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Just a question for discussion. Not necessarily which authors you like the best, but whose writing style would you like to have?

For myself:

Robert Heinlein - his later books needed editing but he was always the master of clear, sharp prose and had an ability to drop you right into the story in just a few sentences

Neal Stephenson - I don't know if I want to have my prose read like his, but I love his ability to invent and pull a lot of various, seemingly unrelated, ideas together and show what's going on behind them.

I've always liked CJ Cherryh's writing style. She's excellent at portraying humans trying to adjust to alien societies. I like the social and anthropological details she puts in.

Lois McMaster Bujold is fun, too. She can be light and funny as well as heartwarming and romantic, all while she's writing good solid science fiction.

And then, Diana Gabaldon's stuff is just plain hot. It's less science and more bodice ripper, of course, but it certainly catches the readers' interest.

If I could write like F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Megan Whelan Turner, I would be the most happy girl on the planet. I highly, highly, recommend her The Queen's Thief series. It's a series for kids, but it's not a juvinile world AT ALL.

You know, if you truly want to pick up elements of a writer's style, copy down a substantial bit of his or her writing. You'll begin to notice what he or she is doing. (Don't cut and paste -- that won't work!) Also, READ IT OUT LOUD. You'll hear things you never see when you read. Ideally, then go on to a fine exercise in imitation like Distracted's wonderful Sincerest Form of Flattery series.

I sometimes envy poetic prose writers like Lucia Nevai or Italo Calvino or Marilynne Robinson, but not enough to really sit down and work at it. I'm in my fifties already. My style is my style.

Well, it's not in me to be a copy-cat. I'm far too stubborn. That said, I have to admit I like having something to aspire too.

Alelou wrote:You know, if you truly want to pick up elements of a writer's style, copy down a substantial bit of his or her writing. You'll begin to notice what he or she is doing. (Don't cut and paste -- that won't work!) Also, READ IT OUT LOUD. You'll hear things you never see when you read. Ideally, then go on to a fine exercise in imitation like Distracted's wonderful Sincerest Form of Flattery series.

Sounds like a good exercise, though I'm bummed about having to do actual work. I guess putting the book under my pillow won't help either, huh?

Probably not. But reading a hell of a lot couldn't hurt. That's fun, right?

I'd read my favorites even if it meant giving up food.

I have a short list of authors I look to, some Trek, some not-Trek, and to my delight I've discovered that some of them have non-fiction work out about writing. When I come across a copy of something like that, I waste no time snapping it up.

In the Trek novel universe, I particularly like A.C. Crispin and Christie Golden and I've made a point of reading their non-Trek work. Margaret Wander Bonanno, Keith R.A. DeCandido and Christopher Bennett are also good ones. I also check to see who writes my favorite episodes -- for example, the Reeves-Stevenses do a good job and I tend to be happy when I see Andre Bormanis' name. So I look for their work too.

Other writers that I look toward are Orson Scott Card (c'mon, I'm from North Carolina and I am Ender Wiggin), Nancy Kress and Kathy Tyers. Octavia Butler is a favorite as well, and there are times that nothing else but a good James Michener will satisfy me. I find that the writers I like to read the most are the writers I most like to emulate.

In the author's note to Strangers from the Sky, Margaret Wander Bonanno repeats advice to "steal from the best." That's essentially how I started out until I found my voice, and I still do it quite a bit. Very little writing is actually new no matter who does it; it's a matter of recombining things in fresh and unique ways.

Ah Christie Golden good times in the library where I worked as a young girl when I was on break. I really didn't enjoy her post-VOY work though. I mean B'Elanna running off leaving her newborn and her husband...

Hum. Let me think. I love Jane Austen's ability to capture biting social criticism while writing what was for her time quite modern romances. I'm a BIG Pride and Prejudice fan and I have so much admiration for what she did for fiction, both for women's writing and women writers, but for novels more generally. Austen's sentences tend to be overly long, though, which can look quite outdated now. I also love Evelyn Waugh for his scathing look at the English chattering classes, particularly Brideshead Revisited. I also like W. Somerset Maugham (he published at a similar time to Waugh, and F. Scott Fitzgerald too, if memory serves) - his Painted Veil was fantastic but quite sad. Both of those books are really well-written, Waugh in particular manages to craft characters that are as brittle and superficial as they are desperately longing and sad, which is a real skill.

I haven't read a whole lot of Ursula Le Guin's stuff but I what I've read I like. I just finished reading Nate Fick's book One Bullet Away, which is a memoir of his time in Afghanistan and Iraq and manages to combine economy, lucidity with supreme self-confidence. It certainly makes for compelling reading.

Finally, Daniel Woodrell is my favourite writer of the moment. He wrote Winters' Bone, a fantastic story set in the Ozark region of Missouri. Bleak story, bleak characters, fantastic prose. Each time I finish the book I want to go back and begin it again because the writing is just that good.

I think we're twins seperated at birth. Now about that ring...

Hahahaha! I need to post a pic, I know! I might dig out my photobucket account and link it to the announcement thread, so not to corrupt this thread!

I also forgot to add in my earlier post that I also like Karin Slaughter and early Patricia Cornwell and Ian Rankin. Cornwell's early Scarpetta books were particularly entertaining if you're into the forensic pathology/crime drama. Her new books IMO just aren't that good both in terms of plot or writing style. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of first-person narration simply because unless the character is engaging then it can easily degenerate into a whine/constant neurotic inner monologue. That said, the early Scarpetta books managed to stave off that problem, which is something that I have tried and failed to emulate many times.

Speaking of first person narration, the juvenile series "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins is surprisingly good. I started reading it because my daughter did and I'm finding it really hard to put down. This author really does have a knack for voicing a tough female teen character who's convincingly vulnerable. I like her POV character despite the fact that I honestly don't really like most teenage girls of my acquaintance, and yet the character feels real, almost as if she could be me. And she's such a tough kid that I think a lot of teenage boys could identify with her, too. She's not a whiny baby like Bella in the Twilight books. I'm looking forward to the movie for this one, though it will be sad and probably pretty bloody.

Dis You have got to read The Thief, The Queen Of Attolia, The King Of Attolia, and A Conspiracy Of Kings... You would love them!