Influence has an important role in your writing. As you understand and work with different styles and influences, you’ll learn how to find your own voice.
This is part six of a 12-part series on style and voice. Writers in the Story Course and the Story Intensive can determine their writing style by taking the Style Diagnosis Quiz. This is a tool to help you highlight elements of style in your own work and point you to authors who may inspire you right now.
Read the rest of the Style Diagnosis series here (remaining parts coming soon):
— Bookish — Deeper Than You Think — Fearless — Grounded Fantasist — Stylist — Quirky but Serious (below)
Are you Quirky but Serious?
Where do you come up with this stuff? Your stories would be purely funny, if only they weren’t also so true. The combination of absurd-yet-disturbing puts your readers in the delicate and rare place where they’re laughing, but they’re never quite sure if they should be laughing quite so hard.
Your stories show that you observe more truth about life than most, but then you twist that truth on its head and make your readers cringe — in the best way. You’re generous enough to hand over the dark truth in a way that makes us smile knowingly. So what if we shudder after we smile?
Overall, you favour clarity in your sentences. You love good dialogue especially, of course: all the better to make the gravity of your subtext ring true.
Read the following books to learn about other Quirky but Serious writers:
- Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water
- Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life
- George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation
- Jessica Westhead, And Also Sharks
- Halle Butler, The New Me
- Michelle Winters, I Am a Truck
- Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation
- Patrick deWitt, French Exit
Please leave your suggestions for other Quirky but Serious writers in the comments below.
xo,
Photo credit (top): Belinda Fewings on Unsplash
I was “diagnosed” quirky-but-serious when I was in Story Intensive. The Style Quiz and diagnosis is such a fun part of the course. I loved discovering writers I’d never gotten around to reading (George Saunders) and others I hadn’t heard of (Jessica Westhead). I did a deep dive study of “Commcomm” and came away awed and inspired. I think of this diagnosis as aspirational — I do love absurdity as a cloak for depth, and I have a ways to go to be able to really bring it. Just finished “There There” by Tommy Orange. It could be in this category. It’s probably in several of the categories – Orange is a unique writer, highly recommend. Lauren Groff, especially some of the stories in “Florida,” is also a kindred spirit.
I just finished Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and would add it to the list. I loved I am a Truck and have French Exit reserved 👊
Kafka of course and Kurt Vonnegut.