Writing Style & Preference Pitfalls

[Graeme]

I'm a natural visual thinker, and it's reflected in my writing style. If I can put in some eye candy, I'm more than likely going to do it.

Visual imagery is a strength for me, but because it's a natural preference, like being right handed, it can become an unconscious preference that gets in the way of my best writing.

I had the privilege of having the first three chapters of A Traitor's War read by a very sharp and insightful beta reader over the weekend. They came back with a slew of issues to correct.

Which is a fantastic result.

There was one issue that stood out amongst the rest, and it boiled down to this.

I had a character doing something which was being driven by "this looks good, this is a bit of eye candy." rather than anything else related to the character or the narrative. My beta reader made the point that the activity allows for "this thing, that thing, and another thing" to occur - i.e. a whole can of giant wriggling worms named "Repercussions" was dumped all over my book, and my series...

And the solution was to hold the scene steady and just change the activity and ground the new activity directly back to the characters core motivations. Suddenly, the scene is 100% more powerful and I've been able to remove a whole lot of complications.

And that's a great result.

But, more importantly, my beta reader's insight into the issue, highlighted for me an awareness about my own writing style and my natural preference for visual narrative.

So now, I can look at my own work and ask the following useful question, "Is this visual action character driven, and inline with the narrative, OR, have I just inserted effing "Eye Candy" because it looks good?"

So, for everyone here, what's your natural writing strengths, and how can they become pitfalls for you?

[Graeme]

This is also the indication of the value of having good Beta readers.

[Quantum]

My predilections are brevity
And poetry

[Claudia]

I'm predisposed to humor, which can be inappropriate in certain settings (in writing, as well as in real life).

[Mehreen]

My natural writing strength is to be able to convey difficult concepts a simply as possible to the reader. I don't use jargon or hard words. My constructs are simple declaratives . However, I also believe that all readers cannot be satisfied. No writer is predisposed that way.

[Alexander]

I really enjoy writing fast-paced scenes with generally short, choppy sentences--sometimes with the necessary words taken out to make it flow faster without being really awkward, like:

"He dove through the bathroom and kicked the door shut. Locked it. Pressed his ear against it. Held his breath. Listened.

He heard his pursuer enter the room on the other side. Their feet thumped against the floorboards, approaching... approaching..."

That sort of thing. I take a lot of inspiration from reading screenplays, which some people enjoy while others find it quite jarring compared to the paragraphs in which I describe a specific location or mechanism in detail. I only write paragraphs like that when those details will come into play later in the story (or try to limit expositional paragraphs to just that, anyway).

[Nik]

Yeah, the problem of balance exists. Any strength may become detrimental if unbalanced and overdone..
In my case, I think some snappier choices may result in under-description, gritty content may come though exaggerated and combination of 'low, profanity' words with 'high, rare' words (although many of the latter were eliminated by editors) may leave awkward impression -:)

[Alexander]

Nik wrote: "Yeah, the problem of balance exists. Any strength may become detrimental if unbalanced and overdone..
In my case, I think some snappier choices may result in under-description, gritty content may c..."

LOL... I see what you did in that last sentence...

[Nik]

-:)

[Mehreen]

cool.