My Writing Style (and Why it Matters)

Here’s what I think my writing style is—and why it matters (or doesn’t).

How I Actually Write

Every writer has a different approach to putting words down on paper, or, more accurately, typing them onto a computer screen and saving them to a file. Writer’s block? Ha. I can’t remember more than once or twice that I’ve been stumped about what words to put down. I think my challenge is more likely to be hoping that the words make sense and having something worth saying.

My writing approach is to dump all of the pertinent words onto the page as quickly as possible. Yeah, it doesn’t sound like the best approach, but I’ve found that when I start to put words on the page, those words spur more words and sentences and thoughts and ideas, and eventually, something good comes out of it—something that I can work with, edit, shape, form, and perhaps put into something cohesive and sensible.

That’s not always the case, of course. My other challenges are using the correct tenses of words, using ‘they’ instead of ‘who’, and those kinds of things. Frankly, many of those little English language rules didn’t make much sense back in high school creative writing classes or the other English classes where I had writing assignments. But I leaned into it, and most, if not all, of those little bits and pieces generally made sense. Not 100%, but enough to keep from having them hold me back.

If I had to describe my writing in a sentence or two, it’s straightforward, not too flowery or over-the-top like Tom Robbins (for example), who was known to have spent hours and sweated bullets crafting a single sentence. Not me. I bang away, put words down as fast as I can, and deal with the fallout later. LOL. I suppose I generally write the way I speak. Sometimes I speak slowly and thoughtfully, but more often than not, the words tumble out, ass over teakettle, bouncing over each other, and now and then making sense. Hopefully.

I like to see an arrangement of words that flow and have a rhythm, a cadence that the reader feels in their gut. I rarely read anything out loud, although I admit that’s a good approach, especially if something doesn’t make as much sense as I’d like. I hope to be clearly understood, but in my experience, that’s not always as easy as I’d like it to be. What I think is as clear as a mountain lake might be as thick as mud to others.

One overarching thing I’ve done, especially for years (and I’d point to the dozen or so years I blogged at TradeshowGuyBlog.com), is to write quickly, revise only for clarity and brevity, and publish. As a blogger, starting in the fall of 2008, I dedicated myself to posting consistently. That evolved as time passed: some years I posted three times a week, then ratcheted it down to twice a week. I also remember posting once a day, M-F, for a few months. It was all an experiment to see if the blog could attract readers, mainly trying to provide new fodder for the search engine bots. However, frankly, I never really spent much time worrying about SEO rankings or any of that. I was too busy.

What Influenced Me

I’ve written about some of the authors before on this Substack, but my main early influences were writing in the worlds of 5the 0s, 60s, and 70s science fiction, and the world of 60s and 70s comic books. It wasn’t until my 20s and 30s that I purposely expanded into reading the likes of Tom Robbins, Stephen King, John Steinbeck, and Hunter S Thompson. I also recall reading Richard Brautigan novels, which where whimsical, bizarre and humorous. I read every Kurt Vonnegut book I could get my hands on, and even the occasional Salman Rushdie book (Fury). In the past couple of decades, I’ve enjoyed the Reacher series by Lee Child, the Bosch series by Michael Connelly, and everything I’ve read by Haruki Murakami, whose books are magical.

In my 30s and 40s, I gravitated to thrillers: spy novels, private detectives, and the like. I’m thinking of Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum (Jason Bourne series), Frederick Forsyth, and more. I also read some non-SF novels, and even a few classics.

Those are a small sample of what and who has influenced me. Yeah, I could write a book about this subject.

What I’ve Learned

I’ve looked back at some of my failed attempts at novels, and my first thought is, wow, the writing is pretty good! Much of it is entertaining, well-written, and cohesive. That surprises me just a bit. I was always capable of putting words on paper, back when I used a portable typewriter; that wasn’t a problem. No, the challenge, at least when writing a novel, was that I didn’t see the bigger picture. I didn’t know what went into a good story. Sure, I enjoyed reading them, but when it came to doing it myself, the only part I could see was the paragraph. I could see the manuscript from note to note, but not the symphony. Plot? Uh, maybe. Character development? Not so much. Themes? What’s a theme, anyway? (I think I’ve come a long way since those days!).

I didn’t learn how to think about that, and it didn’t occur to me to find out. High school writing classes didn’t focus on teaching you to write a novel (why should they?), and they barely taught you how to write an essay. It seemed the focus was more on knowing what words were what, knowing adjectives from verbs, nouns from pronouns, and more. And so on, I was focused on excelling at my radio classes and passing my other courses. Funny sidebar: in high school, I taught myself to type using the two-finger approach, which worked well for me. With that method, I could type 60 or so words a minute. In college, I was required to take a typing class to graduate, which finally taught me the proper way to type. The thing is, it ultimately didn’t matter because I was offered a job in radio and left school without graduating. So it goes.

How I Edit

When revising and editing, I often think a little more about voice and style, but I don’t dwell on it that much. I want the story to make sense. I’m not trying to be a Stephen King, Isabelle Allende, or John Steinbeck, all of whom have unique voices. I doubt my ‘voice,’ whatever it is, is that unique. I don’t consider it to be. Sometimes, I think I get too flowery or overwrought, but I mostly try to explain in easy-to-understand prose. I try to balance dialogue with exposition, and hopefully notice when one is done more than needed.

The question I ask myself more than anything else is this: Does it help the story? Is what I’m writing adding to the character development, moving the plot forward, or connecting the dots? In the current novel, Forged in Ancient Fire, I’ve cut large swaths of text or chapters when I decided they were either redundant or unnecessary for some other reason. I’ve jettisoned scenes that I loved, but just didn’t help out the story. I think I’ve moved on from most of the challenges that first-time novelists face, such as loving a scene or character so much they can’t let them go when they realize it doesn’t work.

What I Hope Readers Feel

I’ve often wondered how readers feel when reading my works. I hope it’s something like, "Wow, that was enjoyable. I didn’t know it was going to go there!" Or, it was written well enough so that they sink into the story and don’t even think about how it’s written. I’ve rarely sought opinions on my writing, but when I have, I appreciate it when someone gives genuine feedback, whether it’s good or bad, or indifferent. All feedback is worth hearing, as long as it’s from the heart. Recently, the comments I’ve received have been surprisingly upbeat, which is quite satisfying.

In the end, I’ve realized that while it would be great if lots of people discovered and enjoyed my writing, I don’t do it for the applause. I do it for me. To challenge myself, to entertain myself, to create worlds out of thin air, and to solve the puzzle of how to make a story as complete and compelling as I can. Writing has become a way to explore my thoughts, push past limits, and bring a little order to the chaos. I may not follow all the rules, and I’m certainly not trying to be the next literary giant—but I show up, I write, and I learn. And that’s more than enough to keep me going.