I often hear writers say they’re struggling to find their voice or their style. So it was unexpected to read this piece from Brad Beauregard about avoiding the adoption of a style. Here’s a brief excerpt:
Sometimes writers talk about style as something you can pick up when you buy groceries, something you might stumble upon in the dollar-or-less bin at the thrift store. But style isn’t an outfit we don and toss in the laundry at night’s end. Style is a body roadmapped with scars and tattoos, the sediment of time spent struggling, failing, and starting over. Style is the house you accidentally build while you’re tearing walls down and throwing them in the burn pile. But most important, style is the thing writers struggle against, not toward. I say writers struggle against style, not because they always do, but because I believe they should.
What follows is an unconventional perspective, but a worthwhile one. At the very least, it should reduce your anxiety about solidifying or identifying your style. Click here to read the full piece—or click here to read the rest of Glimmer Train’s monthly bulletin with wonderful advice and insight for writers.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
Without a style is being without a lot of limitations, I guess. When a writer takes on a style, readers expect to be able to follow that style through every new release they crank out. I like to think that everything I write is different from everything else I write; everything is a creation in it’s own right.
I draw the analogy of a pop singer who was lambasted because she sang too many different “types” of songs. I remember how I loved that she stretched her voice to give us a taste of many different “styles” in music. Linda Ronstadt was the singer. Also, we might take note from Rachelle Gardner’s advice to experiemnt with multi-genre even if it means using different names with different publishers. Like letting your voice sing in more than one octave 🙂
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This makes sense in the design world of “form follows function” – though I do mash-ups with form all the time. Why? I need to think about this for a long time. Food for thought. Thanks
I think most writers probably aspire towards literary, yet resign themselves to genre. Straying from “revising your perspective over and over again,” as Brad suggests, they settle for craftsmanship over artistry. This is not necessarily wrong. Genre pays the bills. Not everyone has the talent to produce a masterpiece, let alone one that resonates with the reader. Along the way, some writers forget about things like plot and structure, and then try to justify it as creative, when it is really just bad writing. We can learn to practice different voices, and thus exercise mastery of our craft, but if we forget the mechanics of drawing the reader into our world, all the style in the world will not salvage the composition.
While I think imposing strict limitations on our writing is a mistake, I have a question about style as branding. If we’re getting paid to write, and our writing is therefore a product, how do we keep it from being fragmented and without unity while still developing as artists and not getting trapped in a “style”?