Andrew Norriss
Andrew Norriss: 2. Developing your style
At the same time as reading through for balance, I have an eye open for style. It happens much less now than it used to, but in the early days particularly I would find my style could be heavily influenced by whatever I was reading at the time. If I was reading a Terry Pratchett, the chapter I was working on could read very differently from the next one, written when I was deep in Jane Austen. So I keep an eye out, while I’m going through that first draft, for the bits that sound truly authentic, that sound like me.
Because the style I’m really looking for is the one that is my own authentic voice. It may not be as funny as Terry Pratchett or as literary as Jane Austen but… it’s me. There is no guarantee, of course, that anyone will like your authentic voice but, ultimately, it’s going to be the only voice that will truly express whatever you have to say.
There’s a story of a man asking Rudyard Kipling to look over a short story he had written. Kipling, always generous with advice and support, sat down then and there and went over it line by line. He changed things, crossed out whole sentences, put in new ones… and the result, the man agreed, was a great improvement. The only trouble was that it wasn’t his story anymore. It was a Kipling story.
Andrew Norriss
