For a fiction writer, what’s graceful style? Ironically, it’s a style you don’t even notice. All you notice is that you’re involved, you can’t stop reading, and the reading is effortless. Although style seems to some the mark of the born writer, it’s really the end result of a lot of good writing habits. Here’s one you can pick up immediately and make your style more graceful:
Avoid “report” language. It’s that use of stilted, puffed up words or phrases to make ordinary descriptive narrative seem to have been handed down from on high. Examples:
The perpetrator than made his way to the vehicle and proceeded to kick the rear tire, causing multiple abrasions to the frontal area of his lower right extremity.
See what I mean? In Report World you don’t do something, you “perpetrate” it. You don’t kick a tire, you “proceed” to kick a tire.
This zombie language is (rightfully) never heard or seen anywhere else in life, for one good reason….
Because it’s terrible style. It shuts down understanding, rather than nspiring it. It smothers any possible visualization of whatever it’s trying to describe.
I know, these are extreme examples, and you don’t write your fiction
that way. But look again. How many times do you catch yourself writing:
“She then went to her desk and wrote a letter,” or: “Bob was drinking at the bar, along with several persons
Emily had never seen.” What is a “person?” A human being, of course.
But what kind? Old? Young? Male? Female? Threatening? Funny?
We don’t know.
THAT is the worst part about report language: it makes us work harder, but doesn’t give us any reward in return, and that, friends, is bad
style. Root out any trace of it, and you’ve made an instant giant step toward a more graceful style.
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