​​Today we take a look at the indecisive shopper! Writers are a lot like shoppers, and the writing process is a hell of a lot like shopping. Your writing process says a lot about how and what you will write, and it dramatically influences your voice. The beauty here is that there is no right or wrong as long as you write in your way. Try to write like someone else, and you will fail. Note: many of us have more than one style influencing us! 

The Indecisive Shopper

The Indecisive shopper wanders the aisles, places things in their cart, panics, and then ditches everything and runs from the store. This kind of writer has difficulty figuring out what they want to write and how they want to write it. Often, they have dozens of half-started manuscripts lying around (I have 28 half-started and probably another 15 outlines that never grew into anything). This is a common writing style for all new writers, regardless of any other styles you fall into. The indecisive shopper is a formative stage or one we get stuck in when we don’t quite know where we are going. As a result, I have not listed the pros or cons for this, only some tips to get you out of the rut.

Tips

• Start by completing a thorough character sketch for your protagonist and antagonist. Having a good backstory and idea of who they are can give you direction for the story. Here’s yet another website with info on how to do this: http://www.fiction-writers-mentor.com/writing-character-sketches/
• Try the “if this, then what” format for creating a basic outline for your story or a scene. You could create multiple branches on this and follow several what-ifs and then choose the branch that creates the most conflict. If my character loses her purse, what happens next? She’s driving down the road and has an asthma attack, but her inhaler is in her bag. Then what? She keeps an extra inhaler in the glove box, so she reaches for that, causing her to swerve on the road. Then what? She drops the inhaler when her tire hits the gravel on the side of the road? Then what? She manages to get her inhaler, but she gets pulled over because she’s driving erratically. Then what? (see how you could keep going?)
• Keep a “Cut Document” to save parts that you cut out of your writing, just in case.

That wraps up my dialogue about writing style! I will leave you with one final thought before I go:

All good writing helps us understand ourselves and humanity. It grapples with the big questions, even if it cannot answer them. Strong words evoke passion before our brains even make sense of the lines. For that’s what good writing does: make us feel and, through that emotion, make us think.

​​Today we take a look at the stingy shopper! Writers are a lot like shoppers, and the writing process is a hell of a lot like shopping. Your writing process says a lot about how and what you will write, and it dramatically influences your voice. The beauty here is that there is no right or wrong as long as you write in your way. Try to write like someone else, and you will fail. Note: many of us have more than one style influencing us! 

The Stingy Shopper

Like the premeditator, everything the stingy shopper puts onto the page is deliberate and planned. The stingy shopper does not like extra things, though. If they had a mantra, it would be “Just the facts, ma’am.” This type of writer is all about bones and subtext, and a lot is implied. Often, these are some of the most fun works to read if you’re up to the challenge because they engage you more as a reader.

Pros: Falling into the “sentimental” classification of writing (see Orhan Pamuk’s book, The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist, for more on this), the stingy shopper counts on his or her structure and method to help tell the story. Hemingway’s novels are an excellent example of compact, surface type of writing. If there is a more straightforward way to say something, that is how it is written. His writing creates a surface, but there is depth, unsaid but implied. Read “The Old Man at the Bridge” to better understand this stingy (but beautiful) writing.

Cons: Sometimes, too much gets cut, and the writing becomes flat and difficult to understand. These writers often are accused of taking the emotion out of the story, although if done correctly, the emotion becomes part of the subtext. If you are shooting for a lengthy manuscript, you will struggle. Need some inspiration? Check out Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction.

Tips:

• If you are going to write in this style, you have to be deliberate. Everything you include must be intentional.
• Practice showing instead of telling.
• Preplan your subtext. What do you want your readers to intuit? What are you trying to build beneath the surface of your writing?

Today we continue the series about writing styles! Writers are a lot like shoppers, and the writing process is a hell of a lot like shopping. Your writing process says a lot about how and what you will write, and it greatly influences your voice. The beauty here is that there is no right or wrong as long as you write in your way. Try to write like someone else, and you will fail. Note: many of us have more than one style influencing us! Today let’s check out the browser!

The Browser

For the browser, writing is an opportunity to take everything in. They view writing as an excuse to explore the world, and they slowly meander through their writing just as they do life, exploring the quality of light as it filters in the window and the texture of a nectarine against their lips. Writing is a daily essential for these writers, and it is one way in which they process their experiences and assign meaning and emotion to their sensations.

Pros: Falling into the “naive” classification of writing along with the impulse shopper (see Orhan Pamuk’s book, The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist for more on this), these folks have a way of capturing the things others so often take for granted. The browser can provide readers with a sensual glimpse through their eyes. Few other writers can capture so vividly the world around them. Looking for inspiration in this type of writing? Check out Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse or Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.

Cons: The browsers have a hard time keeping it short and sweet. Because these people feel so committed to their senses, they tend to write exhaustively. In Search of Lost Time is an example of this, and Proust only gets away with writing this 7-volume, million-word novel because he’s a master. The delete button is this writer’s best friend. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery says, “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Tips:

• Make time for sifting through your experiences every day. Don’t worry about forming them into something meaningful, just write.
• Find a trusted adviser when you are forming your prose, someone who can help advise you what you need to cut, but always save the original and trust your gut!
• Embrace your need to record everything. You can go back and edit things out later. The best advice on this comes from Natalie Goldberg in her book, Writing Down the Bones:
  • “Our sense by themselves are dumb. They take in experience, but they need the richness of sifting for a while through our consciousness and through our whole bodies. I call this ‘composting.’ Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones of our minds come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not come all at once. It takes time. Continue to turn over and over the organic details of your life until some of them fall through the garbage of discursive thoughts to the solid ground of black soil.”

Tomorrow I will post about the premeditator. For now, I will leave you with this thought:

Each thing you add to your story is a drop of paint falling into clear water; it spreads through and colors everything.”

Lisa Cron