Similar writing styles?

[Kantarii]

Deleted

 

[HandsInTheDark]

For those that write stories, when you read stories do you look for ones that share similarities with your writing style? Or, do you read stories that have a different writing style from your own?

I've never seen a story written in my style that I didn't write. If I found another story in my style I'd probably like it, based on the fact that I like my own stuff.

I have the opposite issue - if I read someone else's work - at least if it's got any characteristic flavor - I can imitate the author's "voice" very well, at least for a few hours afterwards. I can mimic style (which comes in useful when I want to lampoon someone's ideas.)

I've made a semi-deliberate attempt to write like Alistair MacLean over the years. As a kid I read everything of his I could get my hands on. He wrote vividly and I learned from that. And he knew when to mix in humor, some but not too much. Still very much a fan of his later work at least.

 

[sr71plt]

Sometimes when I'm reading a mainstream novel I find I'm picking up some of that style when I'm also writing a short story.

 

[Cruel2BKind]

I have a few turns of phrase that I think Stephen King would find suspiciously familiar if the universe ever convoluted itself in a way that he read my work.

I have almost all of his books and sometimes when I re-read them I wince. I don't even realize I'm doing it anymore.

 

[NotWise]

I'm sure that my writing style is fashioned after authors I've read and enjoyed. I don't look for them any more; they are in me. But then, I'm not talking about Lit authors. I'm talking about Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, D. H. Lawrence.

Fitzgerald in particular wrote images that are burned into my mind. I have a pair of yellow dress gloves because of a scene in one of his novels that I read while I was in high school 45 years ago.