The Three Styles Challenge

I've been blogging on how to write in a more literary fashion.  I've heard about an art challenge to imitate the artistic styles of those one admires.  It's a common challenge found on YouTube.  However this challenge has been around for a very long time in multiple fields.  In art classes, I practiced emulating artistic styles of some of the greats as many have done before me.  I've also had been assigned essentially the same challenge but with writing styles.  If you want to learn how to write like the greats, it helps to consciously practice imitating those styles.  Assess what you like about that or those literary styles and do what they do. 

In high school, my English teacher ran out of time to work through both our Greek myth unit and our writing styles unit.  So she had us select three writing styles and three Greek myths.  We were to rewrite the Greek myths in those specific writing styles.  For "Cupid and Psyche," a tale related to the familiar "Beauty and the Beast," I imitated a specific children's book.  I took note of the repetition of the style, its simplicity, and its manner of addressing the reader and did likewise.  "Who was taken away by a mysterious being to become his wife?  Psyche!"  I took the Perseus myth with the Minotaur and rewrote it in the fashion of Joan D. Vinge's Psion.  I used the rough, angry first person prose of the sci fi juvenile dystopia and employed those techniques in the tale.  I took the intensely descriptive, almost purple, style of the Shannara series by Terry Brooks then rewrote yet a third tale.  This was a most fascinating writing exercise anyone can do.  Rick Riordan has made a career of rewriting myths of various origins with the Percy Jackson series and other series except he's invented his own style. 

You can do likewise, if only as an exercise.  Find a writing style you admire.  Does Bronte's Jane Eyre excite you?  Then study her Gothic romantic prose.  What about Austen's Pride and Prejudice?  Study her use of adjectives, adverbs, and dialogue.  Look at the description of each country ball.  Look at how she writes romantic scenes or the rejections of proposals.  What makes her style work?  Do you love Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo?  Look at how he builds suspense, how he illustrates his action scenes, and how the "count" plots revenge against those who destroyed his life.

Once you have done a careful analysis of the style of a literary author who impresses you, use those techniques to rewrite a Greek myth, a fairy tale, or some other simple story you know.  Tell the story of your first day in college in the manner of Shakespeare's Hamlet.  Retell yesterday's shopping trip in the manner of Twain or Hemingway or your favorite poet.  Tell about your most traumatic childhood experience through the dark and brooding tones of Poe.  This exercise may help you come up with something new or learn techniques to rewrite something that feels old and stale.  You obviously can't become that author.  But they're remembered for a reason.  What makes them tick?  What makes them memorable and beloved?  Figure it out and use those techniques for yourself. 

Loss at the Center of Literature

I've been exploring the idea of making your work, any writing you do, more literary.  Have you noticed that much of literature is about loss?  So many storylines start with the memory of past loss.  Main characters flash back to losses of children, parents, spouses, etc.  Alexandre Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo begins with and centers on a plot by his friends to take everything from him, and the rest of the story deals with what he does as a reaction to loss.  Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Taran Wanderer and so many other stories start with an orphan who is forced to find his/her way in the world because of the death of both parents.  Most novels or series of novels, such as Harry Potter, based on Joseph Cambell's hero's journey pattern feature a father's (or father figure's) death as does Shakespeare's Hamlet.  To Kill a Mockingbird, Emma, "Cinderella," and other tales have a single father making mistakes as he tries to raise children alone.  The evil stepmother is such a common trope in fairy tales and other literature because loss of spouses has been such a common experience.

If literature doesn't start with loss, it often centers around characters trying to avoid loss of some sort, whether it be through death or some other means.  Shakespearean tragedies are built on the theme of impending loss.  Adventure stories have main characters grappling with the risk of death on a regular basis.  Pride and Prejudice centers on fear of loss of home and livelihood. Jane Eyre's central theme of loss extends not just to her loss of parents and childhood friend but also to her loss of home after home, hope for the future after hope for the future.   Loss is at the center of what makes literature powerful because loss is at the center of human experience.  Past loss can also make a character more understandable.  If a character cares about or has cared about someone and has experienced or experiences a broken heart, we often feel for that character because we, too, have been through loss.  We see some piece of ourselves in those characters.

So it's time to consider your own characters.  What loss have they experienced before your novel begins?  How does that make her/him more understandable and empathetic to readers?  Remember that any presentation of loss should feel like it could have happened.  It should feel real to the reader, whether they've experienced that kind of loss or not.  If you simply say a person has lost a child, but yet that character doesn't behave as would someone who has lost a child, those readers who have lost a child will not like your story or character at all.  It will feel wrong, contrived.  Loss should have an impact on the character and, thereby, on the story.  

Is your character in danger of loss?  What is at stake through the story?  How does that play into or echo loss they've already experienced?  If nothing feels like it's at stake for your character, why should the reader care?  Look at loss as it is handled in your favorite literary works.  How can you handle this theme likewise?   Best of luck.