't been moving very much.

Rebelling against the conventions of traditional narrative methods rarely bears fruit. I'm not an expert on any of them, but I suspect that Joyce, Burroughs and Lynch had done many traditional narratives, and to a degree mastered the form before striking out into less traditional methods. It's because we haven't been programmed by years of traditional narratives to not be able to accept anything different. Rather, traditional narrative form arose out of how human beings think and how our brains reflect on our own lives. Which is why novels like _Finnegan's Wake_ are still studied. It's unique because it could spark it's own genre because it just didn't connect with as many people.

Point is, if one wants to compare themselves someone like Joyce, they do so at their own peril. For one, _Finnegan's Wake_ wasn't Joyce's first novel, but his last so to try to deviate from the norm without gaining some ability with traditional structure is premature. Moreover, the audience for such work shrinks because it deviates from the norm. Like a pithy quote from Mtv several years ago, who would have thought that the flaw in alienation is that it doesn't relate to anything?


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## Caragula (Dec 1, 2012)

It's just practice.  Just get on with it, you will imitate for a while, and as you read books which profoundly affect you, you will then imitate them a bit, and after a while you'll just not be that obviously imitating at all.

What is important though, is exposure to widely different styles of writing.  If I'd read Terry Brooks and Geddings and Tolkien all my life I would now be a crap writer.

When I read John Banville, Thomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie, John Fowles, Annie Proulx, DH Lawrence and a number of other worthies I found my flowery prose and slightly gothic style dissipate into a much tighter form.  I hate words that don't do some work in every sentence.

So read widely as you write, best advice I could give.


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## tepelus (Dec 1, 2012)

Gorgemind said:


> Here is a small sample from my last novel _The Frailty of Bone. _I think it shows some of my "voice".
> 
> Red.
> All Red.
> ...



This writing reminds me of spam comments I have gotten on my blog. They are much shorter than this example, but just as confusing and full of WTH? All this example has shown me is that the writer is trying to show off, trying to convey even simple things with excessive verbiage. It's to the point of being laughable. I had a hard time reading _The_ _Vampyre_, written in the early 19th century, but it was the common style in those days, a style that as a modern reader I'm not used to. This kind of reminds me of that, but I don't recall Polidori using words like "facial orifice" to describe a mouth.


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## Zico Cozier (Dec 1, 2012)

You're trying to hard to be poetic in your style and it's hampering your ability to communicate with your reader. Then there are just some sentences that scream awkward 


"She lays head down but does not see, eyes are open but she does not hear." 

What is going on in this sentence? Did you actually reread what you wrote there?

"organs pump and transpire."

Ok..

Just tell your story to us and forget about style for a little while. Clarity needs to become your focus


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## Lewdog (Dec 3, 2012)

It might sound odd, but a big part of my writing voice comes from one of the strongest socialist writers of all time, Kurt Vonnegut.  I've read a quite many of his books and it reaches out to me.  How can you fail at writing when you are talking about real world things, and doing so with an 'every day man's' voice?  There are a few other writers that influence me, Anne Rice, who gives me a trait of talking about things many others won't even recognize.  I also believe that JD Salinger comes out in me as well.  When there are no limits to my posts I feel like a caged bird set free.  If I was able to write one the great American novels, I too would more than likely become recluse and quite writing more novels.  Once you reach the pinnacle, you can only enjoy it for a minute until the rest of the world then expects greatness out of you every time you are published.


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## Amanda786 (Dec 5, 2012)

Jon M said:


> Trying _way_ too hard.
> 
> The writing in the excerpt is not clear. Lots of description, seemingly little of actual story. I think at this point worrying about style is to your detriment.




Lolz..I agree trying way too hard. Listen to your inner voice don't just push  your self to the extreme.


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## the antithesis (Dec 5, 2012)

You know, my ex-wife had me read some of her writing years ago. I said it needs to be trimmed because it was kind of wordy. She said that's her style. I said, wordy is not a style.

Learn to write. Don't refuse to improve by calling it your style.


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