Writing Style

I try to write exclusively in the third person, even for dialogue and inner monologues.

It depends on what I'm writing or how I feel. I know I'm too immature as a writer to have a "style" set in stone and formalized, so I try different approaches and see what works, then stick it all together - sure, I can be accused of syncretism but it makes sense in the philosophical/ontological framework I tend to create my writings in. I think it helps if you write in your second or third language, as you have more conscious control on the vocabulary and techniques you use since you're not bound by the way you use that language in day to day life.

As an example, I wrote this http://pastebin.com/cm47j09C a few months ago. I tried to make my writing as hyper-kinetic as possible, magmatic and moving; I experimented with a lot of techniques, even having the omniscient narrator address the protagonists in a part of the story, taking out every kind of meta-syntax (I don't know it it's the right term, those parts of the discourse that address and regulate the discourse itself formally; like OP wrote, "ha said", etc.). I think it worked, but I'm still pondering on its viability in longer texts.

>>8589088
I always write in 4th person and in rhymes

>>8589153
touche

>>8589153
at the time it was, it was. the end.
srsly how would that even be

>>8589151
there is a lot of stuff going on with that text
i like the ideas thrown about, but its too much at once, ease your reader into it. I understand the want to use the narrator, but to some point a narrator is meant to be unbiased. just saying what is, not what they feel about it, it makes me think more of a 1st person account rather. I always like the idea of a narrator seeming to be completely neutral through out the entire book and then on one point just a slight wink at something or i dunno, a 'wait a sec' moment.

>>8589329
>being that pleb you cant even into 4th person
Fucking KEK

>>8589151
It's not bad, but as you already noticed, it's not possible to keep that kind of momentum up for an entire book.

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It depends on the work in question. I don't like doing nebulous omniscient narrators though; if the narration knows more than it should, there's got to be an in-story reason for it, the formal aspects of the text need to be explained by the fiction itself.

>>8589088
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinaida_Serebriakova

>>8589535
oh my god. thank you

>>8589088

Take your time, don’t hurry. Like I said, it’s not an easy or instant task the one of choosing a mentor. Just read a lot, several different authors. You may have fall in love for someone, but there are always other fishes on the sea. You can also fuse two or more different writers sand styles, and make this fusion your teacher.

What you must do, above all else, is write. You must write every day, or at least five days a week, even when you are not in the mood. Believe me: most writers are never in the mood, and procrastination is a perpetual phantom.

But do this: sit down and write, write, write. Don’t expect to be good right from the start; you will face terrible difficulties. The first months and years are funny, because you advance in an extremely fast pace. When you look to your material of, say, 3-4 months back, you will see how bad you were. When you look to your material of 2-3 year before, you will think of how did you even had the guts to start a career as a writer. This is true to every writer, to every artist: the incubation period is very traumatizing, very febrile. It usually takes something around 10 years of practice to achieve the level of accepting literature.

I will suggest a book that deals with daily routines of several artists and scientists, so you can see how important is to create a working routine. You must insist, and that is pretty damn hard: you must face the blank pages everyday (that albino face that mocks your lack of stamina and shortness of ideas), face again and again and again your limitations and your own mediocrity. It’s not that pleasant a life, let me tell you. Of course, for all that days of suffering and self-loathing there are days when you leave your work-table satisfied with what you wrote, satisfied with what you created, and there is no better feeling in the world that having created beautiful metaphors, modeled a great scene, formulated a memorable speech – it’s a different pleasure that that of sexual satisfaction, a more profound and meaningful pleasure (but that pleasure, alas, will soon vanish, and you will need to prove yet again, on the next day, that you are able to purge the pestilence of mediocrity and plague of bareness from your blood).

>>8589576

Also: remember that you probably won’t be able to sustain yourself with your writing, so you will need to balance the work time with the writing time. That alone is a hard challenge. I, for example, am a lawyer, a profession that makes me cook on boredom and boil in anemia on the gray and dead office. I have to go to work to sustain myself, to pay the bills, and only after I return home, generally already a bit tired, I can finally sit down to write. This balance: working-creating is one of the things that you will have to learn; it’s kind of a biological learning: you will have to teach your body how to face the enormous mental demands that you will throw upon him. One of my secrets is coffee, lots of coffee, but I have also experimented with a drug (modafinil). This problem (the work-write dichotomy) is also covered on the book I will suggest to you.

Above all, you must have a visceral enthusiasm about creation, about the act of modeling words, of bringing imaginary entities to life. Yes, you will feel tired and hesitant to sit your ass on the work-desk every day, and that is normal. But that inner fire of creation, that thirst for artistic glory and aesthetic achievement is something that never leaves an artist. Enthusiasm seasons the gray porridge of an apathetic life with pepper. You can own the whole world, but if you don’t have enthusiasm, the world will be as boring as a classroom in summer time.

Here is the book about the routines of artists and scientists: http://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-Work/dp/0307273601

I wish you the best of luck. You are starting, in other words, you are facing the hardest part of a creative life. But don’t worry: for every day that you feel dissatisfied with yourself there are going to be days of hope, of creative drive and of gratefulness for possessing the ability of creation.

>>8589581

There is also the pressure of the old writers, but we must learn how to deal with it. We must do what we can with what we have. You have to strive to get better every day; to at least sit down and write five days a week; to read and sketch and cross out and sketch again and revise and rewrote, but keep going forward. Every writer in history has felt the breath of the past masters biting their own trembling necks, and yet the history of literature never stopped since the dawn of the written word (although there were, naturally, years of better crops and vintages of higher excellence).

There is that dreadful feeling that what you did was bad, the disgusting sensation that invades you when you read what you wrote and see the cracks, inflamed blackheads, varicose veins, cellulite, bruises and wounds on it. But then you must be patient and correct the flaws. And when you don’t know how to proceed, go back to your masters: read them, not to idolize them in an eternal state of submissive fear, but to learn their technics and use their solutions and the answers of their craft. If the writers of the past did some things in a magnificent way, steal from them. By all means inject your own style and voice on your work, but keep stealing what is good until the end of your life: when you engraft foreign shoots you in your work they will mutate, and plagiarism will not be what you'll be doing.

If we keep ourselves desiring for this man’s art and that man’s reach the fear and anxiety will freeze us in a perpetual cocoon of inactivity and coffin of frustration.

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>>8589581
Your mentality, while well intentioned, is the very reason why being an artist is unsustainable in our economy. This idea that the good things in life that aren't material (education, art, scientific endeavour) are to be chosen as a career purely out of passion and supported only by passion, is what precisely makes them so devaluated in the market. Artistry shouldn't be a condiment to life, but a possible way of life for those that have an attitude and talent for it. Art isn't some mystical form of deeper intercourse if you don't make it.

>>8589612

I agree with you, but unfortunately in our world it is quite difficult to sustain yourself on art alone. Before entering the Law course I desperately tried to find a way of living only with my writing, but I failed to do so. And I really tried, for many years after that, to achieve this holy grail of all of those who love art, yet I still didn’t find it.

This book that I quoted will show you that most artists needed to work in different fields other than the one they were passionate about in order to survive:

http://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-Work/dp/0307273601

The solution that I am slowly evolving now is to create a blog or a Facebook page, get thousands of followers and then publish your material on Amazon (which allows you to maintain most of the selling profits) and sell it for this already-formed audience.

>>8589653
>Before entering the Law course I desperately tried to find a way of living only with my writing, but I failed to do so.
I'm not suggesting to do that though. Just don't let others put the price on your work.

>>8589088
>Do you write first person, third? why?

Depends on the situation and what I'm trying to convey. Any of them can work depending on what I'm trying to do.

>How do you separate speech /dialogue from the rest of the text.

"Fuck your fat ass mom in her shithole," he said. Then he picked up a dildo and whacked me in the nuts with it.

Or...

"Fuck your fat ass mom in her shithole," he said and picked up a dildo and whacked me in the nuts with it.

all sorts of ways you can do it. No super right or wrong answer, just depends if it works or not. Also most readers won't even notice technicalities like this.

>do u focus on rhymes, alliteration, assonance? Do u love using metaphors or allusions?

Not really.

>>8589602
>>8589581
>>8589576
i appreciate your candour. thank you. I will look into the book you recommended.

>>8589088
It depends on the work. Formats -- styles, devices -- are tools. They should be chosen because the work could not work without them.

The story I am writing is in the form of a closet play.

>>8589653
I recommend that letter about "meaning" by Hunter S. Thompson. Very relevant to what you're talking about. Keep in mind where he was in his life at the time of writing that letter

>>8589088
In fluent English. You should try it.

It's easier for me to write in first person, but I recognize that it also makes me lazier, since I can "underwrite" and give it an immature kind of format.