Writing Steve/Tony Part X: Writing in Style
Sep. 17th, 2010 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tsukinofaeriiBecause writing style is so individual, this part is going to be very short not as short as I expected, and mostly contain tips for noting problems. Even Google doesn't seem to have much consensus about writing style, so I'm winging it. (flap flap)
Style is one of those things that you can't really learn, and no one else will ever do exactly the way you do. There's two forms of writing style that are going to affect you most: the whole story and the words themselves. The story style is, essentially, what you like to write. Do you like slow, introspective stories that are more about internal movement than action? Do you likeboy meets boy Steve meets Tony romance? Humor? Supernatural? Straightforward or mind-screws? This sort of thing only emerges over several stories, and it's extremely fluid, when it exists at all. Some people don't have a strong preference for story type. Others become really attached to some plots or tropes, and bend them a thousand different ways. For example, we all know what Mark Millar likes to write (hint: it goes Boom).
Over long fics, style can be a serious concern. During the course of a few months or a year, style can change and grow dramatically. Concentrating on keeping it steady in a single piece takes effort, but it can also make the story flow more smoothly for the reader. In a shorter fic, playing with different styles can be a fun exercise, and yield some very interesting results. Especially important in longer fics is to keep an extra close eye on your style if it's one you're not familiar with yet.
Word choice is tougher. A lot of people tend to develop one style and stick with it, but it can vary from fic to fic too, sometimes deliberately and sometimes not. Sentence structure and scene formatting draw it together into a coherent whole.
Sentence Structure
In sentence and word choices, writing style has a lot to do with tone and structure. Long sentences read slowly, with a more deliberate pacing, while shorter sentences have a more frenetic feel. This can be varied in different situations, to change the nature of a scene, but many people have a "base" that they start from. For myself, I like long, complex sentences. I frequently abuse my emdashes (—) and my semi-colons, to say nothing of my commas and linking verbs. (How many people are now rereading that sentence, I wonder?) This can make my fic read slowly, even when it really shouldn't. Compare:
—ly words: Quickly. Slowly. Adoringly. These words tend to be used as a substitute for action. Ideally, we shouldn't need them (although we often do). The was the sentence is formed and the action should tell the reader how an action was preformed. Not Steve quickly turned and brought up his shield, but instead Steve whirled and brought up his shield. Sometimes, a description isn't even needed. If Tony licks his lips, "sexily" is implied. It is, after all, Tony.
Repeated words: This one has a lot to do with "feel", and it can sometimes take a beta to catch it (for me, at least). When a word is used repeatedly in close proximity, it starts to seem important. When that word is something like "cucumber", the effect can be a bit odd. "Tony screamed as the bomb went off. Civilians scattered, screaming in terror. Shrapnel from the blast screamed through the air." (Okay, that was a bad example. Forgive?) On the other hand, if the word is important, this is an excellent way to emphasize it.
Sentence patterns: This operates the same way as the repeated words above—it draws the reader's attention, and not always in a good way. I think the foremost contender for "sneaky" here is the SVO pattern. "Steve looked up. Tony grabbed his toolkit. They ran to the Quinjet." It becomes more noticeable when the same noun is used. Another pattern to watch out for is the way clauses are joined. If "Tony does X, and then does Y" a lot, you may want to switch up your sentence structure. (I do this a lot.)
Useless verbs: Was/Were/Are. These words slow down a sentence, and often unnecessarily. Every word in a sentence adds weight. When you want your sentences to be snappy, even an extra word is too much. "Steve was running to the Tower" versus "Steve ran to the Tower". I suggest cutting these whenever you're not using a perfect tense.
Emdash and semicolon: Emdashes and semicolons work in similar ways—they combine sentences. Where a comma links clauses, the parts separated by a semi-color or emdash could be used as their own sentence. Speaking for myself, I use a semi-colon when breaking the sentence apart would read too quickly, and I use an emdash to interject an idea that could otherwise stand on its own. Emdashes emphasize, semi-colons complement. You may not use them the same way, but they can be useful tools in the warchest of words.
Semicolon: She looked different; it took Pepper a moment to pin-point how.
Emdash: The idea of deliberately hurting someone else was abhorrent—it just felt all wrong.
Speak to Me
Dialog, for many people, is the easiest part of writing. It's fun, it moves easily, and there's all sorts of fun to be had with it. Stylistically speaking, dialog shouldn't reflect the personal style of the author much, since it's supposed to reflect the character. The bleed through happens mostly in a situational context.
People seldom sit around doing nothing but talking. Generally, there are other things happening around them, drinks being held, hands and feet to move, expressions being made,throes of passion ignited and so on. When part of a story is just dialog, this is called Floating Head Syndrome. Quite literally, the only thing the reader has to judge their actions by is the dialog, which can lead to some confusion and even the dreaded... boredom. (Thunder crash)
Luckily, fixing this is easy. Just note some action other than the speech, and you're generally good to go. In some situations, you may even want to use Floating Head Syndrome. If, for example, Tony is calling Steve while piloting the armor over the Atlantic, there's really not much need to keep going with description once everything's been established.
More annoying to fix are the tags.
Dialog tags are the little markers that denote speaker. "Give up," Tony said. "I have you beat." Having multiple people of the same gender in a fic can be confusing, but it's simple enough to replace some pronouns with names. Gnashing your teeth begins with the various ways to say that a character has spoken.
Show it off
I think I went over this once before, but one of the rules that gets bandied about a lot is to show, don't tell. No one wants to hear how you have a rocket-powered dinosaur robot on roller skates. You've got to bring it to class! (There's even a trope index for this.)
In writing, this shows up by short-cutting the narrative. Instead of writing about individuals acts, or writing out dialog, the reader is told what happened and expected to imagine the details for themselves. This short changes the story by making it hard for the reader to immerse themselves. A strong narrative style reserves moments of "telling" for only the truly unimportant and uninteresting moments. Compare:
Another way this shows up is in using action, dialog and scene to establish facts. No one needs to be told that Tony is a billionaire industrialist playboy genius. We see it every time he makes a decision for his company, creates some incredibly high-tech armor or seducespeople Steve. Informed Ability even has its own trope. This is when we're told, either through narration or through other characters, that a character has a trait that is somehow never displayed in the text. This is the equivalent of everything touting Steve as a sex magnet for six hundred pages, but Steve never gets laid. Not even by Tony, who is the Staples of Marvel.
Backstory can make this a wee bit tricky. It's not happening in real time, and it might not be important enough to use for a flashback. Still, backstory fleshes out the characters, so it's hardly wasted space. One trick to try using is to show as much detail as possible. Instead of having the narration state that Steve once had an embarrassing incident with lime Jell-O, show him actively avoiding the stuff, and maybe one or two people looking knowing as he blushes his way out of a Jello-o Convention.
Fun and Games
Can't speak for everyone else, (how often do I say that? That's it. From now on, I speak for everyone ever), but deviating from my usual writing style is a ton of fun. Here's some things that I don't see very much in fandom, that someone might enjoy playing with:
Non-linear plot: This is when the timeline jumps around. Maybe the book starts at the middle, and we learn the pre-book events in bits and flashes. Or maybe the story is told backwards.
Unreliable narrator: Maybe the narrator just doesn't know the whole story, or perhaps the narrator is just screwing with your head (House of Leaves, anyone?). Either way, the narrator, for whatever reason, cannot be trusted.
Pastiche: Imitation is said to be the finest form of flattery, and also damned hard. It can be fun, very fun, to attempt to write in someone else's style, when that style is distinctive and easily identifiable. Steve/Tony doesn't have very many pastiche options without looking to crossover. (Maybe Stan Lee?) That being said, crossovers and fusions are always an option (Sherlock Holmes, anyone?), and sometimes adopting a well-known style can add a quirky dash of fun to a fic.
If you're going to attempt a pastiche style, the best way to prepare is to read read read. Read that author until your eyes bleed and you are catching yourself speaking in their style. Read until the words flow. Read until the format of their usual story stretches out before you like a nude model for a painting. Read until I run out of sentences starting with "read", and the Old Spice Man runs out of awesome. (NEVAH HAPPEN.)
When doing a pastiche, I sincerely recommend not skimping on the post-fic work. This is something you'll want to be able to read over with fresh eyes at least once. The more different the style is from your usual writing, the more fiddling it's probably going to need. (Unless you're just talented that way. In which case, I am horribly jealous.)
That does it for my paltry attempt at explaining style. D: Plz not to be hating me? Next up, scene elements!
Style is one of those things that you can't really learn, and no one else will ever do exactly the way you do. There's two forms of writing style that are going to affect you most: the whole story and the words themselves. The story style is, essentially, what you like to write. Do you like slow, introspective stories that are more about internal movement than action? Do you like
Over long fics, style can be a serious concern. During the course of a few months or a year, style can change and grow dramatically. Concentrating on keeping it steady in a single piece takes effort, but it can also make the story flow more smoothly for the reader. In a shorter fic, playing with different styles can be a fun exercise, and yield some very interesting results. Especially important in longer fics is to keep an extra close eye on your style if it's one you're not familiar with yet.
Word choice is tougher. A lot of people tend to develop one style and stick with it, but it can vary from fic to fic too, sometimes deliberately and sometimes not. Sentence structure and scene formatting draw it together into a coherent whole.
In sentence and word choices, writing style has a lot to do with tone and structure. Long sentences read slowly, with a more deliberate pacing, while shorter sentences have a more frenetic feel. This can be varied in different situations, to change the nature of a scene, but many people have a "base" that they start from. For myself, I like long, complex sentences. I frequently abuse my emdashes (—) and my semi-colons, to say nothing of my commas and linking verbs. (How many people are now rereading that sentence, I wonder?) This can make my fic read slowly, even when it really shouldn't. Compare:
Iron Man came at him, feet dragging and fists swinging. Steve ducked under the blow, bringing his shield up and into Tony's chestplate. Metal cracked as Tony staggered back, too late to stop the blow from denting his armor. "Come on!" Steve yelled, blocking Tony from regaining his balance with a blow to the hip. "Fight it! Don't let him control you!"to:
Iron Man stumbled forward, fists up, taking a swing at Steve's head. It was so slow that Steve had plenty of time to duck in close. He swung his shield upward, slamming it into Tony's ribs. Metal groaned as the armor cracked under the impact. Tony staggered back. "Come on!" Steve yelled. A blow to hi hip pushed Tony even farther off balance. "Fight it! Don't let him control you!"With the process of developing a unique style comes some patterns and word-use that it's worth noting. They can slow down the story, or sometimes simply distract the reader. Here's some of the contenders I tend to note:
—ly words: Quickly. Slowly. Adoringly. These words tend to be used as a substitute for action. Ideally, we shouldn't need them (although we often do). The was the sentence is formed and the action should tell the reader how an action was preformed. Not Steve quickly turned and brought up his shield, but instead Steve whirled and brought up his shield. Sometimes, a description isn't even needed. If Tony licks his lips, "sexily" is implied. It is, after all, Tony.
Repeated words: This one has a lot to do with "feel", and it can sometimes take a beta to catch it (for me, at least). When a word is used repeatedly in close proximity, it starts to seem important. When that word is something like "cucumber", the effect can be a bit odd. "Tony screamed as the bomb went off. Civilians scattered, screaming in terror. Shrapnel from the blast screamed through the air." (Okay, that was a bad example. Forgive?) On the other hand, if the word is important, this is an excellent way to emphasize it.
Sentence patterns: This operates the same way as the repeated words above—it draws the reader's attention, and not always in a good way. I think the foremost contender for "sneaky" here is the SVO pattern. "Steve looked up. Tony grabbed his toolkit. They ran to the Quinjet." It becomes more noticeable when the same noun is used. Another pattern to watch out for is the way clauses are joined. If "Tony does X, and then does Y" a lot, you may want to switch up your sentence structure. (I do this a lot.)
Useless verbs: Was/Were/Are. These words slow down a sentence, and often unnecessarily. Every word in a sentence adds weight. When you want your sentences to be snappy, even an extra word is too much. "Steve was running to the Tower" versus "Steve ran to the Tower". I suggest cutting these whenever you're not using a perfect tense.
Emdash and semicolon: Emdashes and semicolons work in similar ways—they combine sentences. Where a comma links clauses, the parts separated by a semi-color or emdash could be used as their own sentence. Speaking for myself, I use a semi-colon when breaking the sentence apart would read too quickly, and I use an emdash to interject an idea that could otherwise stand on its own. Emdashes emphasize, semi-colons complement. You may not use them the same way, but they can be useful tools in the warchest of words.
Semicolon: She looked different; it took Pepper a moment to pin-point how.
Emdash: The idea of deliberately hurting someone else was abhorrent—it just felt all wrong.
Dialog, for many people, is the easiest part of writing. It's fun, it moves easily, and there's all sorts of fun to be had with it. Stylistically speaking, dialog shouldn't reflect the personal style of the author much, since it's supposed to reflect the character. The bleed through happens mostly in a situational context.
People seldom sit around doing nothing but talking. Generally, there are other things happening around them, drinks being held, hands and feet to move, expressions being made,
Luckily, fixing this is easy. Just note some action other than the speech, and you're generally good to go. In some situations, you may even want to use Floating Head Syndrome. If, for example, Tony is calling Steve while piloting the armor over the Atlantic, there's really not much need to keep going with description once everything's been established.
More annoying to fix are the tags.
Dialog tags are the little markers that denote speaker. "Give up," Tony said. "I have you beat." Having multiple people of the same gender in a fic can be confusing, but it's simple enough to replace some pronouns with names. Gnashing your teeth begins with the various ways to say that a character has spoken.
Tony sprawled on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. "Why is my ceiling blue? I never noticed before."As you can see, a pattern forms very quickly. One way to break it up is to skip the variations of "said" and describe other actions now and again. If you note an action after a line of dialog, that dialog is immediately attributed to the subject of the next sentence. It erases the repetition, and helps avoid Floating Head Syndrome.
"Should I be insulted that you're paying more attention to the ceiling than to me?" Steve asked as he kicked off his shoes.
"Maybe if you tried to get my attention..." Tony commented, grinning.
Tony sprawled on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. "Why is my ceiling blue? I never noticed before."It gives itself readily to snappy banter, without necessarily falling into repeated words or sentence patterns.
"Should I be insulted that you're paying more attention to the ceiling than to me?" Steve toed off his shoes, unbuttoning his shirt as he did so.
"Maybe if you tried to get my attention..." Tony leered.
I think I went over this once before, but one of the rules that gets bandied about a lot is to show, don't tell. No one wants to hear how you have a rocket-powered dinosaur robot on roller skates. You've got to bring it to class! (There's even a trope index for this.)
In writing, this shows up by short-cutting the narrative. Instead of writing about individuals acts, or writing out dialog, the reader is told what happened and expected to imagine the details for themselves. This short changes the story by making it hard for the reader to immerse themselves. A strong narrative style reserves moments of "telling" for only the truly unimportant and uninteresting moments. Compare:
Tony and Steve bickered casually as they walked through the park. It was a gorgeous autumn day, and they'd enjoyed spending it together, even if Steve had been over the top with his Noble Hero schtick.to:
"Ducks, Steve? Really?" Tony punched Steve in the shoulder as they walked along. He had to take four steps for every three of Steve's, but the math worked out well enough to keep them mostly even. "Just when I think you can't get any more stereotypical..."The two tell the exact same story, but the second is much more detailed and (if I may say so myself) much more interesting to read.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Steve nudged a pile of leaves with his toe. They scattered in a whirl of golds, reds and browns. The weather was just crisp enough that the trees had started turning, but it wasn't really chilly yet. Never the less, fall had definitely arrived.
"It means that you stopped traffic in the middle of rush hour." Even though his tone was dry, Tony couldn't stop smiling. The image of Steve shepherding along a line of ducklings would stay with him for a long time. He just hoped someone had caught it on a camera. "You're like the ultimate example of knightly conduct. If you ever learn to joust, you'll have every cliché in the book down."
Steve wrinkled his nose in a way Tony would never admit was adorable and laughed. "I'll just have to borrow your armor, won't I?"
Another way this shows up is in using action, dialog and scene to establish facts. No one needs to be told that Tony is a billionaire industrialist playboy genius. We see it every time he makes a decision for his company, creates some incredibly high-tech armor or seduces
Backstory can make this a wee bit tricky. It's not happening in real time, and it might not be important enough to use for a flashback. Still, backstory fleshes out the characters, so it's hardly wasted space. One trick to try using is to show as much detail as possible. Instead of having the narration state that Steve once had an embarrassing incident with lime Jell-O, show him actively avoiding the stuff, and maybe one or two people looking knowing as he blushes his way out of a Jello-o Convention.
Can't speak for everyone else, (how often do I say that? That's it. From now on, I speak for everyone ever), but deviating from my usual writing style is a ton of fun. Here's some things that I don't see very much in fandom, that someone might enjoy playing with:
Non-linear plot: This is when the timeline jumps around. Maybe the book starts at the middle, and we learn the pre-book events in bits and flashes. Or maybe the story is told backwards.
Unreliable narrator: Maybe the narrator just doesn't know the whole story, or perhaps the narrator is just screwing with your head (House of Leaves, anyone?). Either way, the narrator, for whatever reason, cannot be trusted.
Pastiche: Imitation is said to be the finest form of flattery, and also damned hard. It can be fun, very fun, to attempt to write in someone else's style, when that style is distinctive and easily identifiable. Steve/Tony doesn't have very many pastiche options without looking to crossover. (Maybe Stan Lee?) That being said, crossovers and fusions are always an option (Sherlock Holmes, anyone?), and sometimes adopting a well-known style can add a quirky dash of fun to a fic.
If you're going to attempt a pastiche style, the best way to prepare is to read read read. Read that author until your eyes bleed and you are catching yourself speaking in their style. Read until the words flow. Read until the format of their usual story stretches out before you like a nude model for a painting. Read until I run out of sentences starting with "read", and the Old Spice Man runs out of awesome. (NEVAH HAPPEN.)
When doing a pastiche, I sincerely recommend not skimping on the post-fic work. This is something you'll want to be able to read over with fresh eyes at least once. The more different the style is from your usual writing, the more fiddling it's probably going to need. (Unless you're just talented that way. In which case, I am horribly jealous.)
That does it for my paltry attempt at explaining style. D: Plz not to be hating me? Next up, scene elements!