How can I get my style to feel more mature?
I'm 22 year old and when I read myself, my writing style feels juvenile. By that, I mean that everything seems enveloped in a drape of purity, of carelessness and that whatever happens will end well.
I tried many things so it doesn't happen: choose mature subjects (distopias, dilemmas), write horrible situations (violence), describe the environment a lot more than what I was doing (going from 2/3 lines to a whole paragraph), and I worked on my characters to make them feel more realistic.
Yet, I still feel like I'm writing like a child. Is it because I'm reading myself? What could I do to fix that?
If it is relevant for whatever reason, my native language is french and I'm writing in french.
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There is no real way to learn writing in a completely different style. The best way is to practice it and read as much as you can from author's whose style you feel is at the right level of maturity. Other than that your personal real-life experience is the one thing that will give you a different point of view that will feel more mature to a reader.
An important thing to do though is to get input from others.
Is it because I'm reading myself?
If you ask me everyone is his own harshest critic. You will always feel like something is missing or something is underdeveloped or something is over the top or any of a couple dozen other problems. "Would it sound better if I changed the word order?", "Did I use that word before?", "Did I explain this with just enough details to make the reader long for more?"
You will never be truly satisfied if you are striving for a perfect script. Give it to others, see what they say about your writing. Do they like it? Great, ask them if they can name something they think is good about your writing. They don't like it? Even better, there surely is something they can point out that they didn't like so you can work on it. (Just make sure they are similar to your target audience.)
The next thing is to make sure that your style fits your target audience - there is no use in trying to be overly mature when your target audience is indeed more in the teenage years.
Get things done and put them out there (or just in the hands of your friends) to get some feedback and then make something else. Write, write and write to get experience. At the same time read, read and read to get more input from other author's you look up to (you always need a role model at any point and for anything you want to achieve in life). And above all: live your life. Your writing will improve naturally with time. Trust in yourself.
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I've been struggling with this as well, @Keker.
I'd ask you this: Would you describe all sections of your manuscript as childish? Are some better and more mature in style than others? This thought ties in part into what Chris said in his answer. To the point: the things you feel passionately about are things you will have more nuanced knowledge about.
The portions of my story that feel most juvenile are the pieces that need to be there - but that I don't actually have much experience with. It reads 'juvenile' because it is not sophisticated. My approach to bring this up is to research those areas to add detail, develop it more.
It's helping.
If you can pinpoint certain scenes or chunks that feel most juvenile, consider researching the pieces of that scene to learn more about it. Ask yourself if there are parts of your story that you sort of 'hand wave' because in your mind it doesn't matter if the details are right or not. then learn more about those details.
Example: I'm currently learning the makeup and definitions of villages in comparison to towns.
This may sound like a trivial thing to worry about - but it matters to tone and style for those portions of my story that are set in a town. I need to also research what sorts of road surfaces would be available to these towns in this era. At the moment the roads are a mix of cobbles, dirt, and paved - because i have no earthly idea which is most accurate or if all three are reasonable. I don't know if there would be sidewalks, or what they'd be made of. I don't know how many guest houses a town like this should reasonably have, or how developed the medical center should be. I've handled all of this in a very hand-wavy sort of way but need to nail down those details - and that will add a little more authority to the setting; the reader will understand that they are 'in good hands' when they read it, and I think this creates a more mature tone.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32451. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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