Sat at my desk around 3 o'clock this morning trying to make my way through a particularly difficult chapter I'm writing about fathers I started to think about my writing style. it suddenly occurred to me that I was deliberately trying cut my own narrative in a way that went against many of my favourite writers. Does anyone else find themselves doing this or does anyone else actively seek to do this?

Geoff

Erm no! But then I'm not even sure who my favourite writers are at the moment and the ones I do like are such a mixed bag that I probably wouldn't know what to go against!

Is it because you're conscious that they may have inspired your style?

Cath

It might be the only sure way of finding your own voice. You are so familiar with a particular style that you're using those rules a base to leap from. A bit like teenagers rebelling against their parents. It comes from confidence in your own ability.

Colin M
(of course, in the case of teenagers, it's blinkered confidence)

Given the subject of the chapter you were working on, this all sounds a bit Oedipal!

If you're just avoiding writing like your heroes in pursuit of a vague feeling that originality is all-important, then I'd worry. But I think after the stage when you try to write like a writer/writers you admire, there does come a stage when you realise that that isn't you, and so won't ever really let you do what your own writing-self wants to. That's natural, and a good thing. You'll probably find that later on you can still see the remnants of those writers in your work, but that you've completely absorbed and then trasmuted them into a voice that's distinctively your own.

Emma

Hi Colin, Em, Cath,

I've been thinking about this some more today. I think it's true that I want to develop a voice set apart from most other writers, I prefer the kind of narrative where you feel that the protagonist is stood right next to you, telling you their story to your face.

I guess it's also about challenging myself as a writer, anyone can knock out a Dan Brownesque novel in a couple of weeks, as it takes zero effort or skill. But I find myself thinking how dark can I make this, how unpalatable can I go? Not in an out and out shocking way, but I really try and push the boundary. My current work is on Feeling Gravity's Pull which is about as uncommercial as it can be, and I often get a lot of remarks that it's depressing, which it's supposed to be, because life isn't all roses, in fact for some life is just a series of kickbacks, defeats, failure and misfortune. But I still want people to read it, I don't want to put them off entirely. So I guess that's what I'm aiming for.

Does that make sense?

Geoff

I prescribe "White Light From the Mouth of Insanity" by Swans. I'll even MP3 it!

Anna recommended a superb book of short stories once, "You Are Not a Stranger Here" by (--can't remember. It's on amazon though). A brilliantly dark and thought provoking novel, but for me, the darkness only worked because there was an underlying sense of humour, the sort of humour you get from someone who has known genuine suffering; there is an acidic tone to their laugh; the almost imperceptable humour of a bitter laugh. But it's there. If you know, you know. I'm desperately trying to find the words for what I mean. It's a voice that doesn't ask for sympathy, because they don't want it. A voice that's been beaten down so far, the only direction to look is up. To capture that voice in prose (or lyrics/voice) is something few people can achieve.

As a matter of interest, the story "The Good Doctor" (in that collection mentioned above) is probably the best short story I've read. It took a moment or two to hit home, but when it did... whallop!!

Colin M

But I find myself thinking how dark can I make this, how unpalatable can I go? Not in an out and out shocking way, but I really try and push the boundary

This is what I'd call the experimental method: take a project, and change one thing about it, and see what happens, even if it's just picking Katy up and sending her to school for the new book. It can be very fruitful. But you're right, the mistake would be to be trying to be shocking just to shock people. The darkness needs to be there in it from the beginning, so that when you choose to let it loose, the reader is convinced.

Emma

Well I guess you could call it experimental. There are no names, virtually no dialogue, the language changes throughout the book to reflect both the mental state and medical condition of the protagonist. It reads like a suicide note in parts. In many ways it's the anti novel. It's like nothing I've ever read.

It could just win the Booker prize!

Geoff

Geoff, that sounds absolutely fascinating. If you can pull it off, I guess it just might!

Emma

anyone can knock out a Dan Brownesque novel in a couple of weeks

so do the NaNoWriMo and prove it, and see of you can get anything like his sales. Dan Brown gets slagged, but its what the public love. I read Deception Point the other week. The characters were flat, the dialogue pretty lame, there was a monumental amount of "Tell don't Show" to fill in the gaps and the POV jumped about like a pinball, but the story was fairly enjoyable - not stunning, but certainly entertaining. It's a bit like a blockbuster movie in book form.

Colin M

Hmm, that's a good question. I think about this a bit differently... or actually, I prefer not to think about originality overmuch, as I find it distracts and confuses me.

I don't think it's the destiny of every writer -- even of every great, remarkable writer -- to be revolutionary. Each artist has his own place in the chain, and the mark of true greatness (in my opinion) is to make good use of what has been done before while being true to your own aesthetic sense. I suppose it's only natural that writers graduate from an imitative to a reactive phase -- but from that it's good to go on to a consolidatory phase where it no longer matters which parts of your writing are 'pure you' and which are remnants of somebody else. You take the building blocks you have -- the imitative, the reactive, and the stuff that's neither -- and put them together in a way that satisfies your artistic sensibilities. You can't stop to think how original you are because, frankly, you're not even in a position to judge; you can't see your own place in history while you're living it.

It's good to remember that you are you, and nothing can change that. Even if you deliberately set out to write something in the style of a writer you admire, you will find that in the end it sounds more like 'you' than him/her. In fact, writing pastiche pieces is a very liberating exercise. You can find yourself subtly rebelling against convention, not from a desire to be 'original' on purpose but just because your taste and ideas can never identical to anybody else's.

That's how I feel about this, anyway...

Oh dear. Now that I reread my message it sounds frightfully impertinent, as if my way were the only way to think about writing.

Never mind. I'm afraid this site brings out the insufferable know-it-all in me. I'm trying much too hard to fit in... sorry!

<Added>

Great! Now it sounds as though I were saying that you're all insufferable know-it-alls.

I think I'll just go and lie down for a bit now...

Fredegonde, don't be silly: I think the much of the value of somewhere like the WW fora is the insight one gets into other people's practice/habits/experiments/fears. So go on saying what you think. I'd much rather read posts about people's own experience than be told what I ought to do about mine, unless it's a specific problem I've asked for help with.

One of the problems is that 'I' sounds egotistical or is too specific, so we naturally write 'you' when we really mean 'one' because 'one' sounds ridiculously pompous and distressingly like Prince Charles. But 'you' makes the writer sound accusing or bossy, instead (or is confusing, as it would have been in the second half of my first sentence). I wish we could used 'one' as the French can 'on' without any such overtones.

Emma

Hi Geoff - is that piece I read (Dead Air?) a part of this novel? If so, I think it could turn out to be something very interesting indeed. I think if you (one? I?) write with integrity and honesty, what we produce may well turn out to be shocking to some people, whether we intend it to be or not. The amazing, and slightly scary, thing about this writing gig is that we put so much of ourselves out there for people to see - the dark stuff, the weird stuff, the stuff other people won't admit to but like to read about - it can make us seem a little freakish. But I actually think you have to do it, and you have to keep pushing back the barriers. It reminds me of something Salman Rushdie once said (I think) in relation to the fatwa. His view was that once a thought has been thought you cannot unthink it. There are some books people read to feel comfortable, to have their lives and decisions confirmed. But there are other books that do the opposite. Not everyone will want to read them. They're hard to write but it sounds like that's the path you've set out on. Good luck! (And let me know when you put up another bit of the Dead Air thing. I'd be interested in following it.)

Roger.

Every serious writer must be original in some way, but I agree with Fredegoned that it isn't necessary or inevitable that s/he is revolutionary, even if some writers can't see a boundary without trying to cross it. Seems to me it's as much part of each of our characters as our vocabulary or gender. (And no, let's not start in on that one)

But sometimes I think the most interesting thing is when something seems ordinary and inevitable to the writer, and then others are amazed and shocked (in a literary sense, if not in an emotional sense). A writer friend said to me of his novels, 'Lots of people including my editor seem to think they're really experimental, but they seem quite straightforward to me'. His work isn't the most experimental I've ever come across, but it's definitely not usual. He's a poet though, which might have something to do with it.

Emma