Singularity - writing style, etc

[lettered]

I was just in a fest that had a poll where you could guess who wrote what while people were still anonymous. I was surprised that so many had guesses about who wrote what, and it really got me thinking about style. Some people certainly have a singular voice--something that is always the same no matter what they are writing. Others have certain elements or character types or details that are always likely to show up, no matter how generic the voice. Still others will always write a certain story; no matter how original and unique the plot, they are always the same tone or style of mystery, etc.

Let us proceed with the following on the premise that being recognizable or not is not a mark of quality. I feel like there are many great writers who are recognizable, and many who are not. I just wrote "are hot." I . . . really like writing, guys. Singularity is wonderful, but so is the ability to adapt different styles or diverse elements.

Per usual, I have questions. You, like RadioShack, have answers.

You can answer them in comments or in your own journal, but if in your own journal it'd be lovely if you'd drop a link, so I know it's there and discussion can happen! I think this is such an interesting topic. As a note, these questions pertain to how you feel about your writing, not your readership. You may feel that not enough people read you to recognize you, which is a totally valid point, or maybe you would never write anonymously, but I'm talking about how you feel about the nature of your writing, not the reception of it, if that makes sense. Also, there are just as many questions for readers, so if you don't write or would rather not address the writing questions, there's more! And feel free to adapt the quesitons for fanart, or vidding--let's discuss, guys!

Do you feel your writing is recognizable? Why or why not?
What do you think gives you away?
Have you written a fic that you feel best exemplifies what makes you recognizable? What was it?
What's a fic you've written that you feel is unrecognizable?
What are some fanfic writers you admire that you feel are recognizable?
What gives those writers away?
What's a fic that you would rec that you feel best exemplifies their recognizability?
What are some fanfic writers you admire that you feel are less recognizable?
What are some fics by those writers that you feel exemplifies difficulty in recognizing them?

For answering with ease!
<b>Do you feel your writing is recognizable? Why or why not?</b> <b>What do you think gives you away?</b> <b>Have you written a fic that you feel best exemplifies what makes you recognizable? What was it?</b> <b>What's a fic you've written that you feel is unrecognizable?</b> <b>What are some fanfic writers you admire that you feel are recognizable?</b> <b>What gives those writers away?</b> <b>What's a fic that you would rec that you feel best exemplifies their recognizability?</b> <b>What are some fanfic writers you admire that you feel are less recognizable?</b> <b>What are some fics by those writers that you feel exemplifies difficulty in recognizing them?</b>

Comments

[quinara]

Good questions! I may answer them at my own journal later - but, on my own writing for a start, I tend to think it's recognisable depending on whether or not I've written whatever POV character I'm using before. There's a fairly hefty amount of 'my voice' in what I write, I think, but I find it really hard to write against the grain of what I see as my characters' style. So I think it's fairly easy to see the links between my Buffyverse fics from Buffy's POV, for example, but I wrote a Faith POV fic for Remix once, which no one recognised as me, and the moment I get out of the Buffyverse and into, say, Shakespeare or Athenian tragedy my voice gets a lot less colloquial and a lot more (hopefully not too) grandiose.

Otherwise, I try very hard to mix up the type of plots I produce, just because I get annoyed when reading people's stories and I realise I've already read them. :D But I have a certain love of anticlimax, which probably gets in more fics than I mean it to. Along with the dragons.

[hl]

With the warning that I'm really bad at recognizing style.

Do you feel your writing is recognizable? Why or why not? I suspect not? I'm bad at recognizing writerly voice, myself, so I'm not sure what is people look at to recognize writing. I certainly have an style when writing certain type of stories (someone told me I skirt around a lot instead of saying things outright. I think they may be right?) . I mean, I use m-dashes a lot. I confuse may and might a lot. I... idk. I've plenty of those kinda of... mistakes or things I do unconsciously. But I'm not sure anyone would be able to recognize my writing just for that. They are things I'm particularly aware of because my betas point them out.

What do you think gives you away? Er, idk?

Have you written a fic that you feel best exemplifies what makes you recognizable? What was it? Again, I really don't know.

What's a fic you've written that you feel is unrecognizable? If only because of its rating & particular argument, my only 28 Days Later story. I was purposefully attempting to imitate a particular character's voice, too. I'm not sure either thing is enough to not make me recognizable if anyone does recognize my writing.

What are some fanfic writers you admire that you feel are recognizable? Uhm. This is hard! I'm so very bad at it, that I'm not sure I'm a good judge. But, say, Faulkner is a good bet, probably. After reading The Sound and the Fury with my sister, we spent days and days in which we only messaged each other in Forster style. /ETA: I'm not sure how I missed the 'fanfic' here, tbh!

What gives those writers away? Well, I suppose any stream of consciousness would make me think Faulkner (I think it was the first novel I read which was so extremely in that style), but at the moment of reading it I remember that the writing had a certain cadence that was very very recognizable. I couldn't tell you how, because I didn't analyse it then, just imitated it in those messages, but it was very noticeable.

What's a fic that you would rec that you feel best exemplifies their recognizability? Oh! I suddenly realized you meant fic. Uhm. You know, I can't think of anyone.

What are some fanfic writers you admire that you feel are less recognizable? Most of the people whose writing I admire! I only don't say 'all' because I'm not entirely sure none of them have recognizable writing.

What are some fics by those writers that you feel exemplifies difficulty in recognizing them? No clue. I mean, take Peradan/Anghraine. I think she varies phrase structure and pov and voice a lot, depending on the fandom. I think taking any of her SW fic, and comparing it to her JA fic, or her HP fic, would be a good example. (But then again, maybe her writing is recognizable for someone else? idk)

A Little about Recognisability

[kestrelsparhawk]

Do you feel your writing is recognizable? Why or why not?
Interesting question -- if you mean fanfic writing, no, because I try to be inventive in different ways and few ever guess I wrote a story, and I work for a "transparent" style because there just doesn't seem a call for literary style, and the main characters I use for POV don't seem the sort to have a really identifiable style. If that makes sense. However, if lit crits WANTED to, I believe they could find my "tells;" I'm uncomfortably aware of them.
What do you think gives you away?
Some things just put me in certain categories: sf writer, doesn't like writing anyone as The Enemy, things work out in the end -- and in fanfic, plot as important as character to me. Characterisation is pretty recognisable too. I also tend to find the world funny, and words funnier, so there tends to be double meanings in most commentary. I also like to write dialogue as though I were an eavesdropper on a college campus where fairly smart people go. That's how I learned to write dialogue, after all. I don't think I can write dim characters credibly, or judgmental characters sympathetically, so those come out as if an elitist were making fun of them, alas.
Have you written a fic that you feel best exemplifies what makes you recognizable? What was it?
Gates, which is my rl magnum opus if I ever finish revising. In it, there are no completely bad guys, although there's a war and the audience will identify with one side (as I do;) character takes precedent over plot, so it gets quite longish with events that don't further plot at all -- with my original characters, one hangs out with them and they're procrastinators. There are lyrical passages, which is how I tend to write climactic scenes, because I have a lot of training in poetry and that's how I learned to write emotional action. These things, except the lyricism, are all present in my fanfic as well, but working with existing characters mean I can't spread myself as much creatively. I also note that in my H/D fiction I not only have recurrent themes, but recurring plot interests -- for example, somehow theatre keeps cropping up. PTSD has been referred to obliquely in all of them, but I think that's out of my system with Alohomora, so hopefully that won't give me away if/when I participate in future fests.
What's a fic you've written that you feel is unrecognizable?
If people read teh LOTR fics I wrote as Lost Owl, I think they wouldn't recognize the writer as the same person, just because I really am character driven and the characters are so different. for example, "Betters" is a Frodo/Sam fic and I don't think it resembles in plot OR character Harry/Draco, especially not Squib, which is my favourite H/D. But if you've "got" my sense of humour and my political interests, there would be resemblances to pursue.
What are some fanfic writers you admire that you feel are recognizable?
Oh, Maya for certain! She stands out, really, because her style is language timed for humour, and she has her own "voice." She brought so many things to fandom which are recognisably her characterisations: Harry as a kind of socially incompetent loser, Draco as a coffee addict, Hermione and Ron as not suited, Pansy as a delightful snarky person who would be well-suited to Ron (don't get me started on that one!) and so forth. I love her work, rl too, but frankly I think her characters were predictably similar. Again, that's fanfic for you. Recognizable styles? Tigersilver and Wemyss have really distinctive styles I think of as kinda "early Peter Wimsey," very before-the-Great-War language. Again, I love the work. Still, it's so very "period" pure that I can't read a lot at once without needing to read some transparent stylists just to clear my brain. Sarasgirl is another who's recognisable, though in her case her plots and to some extent her characters vary significantly, and her writing style is fairly transparent. I mostly recognise her because she's simply that good, and then I notice certain ... quirks? Standards? Her characters are good people in general, and the bad ones aren't "Darkly" bad but just human bad; there's always lots of unexpected sorts of magics, and she more than anyone else I've read gives me the sense of H/D as normal people living relatively normal lives. and Pir-8fancier like Maya has ordinary people slightly larger-than-life lives credibly, with enormous humour, but her characters strike me as somewhat more sophisticated than Maya's. Pir-8 is about the only writer I know who can write Snape well and still make me like him, consistently. I haven't figured out the rest of what makes her recognisable, unless you will accept the highly non-literary description of a quality I call "I'm in good hands." From the first sentence, you know this is going to be interesting, fun, and challenge your stereotypes of character.
What gives those writers away?
Oops. See above.

I will add one other kind of writer: those with a literary bent who use angst as character development. This will sound awful -- and I certainly won't name them -- but their style is so opaque that it's interchangeable among them, kind of like the novels I was required to read in high school -- Edith Wharton, The Mill on the Floss, and so forth. The really fine ones among those can write fic which would win a book prize. Nonetheless, I could never say, "This story is X's, and this is Y's because they sound too much alike, their characters are suffering, and a sense of humour doesn't manifest itself much, in either character or author. The style draws attention to itself by being ... again, I haven't a word, but I used to write like that because I thought I was supposed to: " The diamond panes' wood frames were so old that the rain was seeping through. The dust she ran her finger through turned to a small line of mud. It was so easy to remember then that glass was a liquid too, and in this old abbey had flowed for 600 years and thickened the lower window, while leaving the diamond tips vulnerable to shattering and to rain."

Well, that's an awful first draft, but I don't feel like editing it, so just believe me: the subject, the image, the sadness are all examples of the literary genre.
What's a fic that you would rec that you feel best exemplifies their recognizability?
Oh, I think one needs to rec at least two so they can be compared. But this is way too long anyway. So: if people HAVE any of Maya's fiction, probably the quintessential later work is ... oh blast my brain; an AU where Draco is a Ravenclaw. If you compare that to her first long fic, "Underwater Light," you can see that the characters and the themes and above all the tongue-in-cheek style (when she's not committing angst) are pretty much the same, though obviously she grew a heckuva lot as a write during that time. Pir-8s "Snape the home Fries Nazi" to me is perfect example: you believe the unbelievable (Snape as a cranky cook, Harry as a lost soul, both as lovers) willingly. My personal favourite is "Lettered" and its sequel, "Lush Life" (wrote it as "lust" the first time!) where you believe Draco in all his snarky, self centered, complicated wholeness and just... well, you're in good hands. Sarasgirl's recently finished "Turn" and her earlier, beautiful "Foundations" series exemplify her magical world building and the ordinary human beings who are struggling in it -- and also includes (in 'turn') the only Lucius I've both liked, laughed at hysterically, and believed in.
What are some fanfic writers you admire that you feel are less recognizable?
Resonant? Though that's cheating, because I haven't read much. But her writing shows literary discipline, in the sense that it's following various writing rules and knows how to do that well. I would expect if she wrote another major story that it would follow those rules, and would therefore look completely different in some ways. I never know what's up with a Stray-the-Grey story because they're profoundly original in plot, and the style's not recognisable because English isn't her first language so the betaing makes a difference to how things are said. I think she's 'way undervalued and should become Hungary's premium sf writer, but then, I'm a bit biased.
What are some fics by those writers that you feel exemplifies difficulty in recognizing them?
Try Stray's HDHols 10 fic on broomstick racing at Disneyland (Disneyworld?) . If you haven't read "Transfigurations" by Resonant, you probably aren't a member of H/D fandom anyway.But if you haven't, you HAVE to. I'm sorry about not-linking. I don't have the links and they always take up two or three lines because I can never remember how to code LJ links.

Sorry -- a lot -- for the length. Interesting questions; I look forward to reading other people's answers.

[stultiloquentia]

I've had this tab open all week, because I'm fascinated by the questions (because I am fascinated by me, naturally), but haven't a clue how to answer them. Um. *tries*

Do you feel your writing is recognizable? Why or why not?
Once somebody commented on a story of mine with, "I read [witty line] in the second paragraph and smiled, because I knew then that I was reading a Stulti story." I loved hearing it, but I don't think my style is that reliable in general. It's not like you can count iambs and assonances and figure out it's me. Maybe bigger things give me away, though, like what I find funny, or hot? I do have a narrator I use over and over, who hops fandoms with me, but all I know is that I know when she has the floor. God knows whether other people notice her.

Have you written a fic that you feel best exemplifies what makes you recognizable? What was it?
Take Five, Everybody, I think. That's my panfandom narrative voice at its most...concentrated? pungent?

What's a fic you've written that you feel is unrecognizable?
Maybe Someday Coming Down. It's first person POV of an OC for a Yuletide fandom, and a bit rushed and uneven on top of that. It was challenging to write, probably because I only had a month to make up a character and know her well enough to be her on the page.

What are some fanfic writers you admire that you feel are recognizable?
Oh, gosh. rm, whose extreme sparseness, combined with the complicated emotional beats she likes to hit, gives her away. paian's descriptive sex scenes are unmistakeable. 's Harry Potter stories have a 1930s Golden Age Mystery Writer affectation that's frequently brilliant, but equally frequently marble-mouthed. So. I think I could pick out a few more from the quality of their wit. Hm. You -- either because you're perpetrating some wild stylistic experiment again, or because your default contains three things: full, over-generous prose, jaw-dropping wit and raw honesty.

What's a fic that you would rec that you feel best exemplifies their recognizability?
Here's a recent installment of rm's saga. Here's some paian porn. Except there's no porn in this one. Oops.

What are some fanfic writers you admire that you feel are less recognizable?
It's almost dinner time, so I'm not going to trawl my rec list for names, but I'll mention one of my favourite fannish terms: "LJ house style". I think cesperanza coined it, and named its defining characteristic: unobtrusiveness. It's where the prose acts like a television camera, which I thought was an amazing observation, since so many of us write in t.v. and movie fandoms. You're supposed to forget it's there. Which isn't to say that it doesn't take great skill to pull off. Interesting way of thinking about it, IMO.