Writing Style

Roger Colins

Style comes from the finished product. It can be seen as a whole as once the final page is written in, from thereon, it can't be changed any more. 

You can't really tell what style any product will have until it can be read with the unsuspecting eye. Aiming for a particular style as the product gets written, may get you exactly what you were looking for and sometimes the piece can have a different style all of it's very own.


Essence

Mood has to be considered. The audience reaction to where they are led, what they encounter bears down on how the style is mirrored in it. Moods can lift and fall and change, leave the audience not knowing what to think.

The style of writing and the mood can come from atmosphere, content or mixture of both. Intentional or not, the piece will arrive with it's own style, it's own mood.


Matter

The content is purposeful, the subject matter being addressed, written in the style sought after where atmosphere, usually develops from. Developments in the text and context alter the mood as it progresses, a creepy chapter in a horror or final lines in a romance.

How, where and when these changes are written can depend on pacing, the speed and regularity of instances and space between them can be even throughout, go up, go down or twist and turn.

The layout of chapters, sections, paragraphs all attribute to how the pacing looks. Should the mood change, the pace of the text is more likely to alter as well. If the book seems slow and easy, not too many surprises then the pace can be reflected as even. Dramatics deal with rapid change of delivery and would accelerate the pace.


Timing

The sentences provide timing for these instances in paragraphs or sections where they change from melancholy to informative, prose to speech. Many, long sentences can fill up a paragraph leaving a gap before the next change of pace. Short, sharp speech can enliven the page or flatten it out to something new.

The words in the sentences are the content, what is being said, the way it wants to be said. Vocabulary and grammar, lexis and syntax accompanied buy their chosen rhythm and stresses or stress timing. How the sentences link and interlink together as part of context, builds the style.

Having stuck a few sentences together, their content will reveal the progression of style as linear changes, from one to the next, takes place. Halfway through, the essence of the piece's atmosphere should become apparent, one way or another.

Curiously enough, delivering the best quality of any one particular style has something to do with atmosphere. Perhaps, because the reader is always going to have the same atmosphere of reading a book, when he's reading a book...

Having picked out a few ideas for nice vocabulary and a decided progression from A to B, sticking it together forms the atmosphere, the overall mood and pace dictated thereof. This is what the reader will see, what the audience will experience as the text grows and changes until the very end when the style, of the piece can be fully appreciated.

PS
Style writing or stylistic writing are different to, writing style.

#writing #style