5 Tips How to Keep Your Writing Style Consistent and Unique
When our writing style isn’t consistent it can be very distracting to your reader.
Can you imagine reading a story only to see the writer write the same phrase many times but spell it differently? Seeing them use it correctly one moment but incorrectly another?
It may not bother you much as a reader, but as a writer, I think we wouldn’t want to distract our reader at all with such things.
Use the dash consistently.
One way that writers often become inconsistent with their style is with the – (dash).
Some examples:
- part-time
- back-to-back
- well-known
Using it like this is good and will definitely be a way to have a more unique writing style depending on what you decide to use it for. Just make sure that when you use it once continue to use it for that same phrase.
Don’t make it “back-to-back” in chapter one but then forget and make it “back to back” in chapter two.
Dialogue style.
There are many ways to style your dialogue. Once you choose the dialogue style you’re going to have in chapter one be sure that it stays the same in chapter two and so on.
Here’s an example:
Clara turned around and said, “I’m not going to the dance with you anymore.”
John stammered, “Bu-bu-bu-but.”
Clara didn’t let him finish, “I said no, John—No!”
Now let’s show how you could do the same dialogue but with some unique style changes:
Clara turned around and said, “I’m not going to the dance with you anymore.”
John stammered, “Bubububu—but.”
Clara didn’t allow him to finish, “I said no, Jonathan. No!”
Dashes and hyphens give a particularly different feel to how you see and read something. You can decide for yourself what style you like better, but just make sure you stay consistent with it.
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There isn’t much wrong or right here.
We aren’t talking about words that have a right and a wrong way, per se, but things that are more of a gray area.
For instance, do you use grey or gray?
It doesn’t really matter except for one thing, if you used grey in one sentence and then gray in another that would be strange and inconsistent. (One could argue that it’s your style not being consistent with things like this. In theory, that’s acceptable. In practice, it may become distracting, but you are most certainly welcome to try it out.)
Do you say “Z” or “Zed?”
Again, more of a gray area rather than correctness. Seems to be more of a cultural thing for English, but if you use it consistently it will make your writing style considerably different from others.
Use your style as a signature.
Your writing style should be your signature to the world. It should be hidden and found in the little details.
I don’t want to give away my style choices here (I haven’t even figured them all out yet and I’ve written 1 million + words in my career.)
You’ll change your writing style a bit over time but as you go you pick things up and decide to keep them because you see how unique they are to you and you like them.
Writing style is really about what you like and what you want to be seen using consistently. If people REALLY studied your writing they would be able to point out certain things.
For example: the Oxford comma.
The Oxford comma is apparently highly controversial depending on who you talk to. Is it “this, that, and those?” Or is it “this, that and those?”
This an example of something that is controversial enough that it’s no longer set in writing stone, and you can use it either way.
Can you tell which way I use it in my style?
🤷♂️
It would be mean to make you go through my archives just to figure it out.
I actually prefer to use both depending on the circumstances. (WHAAA?! Both?! How dare you!)
Yup, if I’m writing copy that I think “looks” better without it, I leave it out.
But if I’m writing a story, I will mostly put it in.
That’s one thing about my preferred writing style 😉
Pick your own! And make your writing style unique to you 🙂
Here’s a list of common words or phrases that you can use to make your writing more unique and different depending on how you like to write it:
- café or cafe
- Well- or well (according to AP it will always be well-, but you get to choose your preferred style) well-known, well-thought, well-balanced etc.
- Grey or gray
- Z or Zed
- Toward or towards
- In many cases, you will choose between hyphen or no hyphen.
- Two-fold
- Check-in
- Father-in-law
- Long-term
- Up-to-date
Also, keep in mind synonyms. Synonyms equip you with lots of unique choices to say the same thing, just using different words.
Keep a list of things that seem inconsistent on your first round of edits.
As you go through the first time catching spelling and grammar errors, take a few moments to also make a simple list of certain inconsistencies you notice.
Then after you’ve gone through once the next time you will be able to use the Command-F function on your keyboard to find those inconsistencies and easily make them all the same in one quick go through.
This will cut hours out of your editing process and help you not distract your reader from the story you are trying to share.
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That’s all for the moment.
Hope this helps!
Happy writing!
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