I’m trying to shift between the vocabulary of a book written in the style of Georgette Heyer, to a book which sits somewhere between Schmitz and Laumer, stylistically (and certainly in terms of tongue-in cheek humor.) The problem – as a statistician, is really about word choice and sentence structure. You’d get the same thing with a High Fantasy and say Urban Fantasy.
The structure of the sentences in the direction I am moving is simpler, the vocabulary a little less complex. Some people seemingly can’t really change this: they write the same way, regardless of genre or subgenre. Margret Atwood writes like Margaret Atwood, Ayn Rand wrote like Ayn Rand (fiction or philosophy). Others shift style hugely (while still remaining recognizable) like Roger Zelazny.
As I am little more than a hack, one of my challenges to myself to improve my breadth as it were, has been to try and shift my style and to some extent my voice to chameleon various authors I admire. As these range from Louis L’Amour to Gene Wolfe – I have my work cut out for me. No, I can’t really successfully imitate either of those! But there is no doubt that to many readers there is a comfort-zone style in their favorite genre or sub-genre. (Fantasy for example has in general longer sentences than sf (especially Space opera) and certainly in high fantasy archaic vocabulary is a given.)
Shifting between them is mentally demanding, I find. For me, the only way is immersion. I can’t say be reading Heyer and writing Laumer paced stories. Is there anything you have found works for you? Do other people also try to do this, or is it just me?
Thank you, BTW for the star rankings and the couple of reviews on Amazon for CECILY. Its sales have been a little slow. I am not sure if that’s me, the economic situation, the pseudonym or just the genre.
Mad Genius Club 
6 responses to “Words, words, words”
Writing formal poetry helped me become more comfortable in shifting the rhythm of the language to suit the genre/setting that I am going for. Poetry trains the mind to be aware of the levels of language–word, phrase, sentence, stanza, verse, page, chapter, and so on–and how the levels effect each other across scales.
I tried to mimic H. Rider Haggard and Jim Corbett when I wrote the Shikari series. The words move more slowly, so to speak, than in urban fantasy. Likewise the Merchant books, although there part of the work is making sure I don’t use modern terms that required modern tech to make sense.
My sales are down, even on new books. I think the economy broadly speaking, and the political uncertainty in the US, are causing people to hold onto their guineas, pounds, and pence.
No, not just you. I have found that if I “load up” on reading a particular style, I can then go for pages and pages and pages, perfectly duplicating that style and vocabulary. This has come in handy when creating authentic Victorian-era letters and diary entries for my own books.
Dave, I greatly enjoyed Cecily and just went back and rated it. I got banned from making Amazon reviews about a month back for unclear reasons, so no reviews, sorry.
Trying to keep the 1st person POVs for Casual Cowgirl and Dr. Dunedan (not their actual names) sounding like themselves is my current challenge. As well as stuff like, she’s ripped the skirt to dress but think it’s loose and drapey enough to where the men haven’t noticed, but I’m pretty sure the doctor has noticed and almost equally sure he wouldn’t draw attention to it when narrating events to a third party.
For the Jaiyan books I was trying for a kind of vibe that none of this was taking place in English (my influences being mostly films that I’d watched subtitled), don’t know if I succeeded
Writing in voice can affect my writing without my noticing it much. In The Lion And The Library, I didn’t even notice Lena’s fondness for metaphor before a critique complained it was flowery. The revision toned it down some but that was Lena’s point of view.
In Eyes of the Sorceress, I didn’t notice that Apollonia just doesn’t describe things much. Much more cerebral than my other characters.
Then, on the other, there are children’s points of view, which spontaneously cause me to rethink my