i've meta'd! and it is very rambly!
Warning: this doesn't have a huge amount of organization. mostly it's stream-of-consciousness thoughts as I go, which leads to a lot of off-the-cuff topic jumps. Plus, I'm speaking just for me and how I perceive writing styles, not how other people may see or think about them.
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For the first time in a little over four months, I've written and posted something. And it feel so weird, because it's such an incredible departure from my usual style.
I've never written anything without a happy ending before - or at least a very hopeful ending with a clear implication of future happiness. *I* know that their story eventually works out in a happy way, because I'm planning on writing a sequel, but you'd never be able to tell that from the story itself, which ends in an incredibly unhopeful note.
So, the unhappy ending thing made me have a few, deep-writer thoughts, mainly because yesterday, I was talking to synecdochic about our writing styles, versus our personalities. We realized that if somebody were to make assumptions about our personalities, based solely on our writing styles, they'd be completely and totally backwards. Syne tends to write bleak and hopeless stories, that crush your heart and leave your world cold and lonely and grey (I mean this in the good way, syne, really!). However, in real life, she's warm and friendly and cheerful and colorful. The exact opposite of her writing.
Then there's me. Up until this, my writing as a whole tends to be happy and fun and not very serious at all. Everybody gets stoned and John can't say, "Atlantis." Ronon stalks Radek around the city and John explains that men are from Mars, while Rodney is from Venus. The team goes off to visit the planet of the m'Preg, and Ronon yearns for young. Rodney is a secret tea-drinker and John catches him in the act. You get the basic idea. Just from reading these you'd think that I'm a naturally happy, up person (two points for whomever gets that quote), while actually, I'm pretty much the anti-cheerful. I suck cheer out through a twisty straw! I'm gray and meh and I always worry when I friend somebody because I'm sure they expect something very different than what they receive.
I know that synecdochic and I are probably extreme examples, but it makes me wonder how other people's styles relate to their personalities. What makes people choose the tone that they write in? My tone is usually chosen by my desire to actually live in a happy and fun world, and since I don't have that in my life, I try to have it in what I write (or what I read; I avoid unhappy endings like the plague). As I can only speak for myself (and not even for syne here, who is sleeping right now and therefore can't explain her tone choices), I'd really love to know what motivates everybody as writers. Do you try to write in the style of your own life? Of the life you wish you had? Of the life you're glad you *don't* have? Is it totally random and disconnected to your life in any way at all? What makes you go for humor and/or crackfic over angst and/or seriousness? Or the other way around? Can you switch back-and-forth between the genres easily?
I think that a lot of people feel that in order to be taken seriously as writers, the things they write have to be "deeper," which a lot of the time translates into "darker and bleaker." Somebody on my friendslist is doing a writing workshop this semester and the topics and plotlines her fellow writers are choosing are hilariously similar - protagonist kills somebody and hates world and then kills himself, protagonist hates world and kills animal, protagonist is full of emo, emo, emo pain. It can be interesting when there's one story like that, but a whole classful of them isn't only funny, it's noticeable, because there has to be some reason that everybody is independently choosing to go down the same path. Darker and bleaker can be brilliantly done, but not when it's done just for the sheer point of being dark and bleak. You're left blinking and wondering just *why* everybody is so emo.
The opposite of the coin is humor/crackfic. There's a general assumption in the fandom and writing world that writing humor is somehow much easier and less "real". However, sit somebody down in front of a few dozen "funny" stories, and you quickly realize that it takes just as much skill to remain light and funny and *in character*, as it does to remain serious and thoughtful and of course, in character as well. I can't even count the number of stories full of John and Rodney's "witty banter" that make me want to cringe with sheer embarrassment for the writer.
So either way here, the writer is kind of screwed, by the stereotypes associated with the style of writing they choose. I assume that affects most writer's choices as well. I know that when I write something funny, I tend to get comments along the lines of, "I snorted up my cereal and almost choked to death from laughter!" and when I write something less funny, I tend to get comments wanting to discuss my writing in more depth. It's hard to keep thing like that from making me feel like I have to write in a non-humorous style all the time, if I want to be taken seriously as a writer, and I find that to be incredibly frustrating. And curiosity-inducing about the affects on everybody else. How does it work for you?
---
For the first time in a little over four months, I've written and posted something. And it feel so weird, because it's such an incredible departure from my usual style.
I've never written anything without a happy ending before - or at least a very hopeful ending with a clear implication of future happiness. *I* know that their story eventually works out in a happy way, because I'm planning on writing a sequel, but you'd never be able to tell that from the story itself, which ends in an incredibly unhopeful note.
So, the unhappy ending thing made me have a few, deep-writer thoughts, mainly because yesterday, I was talking to synecdochic about our writing styles, versus our personalities. We realized that if somebody were to make assumptions about our personalities, based solely on our writing styles, they'd be completely and totally backwards. Syne tends to write bleak and hopeless stories, that crush your heart and leave your world cold and lonely and grey (I mean this in the good way, syne, really!). However, in real life, she's warm and friendly and cheerful and colorful. The exact opposite of her writing.
Then there's me. Up until this, my writing as a whole tends to be happy and fun and not very serious at all. Everybody gets stoned and John can't say, "Atlantis." Ronon stalks Radek around the city and John explains that men are from Mars, while Rodney is from Venus. The team goes off to visit the planet of the m'Preg, and Ronon yearns for young. Rodney is a secret tea-drinker and John catches him in the act. You get the basic idea. Just from reading these you'd think that I'm a naturally happy, up person (two points for whomever gets that quote), while actually, I'm pretty much the anti-cheerful. I suck cheer out through a twisty straw! I'm gray and meh and I always worry when I friend somebody because I'm sure they expect something very different than what they receive.
I know that synecdochic and I are probably extreme examples, but it makes me wonder how other people's styles relate to their personalities. What makes people choose the tone that they write in? My tone is usually chosen by my desire to actually live in a happy and fun world, and since I don't have that in my life, I try to have it in what I write (or what I read; I avoid unhappy endings like the plague). As I can only speak for myself (and not even for syne here, who is sleeping right now and therefore can't explain her tone choices), I'd really love to know what motivates everybody as writers. Do you try to write in the style of your own life? Of the life you wish you had? Of the life you're glad you *don't* have? Is it totally random and disconnected to your life in any way at all? What makes you go for humor and/or crackfic over angst and/or seriousness? Or the other way around? Can you switch back-and-forth between the genres easily?
I think that a lot of people feel that in order to be taken seriously as writers, the things they write have to be "deeper," which a lot of the time translates into "darker and bleaker." Somebody on my friendslist is doing a writing workshop this semester and the topics and plotlines her fellow writers are choosing are hilariously similar - protagonist kills somebody and hates world and then kills himself, protagonist hates world and kills animal, protagonist is full of emo, emo, emo pain. It can be interesting when there's one story like that, but a whole classful of them isn't only funny, it's noticeable, because there has to be some reason that everybody is independently choosing to go down the same path. Darker and bleaker can be brilliantly done, but not when it's done just for the sheer point of being dark and bleak. You're left blinking and wondering just *why* everybody is so emo.
The opposite of the coin is humor/crackfic. There's a general assumption in the fandom and writing world that writing humor is somehow much easier and less "real". However, sit somebody down in front of a few dozen "funny" stories, and you quickly realize that it takes just as much skill to remain light and funny and *in character*, as it does to remain serious and thoughtful and of course, in character as well. I can't even count the number of stories full of John and Rodney's "witty banter" that make me want to cringe with sheer embarrassment for the writer.
So either way here, the writer is kind of screwed, by the stereotypes associated with the style of writing they choose. I assume that affects most writer's choices as well. I know that when I write something funny, I tend to get comments along the lines of, "I snorted up my cereal and almost choked to death from laughter!" and when I write something less funny, I tend to get comments wanting to discuss my writing in more depth. It's hard to keep thing like that from making me feel like I have to write in a non-humorous style all the time, if I want to be taken seriously as a writer, and I find that to be incredibly frustrating. And curiosity-inducing about the affects on everybody else. How does it work for you?