Is anyone else shackled by their style?

[Roger]

The posts on writer's block made me think of this:

To cure writer's block at my job, I flip through magazines to find "ideas." But something I've noticed is that once I find an idea, I almost always end up taking the same approach to the idea (which is my "style" I suppose), and that approach is a bit sarcastic. Sometimes it feels like it's the only way I can get excited enough about the stuff I've gotta write about is by being a bit sarcastic and "dry."

So my question to the forum is this: do you ever find yourselves often writing in the same style, and even being shackled by your style? And also: does anyone have any tips for overcoming their style, and adopting new style personas? Is that even possible?

Thanks!

[DanielScocco]

Interesting.

Now that I think about it, I also think that I approach most of writing with the sale style as well, which I would define as succinct and brief.

Sometimes I do manage to inject some humor aspects, but it is not that often.

I guess one could try to solve this by reading materials from people that already have the style you are looking for.

So if you want to write in a more austere way, read The Economist and try to emulate what they are doing there, for instance.

[Rio]

I find it really hard to find my own style. I end up following the style of the last writer I read whose work I took a shine too. I always give myself impossible people to emulate too, like E B White. Still, how else can you learn style?

[penijo]

My writing style is kind of loose and fun. Most times I write as if I were talking to my best friend, very informal. When I find that I need the tone to be more serious, the easiest way for me to accomplish this is to write as I normally would and then edit it. Trying to fight my style slows me down and makes it difficult to maintain my perspective. If I write the way I normally would, I have all of the concepts in place and all I have to do is go reword them to fit the audience. Sometimes a thesaurus helps in this task.

[susabelle]

It might help to refocus yourself on why you're writing and who you are writing for.

I am about half-way through a book called "How To Grow a Novel" by Sol Stein. While most of the stuff is, uhm, over-written, he does make a good point about knowing what your CUSTOMER wants. Just like any other job or business, you must please the customer, i.e. your reader.

Without that reader, you might as well be writing in your own diary for your eyes only.

[Genuine]

Sometimes I find that my sarcasm has nothing to do with it being appropriate for a certain story or article, it has to do with the fact that I'm being defensive-if I don't take anyone else seriously, then they can't take me seriously, so I deflect criticism by being sarcastic. Now, I am also a naturally sarcastic person, so this means that sometimes I just have to risk a little "serious" or pour my heart into something, and just realize that criticism isn't going to kill me.

[Roger]

"Sometimes I find that my sarcasm has nothing to do with it being appropriate for a certain story or article, it has to do with the fact that I'm being defensive-if I don't take anyone else seriously, then they can't take me seriously, so I deflect criticism by being sarcastic. Now, I am also a naturally sarcastic person, so this means that sometimes I just have to risk a little "serious" or pour my heart into something, and just realize that criticism isn't going to kill me."

Hey thanks that makes total sense. Yeah, my sarcasm is me being defensive because I don't think I'm expert enough in the stuff I'm writing about for work. I've gotta get over that, I guess also because it's not good for my readers to think I'm not serious enough about the topic they're paying to read about. Hmmm, thanks guys. I've gotta work on this sarcasm and make it work positively.

Btw: didn't someone famous say that "sarcasm is the lowest form of wit"?

[--Deb]

Me, too. I think my writing style is more or less consistent, regardless of what I'm writing. Rather conversational, kind of stream-of-consciousness, so that I use a lot of dashes and parenthetical comments--which, of course, makes writing formally more of a challenge.

--Deb

[Al B]

Like pretty much everything else, you can do it better with some practice, and that includes altering your writing style, although some might say that you should be happy with having found a style in the first place, since that's infinitely better than having none at all.

When I used to write for a newspaper, it would be for a variety of sections in the publication, such as sport or business, features or advertorial edit, and each one of those required a certain differing stylistic approach, which was a constraint compounded by the fact that one also had to maintain the the editorial style of the paper too, which itself was somewhat dowdy.

So, to a large extent, the subject dictated the style. Nevertheless it was easy to fall into traps in taking that approach too rigidly. For example, the temptation to be too 'blokish' if writing a motoring review would be to ignore the rather obvious fact that women buy cars too, and a choice of car is often a family decision as well. Nevertheless, it's a mistake one sees a lot. Similarly, the tradition is to have business articles be somewhat stiff and brusque, in order that they be regarded as 'serious' and 'informed'. Frankly, I thought that was absolute rubbish, and personally I always tried to liven them up a bit! After all, what's the point of reading something when you know what to expect?

And so to address the original point of the thread, I found that regularly being forced into a position of having to at least be somewhat constrained into a style of writing one might not particularly like, is ultimately a good challenge to your skill, largely because you can try to 'push the envelope a bit' and make your own style fit the genre. But even when the shackles dictate that you cannot do that so much, it's still a valuable experience in developing your skills at writing. Kind of like being forced to build a raft to escape a desert island with just what you can find - such circumstances force you to be creative in what you come up with.

Al

[Maeve]

The usual quotation is "The pun is the lowest form of wit." i've seen it attributed to Freud (1856-1939), but I can't find a source.

Noah Webster (1758-1843) called it "a low species of wit."

Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834) said that punning "may be the lowest, but at all events is the most harmless kind of wit, because it never excites envy.”

Sarcasm, on the other hand is, according to Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), "the language of the devil."

And an American lawyer, Rufus Choate (1799-1859), observed that "neither irony nor sarcasm is argument."