| We writers spend quite a bit of energy giving each | | | | sea of future and past. |
| other tips on the structural elements of our craft, | | | | A focused lens into the past can provide valuable, |
| things like dialogue, creating characters, developing | | | | revelatory insights into and about the present; a |
| plots and themes. What about style? Style is the | | | | retrospective gaze from the realized future can |
| natural emanation of who and what we are. In that | | | | redefine and more precisely account the broader |
| sense, it's an essential element of our literary voice. | | | | implications of that same present. In the infinite plate |
| I've developed two examples of personal literary | | | | tectonics of the cosmos, nothing stands alone, |
| style. The first is Hitchcockian moments. Remember | | | | absolute, stoic and stone. "Etc." - a literal translation |
| how Alfred Hitchcock seemed to manage a cameo in | | | | from Latin is "and the rest." Common meanings |
| many of his movies? I call those spots "Hitchcockian | | | | include "and so forth" or "and other things." I think |
| moments." There's a scene in my first novel where | | | | this better captures my sense of the open-ended |
| soldiers destroy a warehouse full of enemy | | | | existence of any piece of writing...and the rest...and |
| explosives. One of the soldiers is Mughal. That's my | | | | so forth...and other things. |
| Hitchcockian moment. After writing it, I decided to | | | | These are just two examples of personal style. Each |
| include a cameo in each successive novel. | | | | is a reflection of me as a person and as a writer. You |
| A second example of personal style is to use "etc." in | | | | can develop your own elements of personal style. |
| lieu of "The End" at the end of each work. I mulled | | | | Perhaps you already have. What are they? Please |
| "The End" and decided that that phrase limits the | | | | share! |
| contextual residence of my writing; it implies that an | | | | Developing your own personal style as a writer is fun. |
| isolated universe is created within each piece of | | | | Style is that extra loop in your literary signature. It's |
| prose and that that world is immutable, irrefutable | | | | that bold, angular first letter or that broad dash that |
| and final. It isn't. Nothing ends. Our stories and novels | | | | turns back and underscores the last half of your |
| depict fragments of experience that occur within the | | | | name. Give your writing its own style. Make it special. |
| moment, but that are also nested within a dynamic | | | | Make it you. |