Collin’s review of Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences > Likes and Comments
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Oh man yes. Also I have finally gotten to the place where I'm like "Okay but this rule is not for all the time, but just try not to do this all the time/try to remove some to improve the writing/make it more concise" but yeah I get annoyed sometimes by some writing rulebooks now if they lay it out as "This is the only way you should write ever".
Yeah! Style/voice is so varied, in nonfic too but especially in fiction, where the characters’ voices are going to be different from book to book, separate from the author’s own voice. Vocabulary is going to be different, diction will be different, grammar will be different. Staying true to a character’s voice is way more important than writing “rules” about using plain words or streamlining the prose or making the hero lovable from page one. Even when some rule book writers say that their advice isn’t for everyone, they make it sound like the exceptions will be rare and unusual, when they really won’t.
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Courtney
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Jul 21, 2026 10:21PM
Oh man yes. Also I have finally gotten to the place where I'm like "Okay but this rule is not for all the time, but just try not to do this all the time/try to remove some to improve the writing/make it more concise" but yeah I get annoyed sometimes by some writing rulebooks now if they lay it out as "This is the only way you should write ever".
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Yeah! Style/voice is so varied, in nonfic too but especially in fiction, where the characters’ voices are going to be different from book to book, separate from the author’s own voice. Vocabulary is going to be different, diction will be different, grammar will be different. Staying true to a character’s voice is way more important than writing “rules” about using plain words or streamlining the prose or making the hero lovable from page one. Even when some rule book writers say that their advice isn’t for everyone, they make it sound like the exceptions will be rare and unusual, when they really won’t.