George Orwell wrote many essays about his experiences, and uses a very drily witty style. However, when writing perhaps his most famous work of fiction Orwell is decidedly not witty and instead writes in a very cold and blunt style. Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
Jane Austen was noted for her novels dealing with manner and class. He was completely integrated now and he took a good long look at everything. Then he looked up at the sky. There were big white clouds in it. He touched the palm of his hand against the pine needles where he lay and he touched the bark of the pine trunk that he lay behind. Ernest Hemingway was particularly famous for his straightforward style. In this passage from the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls , we see hardly any adjectives even though it is a descriptive excerpt.
Her sandals revealed an ankle bracelet and toenails painted vermilion. The sight of these nails gave Briony a constricting sensation around her sternum, and she knew at once that she could not ask Lola to play the Prince.
Contemporary writer Ian McEwan is known for his psychologically astute and highly detailed style. In this example of style, we see the narrator Briony assessing another character in such detail that she makes judgments and decisions based on these miniscule details.
Choose the correct style definition from the following statements: A. But eventually, rereading the story, I grasped why he might have reacted the way he did, and worked to ensure that the style did not precede or occlude the content.
At least, to the extent that I could. Conversations overheard from infancy on. Kitchen table talk, telephone conversations. Banter, indoors and out.
Schoolyard back-and-forth. Books, comics, newspapers, magazines, films, TV shows, the radio, records. Studies in Latin, French, Greek, German. Later self-taught Esperanto, Portuguese and Spanish, other languages, snippets, texts in other languages.
Translating other languages. Imaginary and invented languages, mine and others. Texts I cannot read but pore over nevertheless. Archival documents. The sounds and shapes of nature and the body itself, technologies human and otherwise.
In each case the style for me is synonymous with the writer. Interestingly, to me at least, the first group are nearly all male writers, while the second includes many women and writers of color. In both cases, we are still compelled to look, even if momentarily. Style is not just the clothing in which we place the body of the text, but the body itself fitted, as well or poorly as we imagine and sew them, to that body. At a reception after the American Book Awards two years ago, Ishmael Reed, my former professor and a writer whose poetry has inspired me since I was very young, noted to me in passing that the generation of Black writers who emerged in the late s and s had given up the influence of William Faulkner and similar modernists, in favor of a more direct style.
Now, he continued, in part under the influence of James Baldwin, younger Black fiction writers were returning to more florid styles. Or did he say something else? I believe I nodded and planned to ask him more about this, but people approached both of us, and I made a mental note to contact him about it.
I had mentioned to him how I found his most recent novel Juice profoundly influenced by the blogging he had undertaken for a while, giving it a different and distinct flow from some of his previous work though Mumbo Jumbo anticipates a blogging sensibility by many decades. At some point, perhaps on Facebook, I do hope to take up the questions of Faulkner, Baldwin and stylistic changes over the decades with him.
An idea suggested is more weighty: simplicity of statement excites contempt. The history of literary styles in Western literature is the history of the West, with all that this entails: not just a succession of historical, aesthetic and cultural movements, from the Dark Ages through today, but the long history of Western colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and the exploitation and domination of vast swathes of the globe.
This history is encoded in the DNA of literary styles in every Western society, as well as of many others across the globe, because of this history and genealogy, and the uneven circulation of literature and culture, though we may not be aware of it. No style is free of politics, just as no aesthetics is. What does it mean to be aware of this history, and to write both in the wake of it, and, depending upon the writer, against or through it? How do minoritarian and oppressed writers decolonize their style?
The immediate answer is that we should study the many writers who, over decades, have taken steps and shown us many ways to do this. My style is—or should I say styles are—shaped in part by modernism and its capacity not just to depict, but capture the flow of and embody consciousness, and yet I can say about all my writing that, like our contemporary society, it is also the product of postmodernism, with its emphasis on portraying overlapping and at times seemingly incommensurate realities.
If modernism ushered in access to a grasp of human psychology that prior prose authors lacked—yet many nevertheless figured out how to represent the human mind and its complexities to readers—postmodernism and its heirs have opened a window onto the complex ontologies in which we live and move today. When I was younger, some years before I published my first book, Annotations , I struggled against unwritten stylistic expectations I had internalized over the years.
I thought my prose had to look a certain way, and could not sound or read in the ways that it eventually took. I accepted that there was a particular set of styles the US literary world found acceptable, and not only did I not want to conform to them, I found it hard to do so even when I tried. Posted by: nancycurteman […].
By: Global Mysteries on October 7, at pm. What is Theme […]. Good question. By: nancycurteman on November 3, at pm. This style will appear in any genre.
Here are some examples of different literary styles: Dickens uses long sentences. Michener uses abundant description. Evanovich uses lots of vernacular.
Twain uses figurative language. By: Nancy Curteman on February 9, at pm. By: Nancy Curteman on February 13, at pm. I think it may be helpful.
Let me know how it works for you. Good Luck. By: nancycurteman on February 16, at pm. By: Nancy Curteman on February 23, at pm. Hi Nancy, My writing style has definitely changed since I first began to write. Thanks for stopping by and liking one of my posts. Unfortunately, that was my old blog. By: Tracy Campbell on January 18, at pm. By: nancycurteman on January 19, at pm. By: Tracy Campbell on January 20, at pm. By: nancycurteman on June 5, at pm. Saeed, Your literary style will evolve through reading what you love to read and through writing as often as possible.
By: Nancy Curteman on October 22, at pm. By: Micah Wiseone Anyim on March 27, at am. The biggest problem for beginning writers is a reluctance to rely on their own developing literary style. However, they continue to imitate rather than taking that leap in the dark that leads to their own personal style. By: nancycurteman on March 27, at am.
I am word genius a very special person. I have been writing since I was seven years old. Yes, I have different writing I notice. By: nancycurteman on June 16, at pm. This is a fantastic site. Thank you so much for your work and invaluable information.
It is hard on the eyes and breaks up the flow of reading. I say — use either he or she. We all know that writers are either male or female, or these days, some other gender identification altogether.
By: Indira on July 30, at pm. As a matter of fact I agree with you and have abandoned its use in my later posts. Thank you for affirming my decision. I hope you find my posts useful. Good luck in your writing. By: nancycurteman on August 1, at pm. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email.
Two authors can write about the exact same thing, and yet the styles of the pieces could be nothing like each other because they would reflect the way each author writes. When it comes to style, what comes easy for one author might not work for another; what fits one genre may not fit for others at all; what thrills one group of readers may bore another. Rather than merely sharing information, style lets an author share his content in the way that he wants.
For example, say an author needs to describe a situation where he witnessed a girl picking a flower:. As you can see, there are many ways to share the same basic information. An author can give a short and simple sentence, like 1. Read these two:. These poems use two different styles to describe the same thing: a rose. The poem on the left rhymes and has a simpler, more direct style with easy vocabulary.
Some authors combine these factors to create a distinct style that is found in all of their works, like Dr. Seuss see Examples in Literature. Other authors, however, may choose to write each of their works in a different style. Style is what distinguishes one author from the next. If everyone used the same style, it would impossible for any writer or piece of literature to truly stand out.
As shown above, fairy tales are great examples of how the same story can be told in very different ways. Since they have been retold over and over for centuries, the style of their telling changes from one speaker or author to the next.
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