Lucid Writing Advice V

There are no authors out there who are completely the same, each one has his or her own style, which no one can match. If you don’t have a style of writing, or have lost your voice or just haven’t found one, then the following is for you.

You may be wondering to yourself what in the world do I mean by ‘blunt voice’, and in a way I’m thinking the same thing. But blunt voice, along with articulate voice, are styles that you may find interesting. Everyone writes with their own style in mind, and you probably won’t find that style anywhere else except from the same author. I have style of my own, and so do you and the other authors here at sffworld.

Styles usually are aspects of your writing that you can’t possibly help, it happens without you being aware of it, and yet you create it every time you write a word.

If you would like to experiment, let me show you a passage that is in the ‘blunt voice’.

The words in this passage are simple and straightforward. As with the first sentence ‘The dark pond was an endless stretch of black from bank to bank,’ you can see that this writer described the pond in three words: dark, endless, and black. You should be able to picture this pond in your mind as it stretched between the two banks. Also note how this author didn’t go into a whole lot of detail, mainly just floating above the surface and telling things at an offhanded rate. The scene just hits us in the face, yet we have an idea what is going on.

This voice seems to fit will with the dark mood of the passage, but I must warn you that it won’t work all the time. Sometimes you just have to give your words an imaginative boost. That’s where the articulate voice comes in.

Susana twirled in a ring of shimmering golden light, trapped in the music that floated intimately around her. Her arms rose and fell with the tune while her legs spun her around the white marble floor as if she was gliding on ice. All the others stopped and stared in wonder as she jumped placidly into the air. For a moment there was a gasp of surprise as she landed without a stammer on the other side of the dance hall.