How to be a good writer with style? Learn from a successful one.

Published on by Jean M. Cogdell

Here’s another one on great writers.

Have you found your style? 

 

I’ll confess right up front, I’ve struggled with voice and style since I began writing. Writing as myself, sounding like me and hoping people enjoy it seems at odds. After all, my mind is a mystery to myself, so how in the world could I expect anyone else to understand my thoughts.

Forgive the rambling. Sometimes I get carried away.

Now back to writing with style.

StumbleUpon is becoming one of my favorite places to find great reading on the craft of writing. Once again I stumbled upon an article about Kurt Vonnegut and his tips on writing with style.

Vonnegut: How To Write With Style by Eli James

In this article, Eli James lists seven things to help a writer zero in on their style.

Here are my thoughts:

  1. Find a subject you care about
    • Now I care about a lot of stuff. Hmm, gonna have to work on narrowing this down a bit more.
  2. Don’t ramble
    • Oops, I have really gotta work on this one. My apologies folks.
  3. KIS
    • Simple. Short and sweet. Sometimes I take that too far. Another point to work on.
  4. Cut
    • Eli says we must have the guts to cut words and sentences we love. Doesn’t move the story forward, gotta go. No matter how beautiful. Oh well.
  5. Sound like me
    • Write like me, not anyone else. Guess, I shouldn’t try and kill that Southern twang I’ve got going.
  6. Say what you mean
    • Unless writing fantasy, SF fiction where the language is not of this world use words that readers will understand.
  7. Pity the readers
    • Now I admit this one gave me pause. I understand it to mean, write with the reader in mind. Know your audience.

Are you happy with your writing style? Or are you still searching?

Could you learn something from Kurt Vonnegut?

Who do you write like? Click here and find out. I write like…

More reading at the bottom!

Talk to me – I love reading your comments.

Please head over and “like” my Facebook page at Facebook at jeanswriting . Or to connect with me, click the “write me” tab. Don’t forget you can follow me on StumbleUpon,  on Twitter @jeancogdell , and Amazon.com.

Please stop by and say “hey!”  I’ll leave a light on. 

Style BY KATHLEEN CALI 

Four Different Types of Writing Styles:  Syed Hunbbel Meer 

Style, Diction, Tone, and Voice Wheaton College

Images courtesy of Pixabay.com 

Advertisement

16 thoughts on “How to be a good writer with style? Learn from a successful one.”

  3. My first draft is for me, but I have a “person” in mind when i do it – an amalgam if you will, of a few friends. Their feedback gets me revved up, so I want to please them with each new chapter, and that causes me to write with adrenaline. Which causes me to write a fast-paced story.

    The second draft, subsequent drafts, and editing is for the reader. Anything I want to skim over, I know a reader will hate, so it gets removed or condensed.

    Who do I write like?

    Hard to say. If I am writing a blog post and you didn’t know it was me, I’d hope – HOPE – you thought Mark Twain or Bill Cosby (pre-drug allegations) wrote it. But as far as I know, I write my style in my own way, so maybe Bill and Mark are no longer in the picture. Sad to see them leave but I’ll allow that they shined a light on where it was okay to go.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.