Alright! It's been far too long! Let's get back on top of this bad boy! Don't really have any ideas for actual learning things... so let's talk about what we like and dislike in writing!
To Each His Own... Or Her Own, For That Matter:
I really like semicolons. I like them as nice "mid-level" punctuation marks. Evidently, this also leads to longer than not sentences that kind of compound on each other as the words move on. It's not wrong, but there are certainly some people who perhaps do not obsess over the semicolon quite as much as I do...
...and let's not forget those wonderful ellipses that I love so much, while we're at it...
It's a stylistic thing, is all. There are just some things I tend to do more than others; there are things I like to do more than others. We all have 'em, of course, and that shouldn't surprise anyone here. We're all individuals with our own ideas of what we like and dislike in our writing. Perhaps in a lot of ways these stylistic preferences reflect a lot on ourselves as well? I dunno, let's find out.
I'll go first...
SomeGuy The Academic:
As I have mentioned many, many times, a great deal of my formal writing style comes from the things I learned from Mr. Mike Ireland in high school. Now, Mr. Ireland was an old man and actually retired a few years after I graduated high school, and as such his methods were fairly old-school as well. He was a Grammar Nazi in all the best ways, and he stuck to rules that many others have since considered to be obsolete (for example, feelings about split infinitives or passive voice nouns).
And yeah. I took up a lot of these methods. More often than not I'll refrain from using "I" in my essays; I stick to rules that modern grammarians have since let slide. I tend to stick to the classic "list your topic points in your intro and then hit them one by one along the way" that some others don't like. It keeps things orderly in my head, though, so I'm happy with that.
I also find I'm a big fan of anecdotal introductions; I pretty much never kick off a written thing by going straight into the topic. This is probably somewhere my preferences will differ a lot from others here. Some people like to get straight to the point, but I prefer to lead into them with maybe a story or a background setup. I just tend to do that more than not, anyway.
Other than those sorts of things, I followed MLA style citation and form (which my whole school used). Whatever. Other than that, there's that whole "SomeGuy Method of Questioning" that I once discussed some time back.
Other than those... just a lot of long, more complex than not sentences with a lot of punctuation, minimal use of passive or "to be" verbs (it weirds me out when an essay or something is full of "is" all over the place), and a willingness to use ridiculously fancy words here and there - all-time favourite essay word? Indefatigable. In fact, I think I'll use that word on Wednesday (and yes, I will do my Wednesday work).
I'm sure there are others; if anyone has any ideas about this one, do feel free to tell me.
SomeGuy The Storyteller:
I have most definitely started to notice certain things about my fiction writing and certain features towards which I gravitate. Let's discuss a few of them:
Inability To Describe Characters:
When I think about characters in my stories from the past many, many years, I don't really see faces so much as personalities. I mean I do kinda get ideas of what they might look like, but I never tell my readers about those ideas. I'm sure I could think up all kinds of reasons why I just never give a lot of physical descriptions of people in my stories. Maybe I feel like what people look like aren't important; maybe I think their personalities will show more if I focus on that stuff; maybe I just want the reader to imagine what they might look like; maybe I'm just lazy. Whichever it is, that's definitely what I do, and I don't expect I'll be changing that one any time soon.
I never really describe locations and mood too much either, really. Huh.
Characters Talk Too Much:
I love dialogue. What can I say? I feel like one of these days I should really just write something in script-form and see what comes up. But yeah, I adore writing up discussions between people, and I really feel it's the easiest way to follow the "don't tell people what your characters are like, show them" school of character development. I definitely like to think that speech is one of my good strengths. Speech and action. That's where I hope I shine.
Overly-Detailed Action:
When I write actions, I usually write from very vivid images in my mind. As such, I love doing my best to convey those images to readers. Even if you don't know the colour of the grass or the shape of the cars, so long the direction of the motion is still clear in people's minds, I'm happy. Doesn't hurt that that keeps things exciting and moving along at a good pace, either.
Miscellanea:
If I were to summarize my style, I'd say it is about plot and character/dialogue. Some people can craft amazing works oozing with atmosphere and detail; heh, I can't. Well, I don't, anyway, maybe I could if I tried... but that's not what I like to do compared to the other stuff.
Again, if anyone would like to help me understand myself a little better, I'm open to it.
So How About You?
So that's me. I'm a wordy bastard that curses little and describes characters even less. Among other things.
So what kind of styles do you guys like?
