Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [64]
Chapter 11
Matters of Style
In stating as fully as I could how things really were, it was often very difficult and I wrote awkwardly and the awkwardness is what they called my style. All mistakes and awkwardnesses are easy to see, and they called it style.
—Ernest Hemingway
I’ve often wondered, when contemplating the passage quoted above, whether or not the author wasn’t being a trifle disingenuous. We certainly regard Hemingway as a highly stylized writer. Passages from his works, taken out of context, are unmistakably his, and the Hemingway style is as inviting a target for the parodist as is the Bogart lisp for an impressionist. It’s hard to believe a man could develop a style at once so individualized and so influential without having the slightest suspicion of what he was doing.
Be that as it may, I have no quarrel with the implied message—i.e., that the best way to develop a style is to make every effort to write as naturally and honestly as possible. It is not intentionally mannered writing that adds up to style, or richly poetic paragraphs, or the frenetic pursuit of novel prose rhythms. The writer’s own style emerges when he makes no deliberate attempt to have any style at all. Through his efforts to create characters, describe settings, and tell a story, elements of his literary personality will fashion his style, imposing an individual stamp on his material.
There are a handful of writers we read as much for style as for content. John Updike is one example who comes quickly to mind. The manner in which he expresses himself is often interesting in and of itself. It is occasionally said of a particularly effective actor that one would gladly pay money to hear him read the telephone directory. Similarly, there are readers who would gladly read the phone book—if someone like Updike had written it.
The flip side of this sort of style is that it sometimes gets in the way of content in the sense that it blunts the impact of the narrative. Remember, fiction works upon us largely because we are able to choose to believe in its reality. Hence we care about the characters and how their problems are resolved. Just as a poor style gets in our way, making us constantly aware that we are reading a work of the imagination, so does an overly elaborate and refined style set up roadblocks to the voluntary suspension of our disbelief. From this standpoint, one may argue that the very best style is that which looks for all the world like no style at all.
Style, along with the various technical matters that come under that heading, is difficult for me to write about, very possibly because my own approach has always been instinctive rather than methodical. From my earliest beginnings as a writer, it was always a relatively easy matter for me to write smoothly. My prose rhythms and dialogue were good. Just as there are natural athletes, so was I—from the standpoint of technique, at least—a natural writer.
This gave me a considerable advantage in breaking into print. I can see now that a lot of my early pulp stories had rather little to recommend them in terms of plot and characterization, but the fact that they were relatively well-written in comparison to the efforts of other tyros got me sales I wouldn’t have had otherwise. But a smooth style in and of itself is no guarantee of true success. For years I was accustomed to a particular message in letters of rejection. “The author writes well,” my agent would be advised. “This book didn’t work for us, but we’d be very interested in seeing something else he’s written.” That sort of response is encouraging the first few times you receive it. When it becomes a common refrain, all it sparks is frustration.
I know several writers who were similarly gifted