How to develop your own unique writing style
Trying to develop a completely original writing style feels almost impossible.
The language we use to express our ideas is adopted from phrases we’ve heard or read throughout our lives; environmental influences make us the people we are and, in effect, the writers we are.
I read Orwell’s Politics and the English Language little over a year ago and since then I’ve been looking at my writing in a different light.
In the article he expresses his disdain for the degradation of the English language: “Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer.
“It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.
“The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit — to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think.
“If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious.”
Since reading this article I’ve become vigilantly critical of my own work and it turns out writing original phrases and sentences is much more difficult than I ever imagined.
Imagine every time you write a sentence you think is decent, you take a second glance and see nothing but clichéd language, you make some changes to it so it looks less banal and continue this process for each consecutive sentence.
Then you look back over what you’ve written and you find that the article appears both rhythmically compromised and like the person who wrote it has tried too hard to make it look original.
This leaves you stuck in this strange place; do you keep trying to be original in your writing and leave behind a graveyard of unfinished articles, or do you conform to using stock phrases and hope that you spontaneously break away from the monotony that sort of writing produces?
Thankfully these aren’t your only choices.
I saw a clip a few years ago of John Cleese explaining how it’s impossible to all of a sudden decide you’re a writer then just sit down and write something completely original, he said: “it’s like flying a plane without having any lessons.
“You’ve got to start somewhere and the best way to start is by copying something that is really good. People seem to think I’m advocating stealing in general, no, once you’ve got off the ground you develop your own style and you don’t need to steal.
“Find an actor and a scene that you love and then watch that actor or that scene again and again and again so that it no longer has an emotional impact on you.
“You no longer find it dramatic and you watch it and in a sense — emotionally speaking — you’re bored with it. At that point, when you’re not affected emotionally anymore you can begin to see how it’s done and how it’s constructed.”
At the time I watched the video I took my own meaning from it: “well, I really like Orwell, and Hemingway, and Charlie Brooker, so what if I try to write something that has Orwell’s sense of justice, Hemingway’s concise sentence structure and tone, and somehow incorporate Brooker’s aggressive wit.”
I’d obviously misunderstood Cleese’s advice and I started to create these horrible Frankenstein’s monster-type articles which were as rhythmically retarded as my forced originality articles.
I’m happy to announce that I’ve now realised my mistake and no longer try to bash different writer’s styles together.
Instead I attempt to emulate Brooker’s style when I write witty, on the nose articles, Hemingway’s structure and tone when I write about more serious topics like war, and Orwell’s style when I’m writing something more prophetic like the article you’re reading here.
I haven’t quite mastered the art yet as I’m just starting to use this technique, but from the little I’ve tried I already feel like I’m making some forward progress.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson made a similar point to Cleese when discussing the science behind movies like Interstellar and Martian.
He said that some screenwriters make up the science of the film without first understanding how the processes work in the real world.
To make their film more realistic and believable they should have first learnt the science, then bent it to their will.
I’m sure there are loads of other people who have espoused this same advice which in its basest sense is: don’t waste your time trying to reinvent the wheel.
You should embrace the wheel, learn everything you can about it and once you’ve achieved that knowledge, deviate from it and form the wheel that best suits you.
