Writing Style
As a neophyte writer, I’m still establishing my “style”, and it seemed appropriate to discuss my thoughts on personal style in my opening Goodreads blog post.
I’m trying for fast-paced stories, clever dialogue and interesting prose, and using a lot of the structural writing tricks, particularly symmetrical storytelling. If you see something and it reminds you of an earlier portion of the story, that was a highly intentional setup/payoff on my part.
Story structure wise (at least for my neo-noirs) I’m following a familiar plan, with a primary plot and a related subplot tying into the overall story arc. This structure is very reminiscent of post-Buffy Mystery-of-the-Week TV shows, but has its roots way back with Marlowe.
I’m also a fan of other common literary devices, like forced urgency/ticking clock, obvious emotional projection, meta references (particularly in character names), and - though I don’t think I have the subtlety to get it perfect - audience deception, especially using the Exact Words and Ending Changes Everything tropes. If you’re looking for what I consider to be good models on this last one by modern masters, *spoiler alert* my suggestions are John Scalzi’s Ghost Brigades, Chapter 1, and Patrick Rothfuss’ Wise Man’s Fear, Chapters 130-132 (Wine and Water through the Broken Circle). I like wordplay and referential humor, but recognize I can get too clever with that.
With my Veronica Mars neo-noirs I experimented with a pseudo-third person voice where the protagonist’s thoughts occasionally take over the narration. This is something I wanted to try to stay in keeping with Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham’s books (which use third person) but blending in more of the voiceover that was part of the TV show. As a result, the narration is a bit more colloquial and personal than true third person, and some first-person-esque mannerisms come through, particularly sarcasm and an extensive vocabulary. Veronica Mars is smarter than me, and also would be fresh off the SATs, so it wouldn’t be unusual for her to think with terms like selachamorphic or cacoethes. Some of this may also be due to early and frequent exposure to the writing of Stephen Jay Gould on my part. I tried to give context for any abstruse words so that you can piece together the story without it, but the word choice was intended to show that the main character is a staggeringly intelligent person, and not just that I love the thesaurus too much (though maybe I do).
Finally, I want each of my stories to address larger social and moral issues. If you think you’re reading a detective story and not a morality play, then I’ve hopefully done a good job in weaving the larger lessons into the story.
I’m trying for fast-paced stories, clever dialogue and interesting prose, and using a lot of the structural writing tricks, particularly symmetrical storytelling. If you see something and it reminds you of an earlier portion of the story, that was a highly intentional setup/payoff on my part.
Story structure wise (at least for my neo-noirs) I’m following a familiar plan, with a primary plot and a related subplot tying into the overall story arc. This structure is very reminiscent of post-Buffy Mystery-of-the-Week TV shows, but has its roots way back with Marlowe.
I’m also a fan of other common literary devices, like forced urgency/ticking clock, obvious emotional projection, meta references (particularly in character names), and - though I don’t think I have the subtlety to get it perfect - audience deception, especially using the Exact Words and Ending Changes Everything tropes. If you’re looking for what I consider to be good models on this last one by modern masters, *spoiler alert* my suggestions are John Scalzi’s Ghost Brigades, Chapter 1, and Patrick Rothfuss’ Wise Man’s Fear, Chapters 130-132 (Wine and Water through the Broken Circle). I like wordplay and referential humor, but recognize I can get too clever with that.
With my Veronica Mars neo-noirs I experimented with a pseudo-third person voice where the protagonist’s thoughts occasionally take over the narration. This is something I wanted to try to stay in keeping with Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham’s books (which use third person) but blending in more of the voiceover that was part of the TV show. As a result, the narration is a bit more colloquial and personal than true third person, and some first-person-esque mannerisms come through, particularly sarcasm and an extensive vocabulary. Veronica Mars is smarter than me, and also would be fresh off the SATs, so it wouldn’t be unusual for her to think with terms like selachamorphic or cacoethes. Some of this may also be due to early and frequent exposure to the writing of Stephen Jay Gould on my part. I tried to give context for any abstruse words so that you can piece together the story without it, but the word choice was intended to show that the main character is a staggeringly intelligent person, and not just that I love the thesaurus too much (though maybe I do).
Finally, I want each of my stories to address larger social and moral issues. If you think you’re reading a detective story and not a morality play, then I’ve hopefully done a good job in weaving the larger lessons into the story.
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