Writing Practice and Commentary: Literary Style

When I was still in Vietnam, I took advantage of a promotional offer from MasterClass and signed up for a year. My goal was entirely developing my writing skills. The courses included some practice exercises to train the topics that the lecturers spoke on. I shared my password with my brother David who is also a pretty skilled and inspiring writer in his own right. Together we formed our own writing group and took on a lot of the course material together.

One of the lessons we worked on together — and the one that really stuck with me — revolved around the subject of style. For many beginning writers, style is notoriously nebulous. At the very least, this was the case for me, probably I had come up believing Ernest Hemingway's writing to be the pinnacle of style. (Ernest Hemingway's style is famed for its journalistic and minimalist qualities.)

In my English Literature classes back in high school, I had been trained to think of style as fundamentally the product of two multiples: diction, or the author's choice of words, and syntax, or the order of the words that the author has chosen. I like this definition, because even if it's a bit simplistic, it provides a superb framework for breaking down any author's style into its most rudimentary ingredients: the words.

The style exercise my brother and I were working on was basically this: Choose a passage written by an author that is very different from your own, then craft a passage that channels the same style.

Since the differences in our tastes in literature were vast, David and I decided to take a cooperative approach. He chose a passage for me, I chose a passage for him. If I recall correctly, the passage I chose for David was from Helsreach by the peerless Aaron Dembski-Bowden (ADB).

I don't recall precisely what I sent him, so for refernce I've included a short excerpt of the opening of Helsreach below:

I will die on this world.

I cannot tell where this conviction comes from. Whatever birthed it is a mystery to me, and yet the thought clings like a virus, blooming behind my eyes and taking deep root within my mind. It almost feels real enough to spread corruption to the rest of my body, like a true sickness.

It will happen soon, within the coming nights of blood and fire. I will draw my last breath, and when my brothers return to the stars, my ashes will be scattered over the priceless earth of this accursed world.

Armageddon.

- Excerpt from Helsreach by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

To be perfectly honest, I didn't think David could pull off a good emulation of ADB's style. I thought my brother's own style, which is more florid and low-key, would interfere. Yet not only did David pull it off — he did it with aplomb and pizzazz.

It was good. It was really good, so good I wish I had it on hand to share. I don't, unfortunately. However, I did digest and analyze his emulation, and I later channeled a lot of what I learned from David's exercise into the opening of No Third Chance, my story in the Warhammer Crime anthology Broken City.

I'm including that excerpt below. Although this is my work, today we'll use it as a stand-in for what my brother taught me in his own exercise. That's more than fair, because I can't emphasize enough how much of the style in this single passage was inspired by David's exercise. (Which I suppose is as powerful a remark on the merits of ADB's style as it is on my brother's versatility.)

A riddle. How do people become enforcers?

Take a boy. Or hells, take a girl, because a rodent’s gender doesn’t matter in the pipes. All that matters is the thing has teeth and nails. Because it’s going to use them. Stick the rat into a cage with five thousand more. Make it hungry. Turn off the lumens. After a few years, if the rodent learns to dodge bullets and sling them back, or that amasec and malnutrition kill gut annelids, maybe it lives long enough to fly gang colours. A fine line to walk, gang life, but that’s Varangantua for you. Sink, or float.

When our juve gets caught, the law swings down like a hammer. A shock maul to the face to be precise. Another cage follows. Smaller this time. More people. But if you survive the shock maul and the Judicio indoctrination and the cut-throats inching closer across bare cells, you get a choice. Strong louts in black plate drag you to a steel table in a tiled room. They kneel you before another enforcer, only he wears priest’s vestments over his sanctioner’s carapace. Fitting, because this is either your funeral or your baptism. On the table, you choose your fortune: A loaded burner, winking through its one eye at the socket of yours. Or a copy of the Lex-Alecto bound in pilgrim leather, awaiting your oath. Easy choice. Thirteen weeks after taking the vow, I spilled out the far end of the pipeline. Bastion-A gave me an enforcer’s holo-seal and a uniform. I, Sanctioner Tal Noran, was the God-Emperor’s judgement made manifest. Where law and crime met, they said, castigation must occur.

New gang. Different colours. - Excerpt from No Third Chance by Noah Van Nguyen (Warhammer Crime anthology Broken City)

What are the elements of style that we're really looking at here? No pun intended — get out of here, White and Strunk.

On the surface, the passages appear wildly different, which is appropriate given how different the point-of-view (POV) characters are. Given a deeper examination, however, the diction and syntax share some commonalities.

Working from our definition above, I would argue the following points. (Please don't take this to be me comparing myself to ADB. In my opinion, he truly is peerless!)

• The diction is specific and visceral. In ADB's passage, the conviction of the POV character, Grimaldus, that he will die did not simply appear, but it was "birthed." It is not simply enduring, but it "clings like a virus, blooming behind [his] eyes and taking deep root within [his] mind." ADB's word choices here inherently convey the insidious qualities of Grimaldus's sense of doom. Similarly, in my passage — which I'll restate we're using as a stand-in for David's work — Tal Noran, the POV character, does not simply learn that life is difficult in his youth. He learns that "amasec and malnutrition kill gut annelids." Even "amasec" and "annelid" are more specific, visceral versions of the words "liquor" and "worms." Neither does Tal simply get arrested: Instead, "the law swings down like... a shock maul to [his] face..."
  

• The authors use syntax to expand ideas through "agglutination." Rather than stating outright generalizations, ideas are compounded through the use of multiple clauses. In the Helsreach passage, we learn details about Grimaldus's conviction thusly: Its origin is mysterious, it is enduring, and it feels like a corruption spreading within. ADB could have easily condensed these ideas into a single sentence, preserving all of the meaning and even the diction as analyzed above. He chose not to. At a sentence level, this style choice can be reduced to syntax. I believe the same can be said of much of the opening I used for No Third Chance. Tal Noran is not simply forced to become an enforcer; he is dragged before a steel table in a tiled room, forced to his knees before a cop in priest's raiment, and presented with a loaded gun and the Varangantuan equivalent of a Bible. Then, he is suggestively told to make his choice.

  
  

One could argue that the use of specific and visceral diction and an "agglutinative" sentence-level syntax is key to writing good fiction. (At the very least, I would say that.) Even so, we can all agree that this kind of literary style would not be fitting for an analytical text on gang activity on Varangantua or an objective historical recounting of the Battle of Helsreach.

For my part of the exercise, my brother gave me the opening of Silas Marner by George Eliot. Excerpt below (and fair warning: it's one long-ass paragraph):

In the days when the spinning–wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses—and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread–lace, had their toy spinning–wheels of polished oak—there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country–folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien–looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?—and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One. In that far–off time superstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife–grinder. No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly not overwise or clever—at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the weather; and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring. In this way it came to pass that those scattered linen–weavers—emigrants from the town into the country—were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state of loneliness. - Excerpt from Silas Marner by George Eliot

When I was analyzing the style, I thought it was verbiose and long-winded. To be perfectly frank, I wasn't really here for it. (Like I said, my brother and I have varying tastes and literature). It takes the specific and visceral diction and compounding of ideas to a whole new level.

If I could describe them simplistically, I would call the diction here "excessive" and the syntax "wandering." Rather than building on themselves, a lot of the sentences here kind of shoot back-and-forth between related ideas, expounding upon every description with a statement on common attitudes. There are many garden path sentences that are direct results of authorial syntax.

That said, what I really appreciated about Eliot's style in this opening is the slow, almost suspenseful build-up he achieves in his exposition. If you read the whole opening, you'll notice that like the many rhythms in a song, it builds up to a kind of release. A climax in miniature, if you will.

This build-up and release is what I tried to emulate in my own passage during our cooperative exercise. (Given my tastes, I set my emulation in a more fantastical setting.) Pay attention and you'll definitely catch the "excessive" diction and "wandering" syntax I've reproduced — as well as the final release.

After three years of wandering arid deserts interwoven with trials physical and moral, roads paved and not, and nomadic tribesman remarkable only in their utter fear of bodies of water larger than the occasional puddles of their urine, a warrior arrived to a peninsula called Cola, ruled by an old lord renowned for the integrity of his mind and the fractures in his heart. The warrior did not long remain nameless; as chary of introductions as the cloaked stranger was to Cola’s skittish sugar-hands and their pallid wives hidden in their hovels, not three days had passed before word of his coming raced along the country before him, heralding his advent from distant lands, which, as one might expect from honest, simple folk like those common to Cola, was received with a mix of trepidation and superstition. Whispers passed of sheep’s milk souring in proximity to the man, or scoundrels rambling their darkest secrets in involuntary fits whenever he was near, or children at play plucking feathers which sprouted from the earth where he had passed. Few were certain how true these stories were, but by the time the warrior had at last drawn his ragged courser up to the gates of Lord Cola’s halls to greet the venerable master, rumor had already taken steadfast root that the wandering warrior was an old sorceror and a devil, a peddler of dreadfully seductive evils who had come to propose a seemingly inoffensive service to Lord Cola; and—if Lord Cola was short-sighted and committed the mishap of undertaking this proposal—to spirit away his fissured soul back beneath the earth whence he came. These rumors, girded as they were by the phantom fears of honest men, were not distant departures from the truth. Those few and bold enough to actually introduce themselves to this stranger had been perplexed to learn the vague, travelled rumors which their neighbors had spread bore shreds of honesty. For the warrior had indeed come to make Lord Cola an offer, and he would leave with more than he came.

What becomes apparent in this discussion of style is that achieving a descriptive literary style will make stories longer. This is probably the most important takeaway for aspiring writers, and one I wish I'd known when I started: if you aspire to write beautifully, just know that beautiful writing is longer. That will inflate your word counts, and longer texts are more difficult to read, so your beautiful writing will have to be beautiful enough to compensate for the longer text.

That's all for today, folks. Share your thoughts in the comments below!