On Writing What's "in Style"

In Today's Journal

* Writers Email
* On Writing What's "in Style"
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

On Writing What's "in Style"

A writer recently sent me a link to a video to "give [me] ideas to write about for the Journal."

I appreciate the thought, but I have no shortage of ideas. After all, TNDJ is mostly my own informed opinions and suggestions.

Anyone who would care to write a guest post for TNDJ is welcome. Send it to me via email and I'll consider it.

The writer also wrote

"One thing he mentions in this video is that italics as thought markers have fallen out of style...hmmm....who else says this?"

I hope the writer didn't mean me. It isn't me. That isn't what I say at all.

Just to clarify, nothing I pass on to you in TNDJ has or will ever have anything to do with what's in or out of "style" or fashion in fiction writing. I don't chase bright, shiny objects, and I recommend that you don't either.

Doing something in your writing because it's in or out of style is like writing to market. Eventually, it will leave you mired in the muck along a rain soaked road spinning your wheels.

Everything I present has particular reasons, and those reasons are ALWAYS tied directly to the effect the topic of discussion will have on the reader. Always. Even if I don't mention it overtly.

Just recently I offered two fairly long discussions on italics and a shorter bit against writing narrative in present tense.

In both cases, along with the advice, I offered my reasons for that advice. Again, the reasons had to do solely with the effect the technique would have on the reader.

Of course, some techniques will affect different readers in different ways (for example, using italics to indicate unspoken thought). In those cases, I try to go with how the technique will affect "most" readers in my experience.

A few techniques (for example, the use of the various marks of punctuation) will affect every reader in exactly the same way. So to me, that's an absolute no-brainer.

That foreknowledge also opens up creative uses for the technique to affect the reader in unconventional ways, like intentionally using the colon (long pause or hard stop) in mid-sentence to achieve a particular effect (drama).

Farther back in time, I offered a few "next-level" things along with real-time illustrative examples from my own work. Again, I offered reasons why I did those things in those ways.

But as always, you do you. It's your story, and those who are living it are your characters, not mine.

Some writers immediately pick up what I lay down and run with it. Thanks for the trust you've placed in me.

Others have to hear the same thing said in a different way or by a different writer, and that's fine. If your skill as a fiction writer (your presentation of your characters' stories) continues to improve, I'm glad for you regardless of the source.

Still others, for the sake of false pride or whatever else, have to knock everything out on their own. That's fine too, though it's a difficult and frustrating road. I know because that's also how I finally learned.

I spun my wheels alongside that muddy road for what, 50+ years? But that was all down to me, not anyone else.

Then again, I didn't know there was another way. I didn't have TNDJ. If you're reading this, you do have TJDJ, and in that, you have a choice.

With TNDJ, my only purpose is to jerk that "finally" out of the equation and help you cut your learning curve so you'll get there a little (or a lot) more quickly than I did.

A week or a month or a year or ten years from now, you can step out of your car onto solid pavement. Or you can step out into the same mud and muck. Completely up to you.

Of Interest

Scraps of Wisdom - Keeping a Commonplace Book

Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week: Appreciation

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 680

Writing of Blackwell Ops 38: Paul Stone

Day 1…… 4071 words. To date…… 4071
Day 1…… 2711 words. To date…… 6782

Fiction for February………………….. 48604
Fiction for 2025………………………. 169959
Nonfiction for February…………….... 18490
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 50470
2025 consumable words…………….. 213919

Average Fiction WPD (February)…….. 2209
Average Fiction WPD (Annual)……..… 3155

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 4
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 8
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 108
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 278
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.