Some writers have it, some don’t, and it doesn’t seem to mean a damn in terms of success. It’s style, that distinctive narrative voice that imbues a story with swagger, chattiness, or anything else that makes a reader feel the narrator is just too cool for words.
I don’t have it, at least in my fiction. Oh, in nonfiction I ramble and chat with the best of them. One of my fellow writers once told me that my columns have a “Psst, hey buddy, let me clue you in on something” feel. But while I like using a chatty, conversational style for nonfiction, my fiction uses a plainspoken narrative.
I’m not alone. Consider this quote from J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5:
The best writing (IMO) is natural writing, where the words on the page flow very naturally, very smoothly. Every once in a while, you pull out all the stylistic tricks, you thunder and lightning all over the page, when needed for effect…but it’s the writing free of artifice that seems, for me, to work well. If you hang out with writers long enough, the really *good* ones, you learn soon enough that most of them talk exactly the way they write.
Lemme give you a forinstance… when Asimov was first struggling as a writer, he had lunch with his agent one day. He was having a hard time describing things, using language to paint pictures. The agent said, “You know how Hemingway would describe the sun rising in the morning?” No, Asimov said, leaning in… how? “The sun rose in the morning.”
I like stylistic tricks when needed, but I don’t use them by default. My favorite writers, the ones that most influenced me when I was young, are all pedantic straight-ahead guys. Tom Clancy, Stephen King, John Grisham, Michael Crichton, all of them tell the story and stay out of the way. (Clancy tends to describe too much, but that’s a subject for another article).
The way I see it, the story should be first and foremost. If the story is good enough, a bouncy, in-your-face narrator is more distraction from the story than benefit to it. Such a narrator can be fun, but a good story doesn’t need it.
Here’s an example of what I mean. This is the opening to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. While the book is a fun read and an interesting look at a plausible near future, the story has its weak points and the ending could use some work:
The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.
Great opening, just grabs ya. But as the book rolls on, we become increasingly aware that the strength of this story is less the story then the way in which it’s told.
Now, to put my money where my mouth is, here’s an excerpt from my first novel, Between Heaven and Hell.
Then, suddenly, he wasn’t falling anymore. After he’d recovered from the sudden deceleration, he realized he hadn’t hit bottom; he’d been caught. He looked up at the face of the demon that had saved him. The demon was tall, with angular facial features and bright blue eyes. His black hair was swept back from his forehead, and his perfect teeth were bared in a charming smile.
“Daniel Cho, I presume,” said the demon as he lowered Daniel carefully to the floor. “The infamous leader of the Demon Task Force. Pleased to meet you at last.”
Daniel sat and stared, trying to catch his breath.
“Ah, but you don’t know who I am,” the demon continued. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of wealth and taste.”
That’s one of my favorite chapter endings. We know the demon Daniel’s just met is no ordinary demon. In fact, if you catch the Rolling Stones reference, you know exactly who it is, even though I haven’t named him yet.
But look closer a that passage. While the dialogue has some style, the narrative is plain-spoken. The closest I get to artifice is “his perfect teeth were bared in a charming smile,” the word “bared” telling something about the nature of that smile. But on the whole, pretty straightforward.
Style has its time and its place. Like any writing tool (things like alliteration, symbolism, etc.), it can be used to make a good story better. But be careful that it doesn’t become a crutch, concealing that there isn’t a story there at all.
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