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Voice vs Writing Style

The 4 Main Types of Writing Styles

Which primary writing style is best for you and your book, the 4 main types of writing styles (& how to choose the one you need).

What writing style should you use for your nonfiction book ?

All of them.

In this post, I’ll explain:

the difference between voice and writing style
what the 4 common types of writing styles are
what each one is for
how to choose a primary style for your book
when and how to use them in your writing process

Most importantly, I’ll show you how to use each style to hold your readers’ attention and get your audience talking about your book.

The difference between voice and writing style

Authors connect to their readers through a combination of voice and writing style.

Your voice is about how you speak and think. It’s about the words you use and the patterns in your writing.

Your voice is unique to you.

Your writing style is about how you’re approaching the reader at any given moment:

persuasive writing persuades the reader
expository writing explains things to the reader
narrative writing tells the reader a story
descriptive writing describes things to the reader

But that isn’t the whole picture.

Sometimes the best way to explain something is to tell a story that illustrates your point.

And sometimes the best way to persuade your readers is to explain the facts.

That’s why nonfiction books often use all 4 writing styles together.

As you read through each of the 4 different writing styles below, remember that the point isn’t to pick just one.

It’s to understand when and how to use each of them to give your readers the most value and make your book the best it can be.

1. Persuasive writing style

Let’s say I wanted to write a book about the value of letting employees bring their dogs to work.

One way to convince business leaders to adopt this idea is to use a persuasive writing style.

Here’s an example:

You’d never believe how much having a few dogs around the office can transform an entire organization. Not until you’ve seen it happen. Sure, sick days drop dramatically. And, yes, turnover plummets to almost nil. But the true benefits of a canine-friendly company are much harder to measure, and much more profound.

Like most examples of persuasive writing, this passage makes a direct appeal to the reader.

It mentions a few benefits but doesn’t offer any hard facts. There are no numbers or percentages. In fact, it suggests that the best benefits are hard to measure.

This style of writing works well for appealing to the reader on an emotional level, especially when you’re writing about intangibles.

It also works well for short segments of introductory writing that are followed up by hard facts.

2. Narrative writing style

People love stories. In fact, we’re hard-wired to pay attention to them.

That’s why they work so well as hooks, even in nonfiction.

Especially in nonfiction.

It’s all too easy to bore a reader with:

lists of disconnected facts
more explanation than they need
examples they can’t relate to

Stories bridge those gaps. They can:

connect facts
teach without explaining
help readers see themselves in your book

The narrative writing style is great for grabbing a reader’s attention:

In 2007, I met the dog that would save my life.

Even if your book isn’t filled with examples of narrative writing from cover to cover, including a few stories will go a long way toward keeping your readers interested.

3. Descriptive writing style

A descriptive writing style takes narrative writing a step further.

People often associate descriptive writing with flowery, poetic phrases, but strong descriptive writing is just the opposite.

In 2007, I met the dog that would save my life, but you would never have guessed that from looking at it. It was the ugliest dog I had ever seen. Imagine sculpting a small, hairless gargoyle; popping its eyes halfway out of its head; and then smashing its face in. Whatever that looks like in your head, imagine it about 6 times uglier, and you’ll be pretty close. But for every ounce of cute that dog was missing, it had a whole ton of heart.

Descriptive writing is a lot like salt. A little bit goes a long way.

Use descriptive writing to set the scene and add some flavor to your writing, but be careful not to overuse it.

It’s especially good for adding humor or making certain examples stick in readers’ minds.

4. Expository writing style

Compared to the other styles of writing, you might expect expository writing to be limited to scientific journals and instruction manuals—but that’s not true at all.

Expository writing follows up persuasive and narrative writing with hard facts, adding logical power to your stories and examples.

You might hook your reader with a story and then provide a bullet-point list of the key things you learned from that experience.

Or you might start a chapter with an emotional appeal and follow that up with 7 measurable statistics that support your point of view.

Here’s an example of expository writing:

When you’re ready to draft your dog-friendly policy, start by canvassing your employees. Make sure no one has any canine allergies or phobias. If you discover that someone on your staff is dog-averse, see if you can address the issue by separating dog-friendly sections of your workplace from other dog-free zones.

The expository style is a direct, effective way to give your reader important information or instructions.

It doesn’t usually make the best hook, but there are exceptions to every rule.

A shocking statistic, for example, can grab a reader’s attention just as well as any story.

Most nonfiction books use all of these styles in combination.

For example, in a single chapter, you might:

hook your reader with a story (narrative)
add sensory details to make the story memorable (descriptive)
follow up with an emotional appeal (persuasive)
list 4 bullet-point statistics that support your argument (expository)
humanize those statistics with another story (narrative)
end the chapter with steps readers can take (expository)

That’s why it’s important to be familiar with all 4 writing styles.

But how much you use each method will depend on a combination of 2 things:

what you’re most comfortable with
what your book needs to be effective in solving your reader’s problem

Start with the one that’s easiest for you to write

It’s extremely unlikely for a new Author to start out equally comfortable with all 4 different types of writing styles.

If you’ve read a lot of academic writing or technical writing, you’re probably most comfortable with an expository style. That’s the one that will feel most familiar.

If you’ve read a lot of creative writing, then you might be more comfortable working with a narrative style.

When you’re writing your first draft, the most important thing you can do is just get it all down.

Your primary, go-to style should be the one that’s most comfortable for you.

Don’t let yourself get bogged down in the details of style choice. Just write your first draft in any way that helps you get all your ideas onto the page.

Start with a solid outline and writing plan so you know what you’re trying to share with your readers, but draft those ideas in whatever way works best for you.

Then edit to make your writing clear and compelling

Every chapter should start with a hook that grabs the reader’s attention.

This can be a compelling story or a surprising fact or statistic. It can be an unexpected idea that makes the reader want to know more.

There are NO rules about which writing style is the best way to do this.

The same book could easily use all 4 styles as hooks in 4 consecutive chapters. Or it might use the same style every time.

Open Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run to just about any page, and you’ll find yourself in the middle of a story.

It might be a story about what he was investigating, or it might be a story about the investigation itself. Either way, he uses the narrative style almost exclusively.

This is fairly common with investigative reporters and books based on investigative reporting.

A how-to book, on the other hand, will depend heavily on expository writing to provide step-by-step instructions.

If your book really breaks the mold of traditional thinking, you might need a combination of narrative, persuasive, and expository writing to convince readers that their old way of thinking is wrong.

Narrative writing provides concrete examples of your ideas in action
Persuasive writing asks provocative questions that lead your readers down a new path
Expository writing follows up with facts, statistics, and instructions to implement your ground-breaking solutions

Once you have all your ideas down in a complete draft, you can start to edit your own work and decide what’s working and what isn’t.

You might add a short story to illustrate a point. Or you might decide a chapter needs more explanation to help readers adapt a solution to their own situation.

Consider each of the 4 styles and decide what each section needs to best serve the reader and hold their interest.

A note on memoirs

Memoirs will naturally gravitate toward narrative and descriptive styles, but that doesn’t mean those are the only styles they’ll need.

Even in the middle of a story, you might want to persuade your readers of certain key truths. Or you might need to explain how something works so they can understand what your team was up against in making a critical decision.

There isn’t always a sharp line between these categories, and there are no hard and fast rules about how and when to use them.

In fact, here’s the only rule when it comes to writing styles:

You should never feel boxed in by writing styles, and they should never limit you or your book.

The ONLY point of these different styles of writing is to help you think more deeply about how to communicate with your readers to solve their problem.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, understanding the 4 writing styles: how to identify and use them.

General Education

A piece’s writing style can help you figure out what kind of writing it is, what its purpose is, and how the author’s voice is unique. With so many different types of writing, you may think it’s difficult to figure out the specific writing style of a piece or you'll need to search through a long list of writing styles.

However, there are actually just four main types of writing styles, and together they cover practically all the writing you see, from textbooks to novels, to billboards and more. Whether you’re studying writing styles for class or trying to develop your own writing style and looking for information, we’ve got you covered.

In this guide, we explain the four styles of writing, provide examples for each one, go over the one thing you need to know to identify writing style, and give tips to help you develop your own unique style of writing.

The 4 Types of Writing

There are four main different styles of writing. We discuss each of them below, list where you’re likely to see them, and include an example so you can see for yourself what each of the writing styles looks like.

Writers who use the narrative style are telling a story with a plot and characters. It’s the most common writing style for fiction, although nonfiction can also be narrative writing as long as its focus is on characters, what they do, and what happens to them.

Common Places You’d See Narrative Writing

Biography or autobiography
Short stories
Journals or diaries

“We had luncheon in the dining-room, darkened too against the heat, and drank down nervous gayety with the cold ale. ‘What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?’ cried Daisy, ‘and the day after that, and the next thirty years?’ ‘Don’t be morbid,’ Jordan said. ‘Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.’ ‘But it’s so hot,’ insisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, ‘and everything’s so confused. Let’s all go to town!’ - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

You can quickly tell that this passage from the novel The Great Gatsby is an example of narrative writing because it has the two key traits: characters and a plot. The group is discussing eating and drinking while trying to decide what to do for the rest of the day.

As in this example, narrative writing often has extended dialogue scenes since the dialogue is used to move the plot along and give readers greater insight into the characters.

Writers use the expository style when they are trying to explain a concept. Expository writing is fact-based and doesn’t include the author’s opinions or background. It’s basically giving facts from the writer to the reader.

Common Places You’d See Expository Writing

Newspaper articles
Academic journals
Business memos
Manuals for electronics
How-to books and articles

“The 1995/1996 reintroduction of gray wolves (Canis lupus) into Yellowstone National Park after a 70 year absence has allowed for studies of tri-trophic cascades involving wolves, elk (Cervus elaphus), and plant species such as aspen (Populus tremuloides), cottonwoods (Populus spp.), and willows (Salix spp.). To investigate the status of this cascade, in September of 2010 we repeated an earlier survey of aspen and measured browsing and heights of young aspen in 97 stands along four streams in the Lamar River catchment of the park’s northern winter range. We found that browsing on the five tallest young aspen in each stand decreased from 100% of all measured leaders in 1998 to means of <25% in the uplands and <20% in riparian areas by 2010. Correspondingly, aspen recruitment (i.e., growth of seedlings/sprouts above the browse level of ungulates) increased as browsing decreased over time in these same stands.” -”Trophic cascades in Yellowstone: The first 15 years after wolf reintroduction” by William J. Ripple and Robert L. Beschta

This abstract from an academic journal article is clearly expository because it only focuses on facts. The authors aren’t giving their opinion of wolves of Yellowstone, they’re not telling a story about the wolves, and the only descriptions are number of trees, streams, etc. so readers can understand the study better.

Because expository writing is focused on facts, without any unnecessary details or stories, the writing can sometimes feel dense and dry to read.

Descriptive

Descriptive writing is, as you may guess, when the author describes something. The writer could be describing a place, person, or an object, but descriptive writing will always include lots of details so the reader can get a clear and complete idea of what is being written about.

Common Places You’d See Descriptive Writing

Fiction passages that describe something

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or eat: it was a hobbit hole and that means comfort. It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted...” - The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

This is the opening passage of the novel The Hobbit . While The Hobbit is primarily an example of narrative writing, since it explores the adventures of the hobbit and his companions, this scene is definitely descriptive. There is no plot or action going on in this passage; the point is to explain to readers exactly what the hobbit’s home looks like so they can get a clear picture of it while they read. There are lots of details, including the color of the door and exactly where the doorknob is placed.

You won’t often find long pieces of writing that are purely descriptive writing, since they’d be pretty boring to read (nothing would happen in them), instead many pieces of writing, including The Hobbit , will primarily be one of the other writing styles with some descriptive writing passages scattered throughout.

When you’re trying to persuade the reader to think a certain way or do a certain thing, you’ll use persuasive writing to try to convince them. Your end goal could be to get the reader to purchase something you’re selling, give you a job, give an acquaintance of yours a job, or simply agree with your opinion on a topic.

Common Places You’d See Persuasive Writing

Advertisements
Cover letters
Opinion articles/letters to the editor
Letters of recommendation
Reviews of books/movies/restaurants etc.
Letter to a politician

“What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ - “This was their finest hour” by Winston Churchill

In this excerpt from his famous “Their finest hour” speech, Prime Minister Winston Churchill is clearing trying to convince his audience to see his viewpoint, and he lays out the actions he thinks they should take. In this case, Churchill is speaking to the House of Commons (knowing many other British people would also hear the speech), and he’s trying to prepare the British for the coming war and convince them how important it is to fight.

He emphasizes how important the fight will be (“Upon this battle depends the survival of the Christian civilization.” and clearly spells out what he thinks his audience should do (“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties…”).

Common Writing Styles to Know

Each of the four main types of writing styles has multiple subsets of styles within it. Here are nine of the most common and important types of writing you’ll see.

Narrative Writing

Character voice.

Character voice is a common writing style in novels. Instead of having an unknown narrator, the audience knows who is telling the story. This first-person narrator can help the reader relate more both to the narrator and the storyline since knowing who is telling a story can help the reader feel more connected to it. Sometimes the narrator is completely truthful in telling what happens, while other times they are an unreliable narrator and will mislead or outright lie to readers to make themselves look better.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Scout is the narrator) and The Hunger Games (Katniss is the narrator) are two examples of this writing style.

Stream-of-Consciousness

This writing style attempts to emulate the thought process of the character. Instead of only writing about what the character says or does, stream-of-consciousness will include all or most of the characters thoughts, even if they jump from one topic to another randomly or include incomplete thoughts.

For example, rather than writing “I decided to take a walk to the ice cream shop,” an author using the stream-of-consciousness writing style could write, “It’s pretty hot out, and I feel like I should eat something, but I’m not really that hungry. I wonder if we have leftovers of the burgers Mom made last night? Is Mom staying late at work tonight? I can’t remember if she said. Ice cream would be a good choice, and not too filling. I can’t drive there though because my car is still in for repairs. Why is the repair shop taking so long? I should have listened when David said to check for reviews online before choosing a place. I should text David later to see how he is. He’ll think I’m mad at him if I don’t. I guess I’ll just have to walk to the shop.”

James Joyce and William Faulkner are two of the most well-known writers to have regularly used the stream-of-consciousness writing style.

Epistolary writing uses a series of documents, such as letters, diary entries, newspaper articles, or even text messages to tell a story. They don’t have a narrator, there’s just whoever purportedly gathered the documents together. This writing style can provide different points of view because a different person can be the author of each document.

Well-known examples of epistolary writing include the novels Dracula (written as a series of letters, newspaper articles, and diary entries) and Frankenstein (written as a series of letters).

Expository Writing

You’ll find this style in textbooks or academic journal articles. It’ll focus on teaching a topic or discussing an experiment, be heavy on facts, and include any sources it cited to get the information. Academic writing often assumes some previous knowledge of the topic and is more focused on providing information than being entertaining, which can make it difficult to read and understand at times.

Business writing refers to the writing done in a workplace. It can include reports, memos, and press releases. Business writing typically has a formal tone and standard formatting rules. Because employees are presumably very busy at work, business writing is very concise and to the point, without any additional flourishes intended to make the writing more interesting.

You’ll see this writing style most commonly in newspaper articles. It focuses on giving the facts in a concise, clear, and easy-to-understand way. Journalists often try to balance covering all the key facts, keeping their articles brief, and making the audience interested in the story.

This writing style is used to give information to people in a specific field, such as an explanation of a new computer programming system to people who work in software, a description of how to install pipes within a house for plumbers, or a guide to new gene modifications for microbiologists.

Technical writing is highly specialized for a certain occupational field. It assumes a high level of knowledge on the topic, and it focuses on sharing large amounts of information with the reader. If you’re not in that field, technical writing can be nearly impossible to understand because of the jargon and references to topics and facts you likely don’t know.

Descriptive Writing

Poetry is one of the most challenging styles of writing to define since it can come in many forms. In general, poems use rhythmic language and careful word choice to express an idea. A poem can be an example of descriptive writing or narrative writing, depending on whether it’s describing something or telling a story. Poetry doesn’t need to rhyme, and it often won’t follow standard grammatical or structural rules. Line breaks can, and often do, occur in the middle of sentences.

Persuasive Writing

Copywriting.

Copywriting is writing that is done for advertising or marketing purposes. It’s attempting to get the reader to buy whatever the writer is trying to sell. Examples of copywriting include catalogs, billboards, ads in newspapers or magazines, and social media ads.

In an attempt to get the reader to spend their money, copywriters may use techniques such as descriptive language (“This vanilla was harvested from the lush and exotic island of Madagascar"), exciting language (Stop what you’re doing and learn about this new product that will transform your life!”) and exaggeration (“This is the best cup of coffee you will ever taste!”).

Opinion

People write opinion pieces for the purpose of stating their beliefs on a certain topic and to try to get readers to agree with them. You can see opinion pieces in newspaper opinion sections, certain blog posts, and some social media posts. The quality of opinion writing can vary widely. Some papers or sites will only publish opinion pieces if all the facts in them can be backed up by evidence, but other opinion pieces, especially those that are self-published online, don't go through any fact-checking process and can include inaccuracies and misinformation.

What If You’re Unsure of a Work’s Writing Style?

If you’re reading a piece of writing and are unsure of its main writing style, how can you figure which style it is? The best method is to think about what the purpose or main idea of the writing is. Each of the four main writing styles has a specific purpose:

Descriptive: to describe things
Expository: to give facts
Narrative: to tell a story
Persuasive: to convince the reader of something

Here’s an example of a passage with a somewhat ambiguous writing style:

It can be tricky to determine the writing style of many poems since poetry is so varied and can fit many styles. For this poem, you might at first think it has a narrative writing style, since it begins with a narrator mentioning a walk he took after church. Character + plot = narrative writing style, right?

Before you decide, you need to read the entire passage. Once you do, it’ll become clear that there really isn’t much narrative. There’s a narrator, and he’s taking a walk to get a birch from another man, but that’s about all we have for character development and plot. We don’t know anything about the narrator or his friend’s personality, what’s going to happen next, what his motivations are, etc.

The poem doesn’t devote any space to that, instead, the majority of the lines are spent describing the scene. The narrator mentions the heat, scent of sap, the sound of frogs, what the ground is like, etc. It’s clear that, since the majority of the piece is dedicated to describing the scene, this is an example of descriptive writing.

How Can You Develop Your Own Writing Style?

A distinctive writing style is one of the hallmarks of a good writer, but how can you develop your own? Below are four tips to follow.

Read Many Different Styles of Writing

If you don’t read lots of different kinds of writing, you won’t be able to write in those styles, so before you try to get your own writing style, read different writing styles than what you’re used to. This doesn’t mean that, if you mostly read novels, you suddenly need to shift to reading computer manuals. Instead, you can try to read novels that use unreliable narrators, stream-of-consciousness writing, etc.

The more you read, the more writing styles you’ll be exposed to, and the easier it’ll be able to combine some of those into your own writing style.

Consider Combining Multiple Types of Writing Styles

There’s no rule that you can only use one style for a piece of writing. In fact, many longer works will include multiple styles. A novel may be primarily narrative, but it can also contain highly descriptive passages as well as expository parts when the author wants the readers to understand a new concept.

However, make sure you don’t jump around too much. A paper or book that goes from dense academic text to impassioned plea for a cause to a story about your childhood and back again will confuse readers and make it difficult for them to understand the point you’re trying to make.

Find a Balance Between Comfort and Boundary-Pushing

You should write in a style that feels natural to you, since that will be what comes most easily and what feels most authentic to the reader. An academic who never ventures outside the city trying to write a book from the perspective of a weathered, unschooled cowboy may end up with writing that seems fake and forced.

A great way to change up your writing and see where it can be improved is to rewrite certain parts in a new writing style. If you’ve been writing a novel with narrative voice, change a few scenes to stream-of-consciousness, then think about how it felt to be using that style and if you think it improved your writing or gave you any new ideas. If you’re worried that some writing you did is dull and lacking depth, add in a few passages that are purely descriptive and see if they help bring the writing to life.

You don’t always need to do this, and you don’t need to keep the new additions in what you wrote, but trying new things will help you get a better idea of what you want your own style to be like.

The best way to develop your own writing style is to expose yourself to numerous types of writing, both through reading and writing. As you come into contact with more writing styles and try them out for yourself, you’ll naturally begin to develop a writing style that you feel comfortable with.

Summary: The 4 Different Styles of Writing

There are four main writing styles, and each has a different purpose:

If you’re struggling to figure out the writing style of a piece, ask yourself what its purpose is and why the author wants you to read it.

To develop your own writing style, you should:

Read widely
Consider mixing styles
Balance writing what you know and trying new things

What's Next?

Literary devices are also an important part of understanding writing styles. Learn the 24 literary devices you must know by reading our guide on literary devices.

Writing a research paper for school but not sure what to write about? Our guide to research paper topics has over 100 topics in ten categories so you can be sure to find the perfect topic for you.

Are you reading The Great Gatsby for class or even just for fun? Then you'll definitely want to check out our expert guides on the biggest themes in this classic book, from love and relationships to money and materialism .

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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The 4 Main Types of Writing Styles and How to Use Them as a Writer

Understanding the 4 main types of writing styles can help you grow as a writer and attract an audience for your written work. Here’s how to identify each style of writing and tips for using each of the 4 common writing styles to develop your written skills.

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One of the things that can help you grow as a writer is to learn the 4 main types of writing styles and use the characteristics of each to further develop your own personal voice as a writer.

By learning how to use the different writing styles in your work, you will not only improve your skills as writer, but also learn ways to better connect with your audience of readers.

In this post we’ll cover the 4 main types of writing styles and how to use them as a writer to create compelling books, stories, essays, poetry, articles and more.

What are Writing Styles?

Writing styles are basically another way of saying the form or type of written work you are creating. Think of it as a classification for being able to identify what kind of writing you are creating.

For example, if you are writing a cookbook, that is a completely different style of writing than if you were writing a steamy romance novel!

Each writing style has a different purpose – and therefore, different characteristics are present when you are writing each type of different work.

Now that we understand what a writing style is – let’s talk about the 4 main writing styles which are commonly talked about amongst writers and literary educators.

The 4 Main Writing Styles & What They Mean

The four main writing styles which are commonly recognized are expository , descriptive , narrative , and persuasive .

Style #1: Expository

The definition of expository is this: “intended to explain or describe something.”

Most types of written work that fall into this category explain something in more detail, or provide insight and instruction in regards to a particular topic.

What types of writing fall into this category of expository writing style?

While there are many different types of written work which can be categorized as expository style of writing, you can often identify this type of writing by noticing the purpose of the work.

Does the work intend to explain something in more detail?
Does the written piece inform?
Does the written piece answer questions such as “what, how and why?”

Here are some examples of the different types of writing pieces which can fall into the category of expository writing:

Newspaper and Magazine Articles {not including editorials}
Non-Fiction Books
How-To Books
Self Help Books
Writing about Hobbies & Interests
Recipes & Cookbooks
Instructional Guides
Scientific Research
Textbooks & Educational Resources
Business Articles & Books
Medical Research, Journals and Articles

When you write expository style pieces, your main goal as a writer is to inform your readers with insight and facts that pertain to the subject of your piece.

For example, if you are writing about the history of ice cream, you would be including a lot of research and fun facts into your piece.

Note that this type of writing style is not intended to persuade or influence your audience. In writing your piece on the history of ice cream, you would NOT be trying to persuade your readers.

You would not want to say things like “Everybody should eat ice cream!” and “These 5 reasons will convince you forever to choose strawberry swirl flavored ice cream as your favorite flavor.”

Sometimes it can be confusing on whether an article is expository or persuasive. For example, an article called “The 5 Unexpected Health Benefits of Ice Cream” – would not fall into expository writing, even though it is providing information.

The word “benefits” has a positive connotation to the title. If you were to be writing an article on possible health benefits on ice cream, it would be very important that you as the writer keep your opinion separated from the facts and information if you plan for it to be an expository style piece. To be expository in nature, you would want to use a title such as “Scientists Research The Health Effects of Ice Cream.”

Books and articles that explain how to do something are also very popular examples of expository writing. Cookbooks are very popular, as they explain to others the tips, techniques, and recipes on how to cook something. How-to books for hobbies and crafts are also a good example of this type of writing.

Style #2: Descriptive Writing

Descriptive writing goes deeper than expository writing. While expository writing might have some descriptive details and factual information, descriptive writing will make use of many writing elements and literary devices such as metaphors and similes.

The purpose and goal of descriptive writing is to bring your reader into the written work as if the reader were to be experiencing it first hand.

Most fictional pieces fall under the category of descriptive writing, and even some non-fiction pieces such as memoirs and creative non-fiction can fall under the category of a descriptive writing style.

If you are writing fiction, the more descriptive you can be with your words, the more relatable your story will be to the reader.

For example, we recommend that writers ask their characters questions as one way to really intimately understand the details about a character. Details about the setting, events, and people present in a story will help your readers be able to imagine and understand the piece.

This style also includes poetry. If you browse through some of our poetry writing prompts , you will see there is a lot of attention put on using details to create a scene or feeling in writing a poem!

Here are some examples of types of descriptive writing pieces:

Poetry & Prose
Travel Diaries
Personal Journals
Lyrics in Music and Songwriting

Most pieces using only a descriptive writing style are not very long. It is uncommon for a fictional novel to be 100% fully descriptive without getting into our next writing style, which is narrative writing.

Style #3: Narrative Writing

Narrative writing is far more complex that simple descriptive writing.

While a poem for example may describe a scene or even events or people – generally you do not get into the deep inner thoughts of the characters or even get a full story with a clear middle, beginning, and end complete with conflict and dialogue.

Nearly all fiction novels fall into the case of narrative writing, as well as longer epic poems and sagas.

In narrative writing, there is a story to be told – a clear plot complete with setting, characters, dialogue, conflict and resolution. A narrative piece often has a timeline or sequence of events which further build to the point of conflict and resolution.

Here are some examples of the works which would be considered to have a narrative writing style:

Fiction Novels
Memoirs & Biographies
Screenplays
Myths, Legends, and Fables
Historical accounts
Essays which talk about a lesson learned or valuable insight from an experience

Narrative writing pieces are generally easy to identify, although sometimes it can be confused with descriptive writing styles. The key difference in determining which one a written work might be is whether or not there is a developed storyline or plot.

If there is a well developed plot and storyline, you are most likely reading narrative writing.

Style #4: Persuasive Writing

A speech to convince others to vote for you is an example of persuasive writing.

Persuasive writing is a type of writing style where the purpose is to influence someone into believing or doing something. As the word “persuasive” suggests – your goal is to persuade someone’s actions or thoughts to align with your own goals as the writer.

The persuasive writing essay is a popular homework assignment for many kids. For example, a student might be assigned to write an essay to convince their parents of something. “Why We Should Get a Pet Rabbit” and “5 Reasons You Should Not Make Me Clean My Room”.

Persuasive writing is intended to convince someone of something, and so it usually needs to have a good bit of research and logical analysis – but also should attempt to make an emotional connection to the desired audience as well.

A classic piece of writing which serves as an example of persuasive writing is Thomas Paine’s book Common Sense , which was written in the Colonial times of the American Revolutionary War, urging citizens that separating from England was of utmost importance.

Here are some examples of types of writing which are persuasive writing:

Editorial & Opinion pieces in Newspapers and Magazines
Essays on a specific belief or “hot button” topic
Letters written to request an action or file a complaint
Advertisements {Convincing you to buy something}
Copywriting {Note, copywriting is different from copyright!}
Company Brochures
Business Proposals
Political speeches

When the intention of the work is to convince the audience of something – this falls into persuasive writing.

How to Use the 4 Main Different Writing Styles as a Writer

Now that we know the different types of writing styles, you may be wondering how do you use each style?

The first thing to do is think about what you are planning to write and what the intention is. What is your goal and what type of message are you trying to communicate to your readers?

Expository Style Writing:

In this type of writing your goal is to inform your readers about research or data.

When writing expository style pieces, follow these guidelines:

Avoid using words which have a positive or negative connotation
Do not insert your opinion or attempt to persuade your audience into thinking, feeling, or doing something based on your beliefs
Use research and cite your sources
When writing online, link to additional resources or websites
Use quotes, illustrations or informative graphics to highlight the information
Give concise and clear directions

Descriptive Writing Style:

This type of writing has the goal to describe something and bring into your reader’s imaginations

Here are some tips for writing with descriptive writing styles:

Use literary devices such as metaphors and similes.
Use well thought out adjectives and adverbs to describe nouns and verbs.
Bring attention to small details
Use the 6 senses: sight, touch, taste, smell, sound, and feeling

Narrative Writing Style:

In narrative writing style, your goal is to convey a storyline to your readers.

Here is how to achieve this type of writing style:

Outline a storyline, plot or timeline sequence of events
Include detailed descriptions of your characters and scenes
Give your readers insight into the inner thoughts or behind-the-scenes information to elements of your story
Answer the 6 W questions in your writing: Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why?
Make it so your piece of work conveys an important lesson or insight – what is the moral of the story? What was the outcome of this experience?
Use concrete language which gives readers a specific image to visualize and relate to

Persuasive Writing Style:

When you are writing to persuade, your intention is to convince your readers to side with you. This can be as simple as convincing them to buy your latest new product, or even writing about important social and humanitarian issues.

Here are some tips for writing persuasively:

Include information, data, and facts to back up your argument
Cite your sources and give readers access to additional information
Appeal to your readers on an emotional level – how will siding with your opinion connect with them and make them feel?
Take into consideration your reader’s needs, wants, and desires and how your message will help your reader achieve these.

Understanding Writing Styles Can Help You Be a Better Writer

No matter what type of writing you enjoy creating – understanding the basic main 4 types of writing styles can help you become a better writer.

If you are writing a how-to article for example, you will be able to understand what types of elements to ensure your piece of work includes. If you’re writing a descriptive poem, knowing what type of language to use can help convey your message for abstract concepts.

Use these different writing styles as a fun writing exercise!

Even if you typically only write for one style, it can be a lot of fun to push yourself to try to write for the different types of styles. For example, try writing a persuasive essay, and then a descriptive essay on the same topic. It can also be fun to write a descriptive poem and then turn it into a narrative essay or short story.

Not sure what to write about using these different writing styles? We have TONS of ideas for you with many different writing prompts! Check out our list of 365 writing prompts ideas which are sure to inspire your creative muse!

Using prompts is a great way to help you start writing in different writing styles and push yourself to a new exciting challenge for your writing skills!

I hope this article about the different writing styles and how you can use them as a writer will be helpful for you in building and developing your written skillset.

What types of writing styles do you enjoy writing the most? Have any tips for writing in expository, descriptive, narrative or persuasive styles of writing? We’d love to hear your ideas and experiences in the comments section below!

Chelle Stein wrote her first embarrassingly bad novel at the age of 14 and hasn't stopped writing since. As the founder of ThinkWritten, she enjoys encouraging writers and creatives of all types.

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What is Style in Writing?

Think of writing style as the author’s thumbprint—a unique and indelible mark on the voice and personality of the work. If a writer’s work is a house, style is what adorns that house: the window blinds, the doormat, the freshly painted eaves.

Style is like an author’s thumbprint—a unique and indelible mark on the voice and personality of the work.

Authors doesn’t only hone their style deliberately: writing styles emerge as a result of dedication, the author’s own personality, and a continuous experimentation with language and meaning.

To illustrate what we mean by style, let’s compare two examples of different writing styles from two different works of fiction. Each excerpt talks about the same dilemma—the endurance of memory—but approaches that dilemma in uniquely stylish ways.

“Perhaps you have forgotten. That’s one of the great problems of our modern world, you know. Forgetting. The victim never forgets. Ask an Irishman what the English did to him in 1920 and he’ll tell you the day of the month and the time and the name of every man they killed. Ask an Iranian what the English did to him in 1953 and he’ll tell you. His child will tell you. His grandchild will tell you. And when he has one, his great-grandchild will tell you too. But ask an Englishman—” He flung up his hands in mock ignorance. “If he ever knew, he has forgotten. ‘Move on!’ you tell us. ‘Move on! Forget what we’ve done to you. Tomorrow’s another day!’ But it isn’t, Mr. Brue.” He still had Brue’s hand. “Tomorrow was created yesterday, you see. That is the point I was making to you. And by the day before yesterday, too. To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door.”

—John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man

Compare this with the following excerpt:

“The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don’t want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can’t turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”

—Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Each quote addresses a similar theme : how the perpetrators forget, but the victims always remember, and how that remembering shapes the world. Yet they approach the topic in different ways. John le Carré illustrates his point by examining historical, world-altering events. He uses dialogue and describes the gestures of his characters to punctuate his ideas, and he ends by suggesting that, if we do not remember, then we are infinitely more vulnerable to the metaphorical “wolf at the door.”

Haruki Murakami, by contrast, uses far fewer words to illustrate the same idea. His sentences are less laden with imagery and description; they are merely vehicles to his conclusion that the world is “an endless battle of contrasting memories.”

Each author takes his own route, and each excerpt will connect with the reader in different ways. Such differences in expression are the essence of style. Writing styles showcase how a writer reaches their point, encompassing the totality of the author’s word choice, sentence structures, use of literary devices, etc. It is the gestalt of every decision, both conscious and unconscious, that the writer makes in the text.

What Authors Say About Writing Style

Before we move on, let’s illustrate this point about authors’ writing styles in another way: different quotes from authors on writing styles themselves.

“Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage.” —Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
“When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to see an author, and we find a man.” —Blaise Pascal
“The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules–that it is a living and breathing thing with something of the devilish in it–that it fits its proprietor tightly yet ever so loosely, as his skin fits him. It is, in fact, quite as seriously an integral part of him as that skin is. . . . In brief, a style is always the outward and visible symbol of a man, and cannot be anything else.” —H.L. Mencken
“You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.” —Katherine Anne Porter
“Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.” —Robert Frost
“Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It’s not what we say but how we say it that matters.” —Federico Fellini
“Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of style.” —Jonathan Swift
“The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
“Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language.” —Cardinal John Henry Newman
“Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.” —Stephen King
“It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.” —P.D. James

Elements of Writing Styles

Every author makes key decisions about their writing, and those decisions build over time into a cohesive writing style. What decisions do they have to make? In other words, what are the elements of writing styles?

Creative writing styles are honed through a combination of the following:

Word choice
Economy and concision
Literary devices
Context and purpose
The author’s location, time period, and influences

Let’s explore each element in detail.

Elements of Writing Styles: Word Choice

Also called diction, word choice refers to the artistic decisions a writer makes in choosing one word over another, and how those decisions affect the meaning, mood , tone , and ideas conveyed to the reader.

Word choice refers to the artistic decisions a writer makes in choosing one word over another, and how those decisions affect the meaning, mood, tone, and ideas conveyed to the reader.

Take a look at the following two example sentences. Only one word has been changed in each sentence, and those words are synonyms, but the changed word has a huge impact on the way each sentence is read.

The Union beat The Confederacy during the American Civil War.
The Union subjugated The Confederacy during the American Civil War.

As you can see, changing “beat” to “subjugated” affects every part of the sentence. The sentence moves from neutral and informative to passionate and descriptive; the idea, once impartial, now comes across as heavily invested in the outcome of the Civil War. A word like “subjugated” transmits to the reader that the Union was extremely powerful, even suggesting that the Confederacy was a victim of the North.

Small details such as word choice can have huge impacts on writing styles. Another important element to consider is syntax.

Elements of Writing Styles: Syntax

Syntax refers to sentence structure—how rearranging the order of words impacts the meaning transmitted to the reader. It is closely related to diction, but where diction is concerned with the choice of words, syntax is concerned with the arrangement of those words, as well as the length and complexity of sentences.

Syntax is concerned with the arrangement of words, as well as the length and complexity of sentences.

Much of syntax is innately learned, especially to native English speakers. For example, an English sentence is typically constructed with the subject first, and then the verb, followed by the object of that verb. See below:

The quick brown fox (subject) jumped (verb) over the lazy dog (object).

If the daring writer wanted to complicate this syntactical order, they might write “Over the lazy dog, the quick brown fox jumped.” Of course, such experimentations can prove dangerous, as the reader might misinterpret that construction, or read it as shallow or pretentious.

Nonetheless, paying close attention to the structure, length, and word order of sentences can allow writers to develop their writing styles. Here are some other ways one might experiment with syntax:

Structure (active to passive): The lazy dog was jumped over by the quick brown fox.
Length : The fox jumped over the dog. OR: The quick, sly, and daring fox jumped right over the lazy and motionless dog.
Word order : The brown fox jumped quickly over the dog lying lazily.

Notice how each of these syntactical changes affect the rhythm, meaning, and style of the sentences. Some changes certainly worsen the effect of the sentence.

A final element of syntax is punctuation. Commas, colons, semicolons, em-dashes, and periods each have their own specific use in English grammar. How the author decides to use each punctuation mark contributes to the overall style of their sentences.

Elements of Writing Styles: Economy and Concision

All stylish writers know how to use economy and concision. They know how to use fewer words, not more, and they know how to make every word count.

There are certainly rules and guidelines for concise writing. The economic writer knows to:

Avoid adverbs.
Use strong, visual verbs.
Employ prepositions sparingly.
Only use adjectives when necessary.
Stay inside the active voice, unless the passive is necessary.
Provide only the important details.

Later in this article, we dive deeper into concision. Nonetheless, let’s demonstrate this key facet of writing styles.

Here’s a simple, effective sentence:

We careened from California to Maine.

The wordy writer has many reasons to make this sentence more complicated. Perhaps the reader does need more information. But, the writer might also be insecure about their own writing, or else they might think every detail needs to be ornate (a tactic called purple prose ). Here’s the above sentence, written wordier. In parentheses are the rules broken from the list above.

We were driven (5) swiftly (1) and without (3) direction in (3) our little blue Chevy (4, 6), somehow (1) finding (2) our way from California to Maine.

Perhaps the little blue Chevy is important to the story. It does add some personality to the people in the car. Otherwise, this sentence is haphazard, conveying too much to the reader in too many words.

Elements of Writing Styles: Literary Devices

Literary devices are specific writing techniques that forge novel connections and possibilities in language. You are probably familiar with common devices, like metaphors and similes . However, there is a wide range of devices available to creative writers, from the hyperbole to the synecdoche, from the onomatopoeia to the paranomasia .

In any work of creative writing, literary devices are essential to both the author’s meaning and their writing style.

In any work of creative writing, literary devices are essential to both the author’s meaning and their writing style. Sometimes, the device is confined to a single sentence in the text. Other times, various elements of the writing—its plot , characters, and settings—act as metaphors for broader ideas and themes.

Here’s an example of a metaphor that’s daring, stylish, and effective:

“Love is so embarrassing. I bled in your bed. I’m sorry. I have built you a shore with all my best words & still, the waves.”

Out of Bound by Claire Schwartz

This is a striking metaphor, heartbreaking in its imagery. The speaker laments at the imperfectness of love and language: how, no matter how carefully and precisely a lover chooses the words they use to love another, those words are, inevitably, broken down by “the waves.” What do those waves represent? Perhaps the limits of language—the ever-present gap between what is spoken and what is understood. In the same way that love is modified by language, the shore is always modified by the waves.

Many stylistic decisions go into the construction of literary devices, including:

Which devices are used.
The images used to convey deeper meanings.
The word choice and syntax of those devices.

Indeed, the construction of literary devices is closely related to syntax and word choice, but the way that the writer employs those devices and makes connections and comparisons is key to honing an author’s writing style.

To learn more, check out our articles on common literary devices and rhetorical devices .

Elements of Writing Styles: Context and Purpose

While an author’s writing style is the product of their own artistic integrity, some creative writing styles develop in relation to the context and purpose of the writing itself.

Some creative writing styles develop in relation to the context and purpose of the writing itself.

For example, an author might choose to write a murder mystery novel, a middle grade fiction book, and a historical account of the Sino-Japanese War. Each publication would have its own unique writing style, because the writing serves a different purpose in each book, and the author will have to write towards different audiences. We’ll explore this shortly when we look at the different types of writing styles.

In creative writing, the question of audience can matter a great deal. You would not want someone with a hard-boiled writing style to publish a romance novel in the same voice, nor would you expect a law critic to write poetry using the same word choice.

While audience should not define the author’s style and intent, it is a necessary consideration in the editing process before a work is published.

It is also important to note that there are different types of writing styles for different contexts. Let’s review those briefly.

Different Types of Writing Styles

In standard rhetorical analysis, there are four different types of writing styles: narrative, descriptive, persuasive, and expository. We mention a fifth style, the creative style, because certain decisions and elements are available to creative works that are not usually available to other writing styles.

Narrative Writing Styles

At its simplest, narrative is a synonym for storytelling . As such, narrative writing styles employ certain storytelling tactics to communicate a plot with characters, settings , and themes.

Narrative writing styles employ storytelling tactics to communicate a plot with characters, settings, and themes.

Here’s an example of a narrative writing style, which seeks to communicate the essential details for a reader to understand the story:

“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.” —Opening lines of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

These two paragraphs give us the essentials. We know that the narrator is a child with an unkind family (character), that they live somewhere bleak and chilly (setting), and that the speaker has been made to feel inferior to her peers (theme).

Narrative writing styles are commonly used in the following:

Creative nonfiction
Narrative poetry
Legal writing
Marketing and brand development

Descriptive Writing Styles

Descriptive writing seeks to evoke sensory experiences. This type of writing concerns itself with the effective use of imagery , including non-visual forms of imagery like sounds, sights, tastes, smells, and kinesthetic and organic images.

Descriptive writing seeks to evoke sensory experiences.

Here’s an example of a descriptive writing style, which uses imagery and other devices to reconstruct a particular sensory experience through language:

“The flower shop was here and it was my father’s domain, but it was also marvelously other, this place heavy with the drowsy scent of velvet-petaled roses and Provencal freesias in the middle of winter, the damp-earth spring fragrance of just-watered azaleas and cyclamen all mixed up with the headachey smell of bitter chocolate.” —Patricia Hempl, excerpt from The Florist’s Daughter

The writer employs a variety of images, scents, and comparisons to describe the sensual intensity of the flower shop. Details of the shop’s setting, smells, and the narrator’s relationship to the shop itself combine to make this an effective, descriptive passage.

Descriptive writing styles are commonly used in the following:

Medical writing

Persuasive Writing Styles

Persuasive writing wants to change your mind. By employing logic, argumentation, and various rhetorical strategies, persuasive writers seek to convince you that their argument or interpretation prevails.

Persuasive writing wants to change your mind.

Here’s an example of a persuasive writing style, which uses rhetorical strategies to convince you about a certain worldview:

“Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don’t know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetual recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.” —James Baldwin, excerpt from Giovanni’s Room

In addition to Baldwin’s lyrical prose style, key elements of this passage try to persuade the reader of the narrator’s worldview. “Garden of Eden” and “flaming sword” are strong visual metaphors, and setting up this worldview as a binary (people who remember or forget) encourages the reader to sort people into one of two categories. While persuasive writing styles usually come off as confident, the narrator’s admission that he doesn’t precisely know the answer to this conundrum helps humanize the conflict he’s debating. Certainly, this is a depressing worldview, and one which the reader is free to disagree with, but the strategies Baldwin takes in constructing this paragraph are certainly compelling.

Persuasive writing styles are commonly used in the following:

Expository Writing Styles

Expository writing wants to tell you about something as neutrally as possible. The goal is to be informative: by conveying something with as little bias and interpretation, expository writing styles stick to the facts. Do note that bias is universal: it is nearly impossible for any text to remove itself from bias completely.

Expository writing wants to tell something as neutrally as possible.

Here’s an example of an expository writing style, which conveys facts in a linear and digestible paragraph:

“On June 13, 1910, Arthur James Balfour lectured the House of Commons on ‘the problems with which we have to deal in Egypt.’ These, he said, ‘belong to a wholly different category’ than those ‘affecting the Isle of Wight or the West Riding of Yorkshire.’ He spoke with the authority of a long-time member of Parliament, former private secretary to Lord Salisbury, former chief secretary for Ireland, former secretary for Scotland, former prime minister, veteran of numerous overseas crises, achievements, and changes.” —Edward W. Said, excerpt from Orientalism

This opening passage of Orientalism sets the scene factually: we learn the time period, some geopolitical issues, and a main actor in all of these events. Yes, the passage does play up the significance of Arthur James Balfour and his many accolades, but this, too, is expository description, letting the reader know exactly who and what we are dealing with.

Expository writing styles are commonly used in the following:

Creative Writing Styles

Creative writing styles combine the previous four types: a creative writer can employ narrative, descriptive, persuasive, and expository strategies in their work. You may have noticed that creative genres, like fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, routinely show up under the categories of writing that employ the above four styles. This is because authors must employ a variety of strategies to tell effective stories.

Creative writers can employ narrative, descriptive, persuasive, and expository strategies in their work.

But, in addition to employing the previous four styles, creative writing also seeks to experiment and find new, artistic possibilities in language. Poetry is an obvious example, as the use of stanzas and line breaks affects how the language is read and interpreted. But there are also countless examples of experimentation in prose, from the use of stream of consciousness to the Oulipian n+7 .

Here’s an example:

“I turned out the light and went into my bedroom, out of the gasoline but I could still smell it. I stood at the window the curtains moved slow out of the darkness touching my face like someone breathing asleep, breathing slow into the darkness again, leaving the touch. After they had gone up stairs Mother lay back in her chair, the camphor handker- chief to her mouth. Father hadn’t moved he still sat beside her holding her hand the bellowing hammering away like no place for it in silence When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow. You know what I’d do if I were King? she never was a queen or a fairy she was always a king or a giant or a general I’d break that place open and drag them out and I’d whip them good It was torn out, jagged out. I was glad.” —Excerpt from The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

This is, of course, a highly literary and experimental piece of writing, but it demonstrates something distinct to creative writing styles. The italicized portions of text are streams of consciousness—moments where the reader has direct access to the unfiltered thoughts, images, and memories flowing through the character’s mind. Understanding these passages requires close attention to the text, as well as several re-reads. While creative writing styles can be far simpler than this, the point is that a creative writer takes great liberties to experiment with language, in ways distinct to creative writing, which seek to mine the wide varieties of the human experience.

Creative writing styles are commonly used in the following:

Lyric essays
Creative journalism

Elements of Writing Styles: The Author’s Location, Time Period, and Influences

Lastly, writers are undeniably influenced by their location, time period, and literary influences. For example, if you’ve ever read a poem or novel from Victorian Era England, you know that the Victorian writers (like the Brontës, Charles Dickens, or Percy Bysshe Shelley) often wrote in elaborate and flowery language. By modern standards, Victorian writing styles might seem overwrought; but, that style was influenced by the era’s appreciation for emotional intensity, as well as the tendency to pay writers per-word.

Writing Styles: Examples and Analyses

Let’s take a look at three writing styles examples. For each writer, we will examine how various stylistic strategies affect the overall mood and interpretation of the text, while also discussing that writer’s influences and likely intent. All examples come from published works of classic literature.

Ernest Hemingway’s Writing Style

Ernest Hemingway once wrote “A writer’s style should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous. The greatest writers have the gift of brilliant brevity, are hard workers, diligent scholars and competent stylists.” Hemingway’s writing style certainly lives up to this quote, as his words are often simple, direct, and unadorned.

Here’s an excerpt from his short story “ A Clean, Well-Lighted Place .”

It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.”Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said.

“Why?”

“He was in despair.”

“What about?”

“Nothing.”

“How do you know it was nothing?”

“He has plenty of money.”

Hemingway’s writing style seeks to dispense the precise amount of information necessary for the reader, without any garnishment. Notice the details he provides: the exact time does not matter, only that “it was very late.” Notice, also, a similar pattern with the dialogue. People generally don’t speak in such clipped sentences, but the characters of this story speak to give just enough context for the story’s themes.

Additionally, the visual details, such as the dew settling the dust and the shadows of leaves against the electric light, evoke the sensation of a space that’s quiet and comforting, if also a little bit eerie.

Notice, also, the general lengths of the sentences. The first paragraph is built on longer sentences and clauses, which inevitably juxtaposes sensory details (an old man in the shadow of leaves cast by an electric light.) The effect of these sentences is that time feels slower, as the reader’s focus is on the kaleidoscope of details paused in this one moment in a quiet café.

Finally, pay attention to the lack of pretensity in Hemingway’s word choice. While the story itself deals with complex themes, including the question of nihilism, the language itself is simple, direct, and accessible.

Hemingway got his start in writing as a journalist, then as a short story writer, both of which certainly influenced his economic style. He famously coined the “Iceberg Theory,” which describes writing that focuses on surface-level details without explicitly analyzing underlying themes, rather implying those themes for the reader to interpret. Hemingway was also greatly influenced by World Wars I and II, and his writing style may have been a reaction to these wars, eschewing the flowery language of pre-war literature for a hardened, masculine style.

Toni Morrison’s Writing Style

A master of voice and character, Toni Morrison’s writing style borrows heavily from vernacular, from history, and from her own unique relationship to analogies and metaphors. Morrison frequently plays with sentence lengths and imagery, but her writing never fails to be compelling, lyrical, and delicious to read.

Here’s an excerpt from Recitatif , her only published short story:

My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick. That’s why we were taken to St. Bonny’s. People want to put their arms around you when you tell them you were in a shelter, but it really wasn’t bad. No big long room with one hundred beds like Bellevue. There were four to a room, and when Roberta and me came, there was a shortage of state kids, so we were the only ones assigned to 406 and could go from bed to bed if we wanted to. And we wanted to, too. We changed beds every night and for the whole four months we were there we never picked one out as our own permanent bed.It didn’t start out that way. The minute I walked in and the Big Bozo introduced us, I got sick to my stomach. It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning—it was something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race. And Mary, that’s my mother, she was right. Every now and then she would stop dancing long enough to tell me something important and one of the things she said was that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny. Roberta sure did. Smell funny, I mean. So when the Big Bozo (nobody ever called her Mrs. Itkin, just like nobody ever said St. Bonaventure)—when she said, “Twyla, this is Roberta. Roberta, this is Twyla. Make each other welcome.” I said, “My mother won’t like you putting me in here.”

Both lyrical and conversational, Morrison’s style simply makes you want to read more. Pay attention to two things:

One, the lengths of these sentences. Morrison routinely switches from short sentences to longer ones, partially to emphasize important details in short sentences, and partially to keep the pace of the story engaging. The alternation of short and long sentences mirrors a conversational storytelling style.

Two, the childlike voice behind the narration. It is clear that the narrator is a child. Despite being directly stated, this fact is also obvious when certain elements of word choice are analyzed. Phrases like “smell funny” and “Big Bozo” clue the reader towards a speaker whose words and observations are that of a child.

One thing that’s absent from these paragraphs, but very much present in Morrison’s writing style, is the use of surprising comparisons (similes, metaphors, and analogies). This example comes later in “Recitatif”:

“I used to dream a lot and almost always the orchard was there. Two acres, four maybe, of these little apple trees. Hundreds of them. Empty and crooked like beggar women when I first came to St. Bonny’s but fat with flowers when I left.”

The simile “empty and crooked like beggar women” might be shocking to the reader, but it provides great insight into the personality of the narrator. This sentence is also ripe with foreshadowing , since the trees were “fat with flowers” when the narrator leaves St. Bonny’s.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing Style

One of America’s most influential writers, Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry and fiction forged new possibilities in the written word. Poe’s writing is often dark, gothic, and tinged with insanity, and his style reflects the problems that haunt his protagonists. Notice how psychosis influences Poe’s writing style in this excerpt from “ The Tell-Tale Heart :”

Poe adapts his style quite well to write a character who is clearly self-aggrandizing and obsessed with his own genius. The storytelling here has lots of repetition , such as “slowly—very, very slowly” and “cautiously-oh, so cautiously—cautiously” which makes the narrator sound in love with his own voice. And, it takes a while for the reader to understand what the narrator is doing, as his erratic behavior, like poking his head into the door for an hour, goes without a clear explanation.

Nonetheless, this writing is typical of Poe’s Gothic style. The use of words like “madman,” “midnight,” “vulture,” and “Evil Eye” give this story the grim moodiness characteristic of Poe’s writing. Additionally, the frequent use of em dashes and lengthy sentences propels the reader slowly, as we come to understand every minute detail that forms the totality of this character’s psychosis. This methodical, psychological writing style helps define Poe as a master of mystery and suspense.

Tips for Honing Your Own Author’s Writing Style

Writing styles develop with time, and there’s no singular thing any writer can do to hone their style. Rather, an attentiveness to language and a willingness to experiment are the best things you can do for yourself as you hone your author’s writing style. Nonetheless, here’s 7 pieces of advice for anyone who wants to write with style, flare, and confidence.

1. Creative Writing Styles: Experiment with Language and Syntax

Take risks in your writing. Be unconventional, and don’t always go for the expected word or phrase. Style doesn’t develop from playing it safe—it develops from making active decisions in the words you use to express your ideas.

What do we mean by taking risks? Here’s an example of a risky sentence, from poet Eduardo C. Corral: “Moss intensifies up the tree, like applause.”

This is a daring comparison: we don’t often think of moss “intensifying,” and so that verb already seems strange and risky. But then the moss itself is compared to applause, so now the visual cue of intensifying moss is being compared to intensifying sound. The product of this simile is that we see moss blooming and expanding across the tree, which makes this an effective and stylish sentence—but there’s a level of risk, faith, and skill involved in making this simile work .

Taking risks allows you to see what works and what doesn’t in your writing. So make bold comparisons! End your paragraphs with em-dashes! Try using four different languages in a single sentence!

Just be sure to review your work after and assess what does and doesn’t work for the reader. And, when you’re not sure what to do, try doing the complete opposite of what seems intuitive. You might find a short sentence works better than a long one, for example.

2. Creative Writing Styles: Experiment with Writing Forms

Creative writing styles often adapt to the form of the writing itself. For example, genre writing styles vary from genre to genre. You wouldn’t expect a writer of hard-boiled noir to have the same terse, simplistic style when writing romance fiction (although I would love to read that).

As you hone your writing style, experiment reading and writing in different forms. Pay attention to how the form demands you to make different stylistic decisions. The words you choose in a love sonnet will be different from the words you choose in a flash essay about your childhood. And, certainly, your sentence lengths will differ when you’re writing literary fiction versus speculative fiction .

Getting into the habit of making these stylistic decisions, and paying attention to those decisions, will help you create a mental framework for the ways you approach writing. Such is the nature of style development.

3. Creative Writing Styles: Consider Character

Character development is an essential part of fiction writing, and it will naturally affect the style you use to write. If you’re writing in first person or third person limited, then your protagonist’s personality will affect everything, because their worldview tinges the way you tell their story. Key observational details and thought processes from main characters naturally bleed into the style of the writing itself.

You can see this in action in the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned , is written from the third person limited point of view of Anthony Patch, an unambitious libertine whose personality is defined by wry cynicism and a rigid belief in the purposelessness of life. These personality traits often affect the storytelling, as the reader sees the world through Anthony’s eyes, and thus trudges through a lot of Anthony’s ironic commentary and disdain for others.

Fitzgerald’s next novel, The Great Gatsby , is completely different, both tonally and stylistically. Written from the first person point of view of Nick Carraway, an optimistic bond salesman who wants to immerse himself in the high society of New York’s nouveau riche. Much of the style is poetic and introspective, honing in on the creative chaos of the Jazz Age and the tragedy of the American Dream.

For your own writing, alter your style to reflect the traits of your characters. Style reflects personality, and the person narrating your fiction will certainly want to tell their story in their own way.

4. Creative Writing Styles: Omit Needless Words

While style can take many forms, one thing that all good author’s writing styles have in common is an economy of language. In other words, no word in good writing is excessive or unnecessary. To sharpen your own style, you must omit needless words.

What does that look like? There are two ways to omit needless words: striking out redundancies, and rewriting phrases.

Here’s two examples. First, let’s look at redundancy. A redundancy is when you communicate something multiple times without refining the meaning of your words. Here’s a redundant sentence:

“The girl vaulted over the large gray boulder.”

Nothing is explicitly wrong with this sentence, but several words are giving repeat information. You don’t need the word “over,” because to vault means to jump over something. And, you don’t need the word “large,” because a boulder is, by definition, large. Finally, most rocks are gray, and the word “gray” isn’t offering much useful detail.

A much cleaner sentence would simply be “the girl vaulted the boulder.”

Another example is to rewrite phrases. If you don’t think about your words, it’s easy to communicate something in 10 words when 2 will do. Here’s another example sentence:

“She worked many long hours in order to secure a trade deal with the company.”

God, doesn’t that just read like a corporate memo? It’s passively worded and nondescript. Isolate any phrase in this sentence, and it can be truncated into something much more straightforward. Be sure to avoid phrases like “in order to”—simply “to” will always suffice.

Here’s a cleaner sentence: “She hustled to secure the Nike trade deal.”

Lastly, some categories of words are better than others. Nouns and verbs are necessary for understanding the action of a sentence. Adjectives should be used sparingly, and only when that description is necessary for the reader. Adverbs, which modify verbs, should only be used when there isn’t a sharper verb. For example, “breathing heavily” is much better written as “panting.”

For more advice, check out our article on how to omit needless words .

5. Creative Writing Styles: Read Like a Writer

How do published writers write so well? What did they do to craft such artful sentences, effective plots, or in-depth characters? While you can certainly learn these tricks by taking a writing class , you can also learn them by reading like a writer.

Reading like a writer means paying attention to the construction of a piece of literature and thinking about why that writing works. We did a little bit of this when we examined the above writing styles examples. By examining the elements of writing styles—word choice, sentence structure, character and voice, etc.—we paid attention to what makes each excerpt an effective piece of writing.

Employ those same strategies in the work you read. If there’s an author you like or whose style you admire, pay attention to what makes that style effective. And don’t be afraid to emulate that style in your own work: writers often borrow from each other’s styles and strategies to hone their own voice.

6. Creative Writing Styles: Study Poetry

The writing styles tips in this article primarily pertain to prose writers. But, whether you’re writing poetry, prose, or some secret third thing, reading poetry is essential to honing style.

Poets are masters of language. They know how to build tension, pacing, and rhythm in their sentences. They know how to make that tension correspond with what they’re writing about. They manipulate vowel sounds, constants, tools like rhyme and meter, and a whole other host of poetic devices to move their readers.

Writing poetry is its own separate challenge. Prose writers don’t need to write poetry to master their writing styles. But they absolutely should study poetry. What makes language beautiful? What makes a poem concise? How does the flow of a sentence accentuate its meaning? Asking these questions and listening to the poets will help you experiment in your own pages.

7. Creative Writing Styles: Write Every Day

The key to honing your style is to write every day. A diligent writing practice will train your brain to think about language and make continuous stylistic choices in your work. Even if you can only manage 10 minutes a day on a writing project, or even if you just keep a writing journal, the simple practice of putting thoughts to words and words to pages will naturally sharpen the personality you put into your writing.

Hone Your Own Writing Style at Writers.com

One last piece of advice on writing styles is to read The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. You can find a free copy of it online here . Most of the advice in this book has remained true in the many decades since its publication, and while rules are certainly made to be broken, you should understand the rules first before breaking them.

Want clear, direct feedback on your writing styles and the other elements of your work? Take a look at any of the upcoming creative writing classes at Writers.com! Our instructors are masters of the craft and know how to sharpen your words so that they zing across the page.

Sean Glatch

[…] Writing Styles: What is Style in Writing? […]

very informative and interesting; very useful for all readers.

Types of Writing Styles

There are four main types of writing: expository, descriptive, persuasive, and narrative. Each of these writing styles is used for a specific purpose. A single text may include more than one writing style.

Expository writing is one of the most common types of writing. When an author writes in an expository style, all they are trying to do is explain a concept, imparting information from themselves to a wider audience. Expository writing does not include the author’s opinions, but focuses on accepted facts about a topic, including statistics or other evidence.

Examples of Expository Writing

How-to articles
News stories (not editorials or Op-Eds)
Business, technical, or scientific writing

Descriptive

Descriptive writing is often found in fiction, though it can make an appearance in nonfiction as well (for example, memoirs, first-hand accounts of events, or travel guides). When an author writes in a descriptive style, they are painting a picture in words of a person, place, or thing for their audience. The author might employ metaphor or other literary devices in order to describe the author’s impressions via their five senses (what they hear, see, smell, taste, or touch). But the author is not trying to convince the audience of anything or explain the scene – merely describe things as they are.

Examples of Descriptive Writing

Journal/diary writing
Descriptions of Nature
Fictional novels or plays

Persuasive writing is the main style of writing you will use in academic papers. When an author writes in a persuasive style, they are trying to convince the audience of a position or belief. Persuasive writing contains the author’s opinions and biases, as well as justifications and reasons given by the author as evidence of the correctness of their position. Any “argumentative” essay you write in school should be in the persuasive style of writing.

Examples of Persuasive Writing

Cover letters
Op-Eds and Editorial newspaper articles
Reviews of items
Letters of complaint
Advertisements
Letters of recommendation

Narrative writing is used in almost every longer piece of writing, whether fiction or nonfiction. When an author writes in a narrative style, they are not just trying to impart information, they are trying to construct and communicate a story, complete with characters, conflict, and settings.

Examples of Narrative Writing

Oral histories
Novels/Novellas
Poetry (especially epic sagas or poems)
Short Stories

Writing styles: 10 tips to master ways of writing

Developing the story content of your writing – your characters, plots, dialogue and other areas – is important. Yet mastering different writing styles is equally important if you want to convey your story to readers with creative precision. Read 10 tips for developing and mastering your language use:

Post author By Jordan
6 Comments on Writing styles: 10 tips to master ways of writing

Writing styles - Master ways of writing | Now Novel

First: What is style in writing?

Style, as a broad term, refers to ‘a way of painting, writing, composing, building, etc/. characteristic of a particular period, place, person, or movement.’ ( Oxford English Dictionary ). The parallels to painting, writing a piece of music or designing a building are useful. Like each of these other media, great writing, a great story or sentence, has structure.

Put together a building without some thought to design, and who’ll want to live in it? Forget to add the right supports and the roof could cave in. Strong style in writing invites readers to live in your world. It holds the roof of your story up.

What makes each author’s style different? Sentence length and structure, vocabulary, mood and tone. One author might use simile and metaphor a lot. (Arundhati Roy has this kind of style.) Another might use little comparison, preferring stark, spartan imagery. These are elements of style.

So how do you master different ways of writing and develop a writing style that is completely your own?

1: Get a good writing style guide

This post goes into some detail, but it’s worth getting a print style guide that you can dip into often, one that covers the rules of grammar and punctuation comprehensively, as well as stylistic devices you can use to vary your prose.

Two classic style guides are Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (a long-standing prescribed text for many writing courses in the US) and The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing by Thomas S. Kane. Although Strunk and White’s guide has been criticized for shortcomings (one reader on Goodreads singles out the antique advice to write ‘persons’ rather than ‘people’), there is still plenty of good advice on improving style. For example:

‘Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.’

Kane’s Oxford guide goes into minute detail. For example, there is a whole chapter on different sentence styles. He uses the following example by Joan Didion to illustrate the ‘periodic sentence’. This is a sentence where the main clause is put near the end rather than the beginning. As Kane writes ‘delaying the principle thought [in a sentence] increases its importance’. It gives it extra weight:

‘Paralyzed by the neurotic lassitude engendered by meeting one’s past at every turn, around every corner, inside every cupboard, I go aimlessly from room to room.’

If you don’t want a print guide, try writing style guides on universities’ English department pages. For example, the Yale writing centre offers concise, helpful grammar tutorials you can download here .

Strunk and White writing style advice | Now Novel

2: Copy out favourite paragraphs by authors you love

Many great artists have learned by copying the masters. Famous painters learn by reproducing masterworks; Bach learned composition in part by copying out the works of his predecessors.

You don’t have to copy out the whole of Pride and Prejudice . When you come across a sentence or paragraph you love , write it down in a book for insight and inspiration. Take a moment to analyse how it’s put together; why it works. Keeping a reading journal like this will benefit your style over time. You’ll lift the veil of what distinguishes the writing styles of favourite authors; what makes them effective.

3: Play with how you structure sentences and avoid mistakes

Whether you’re writing Regency romance in a verbose (wordy) style, or you’re writing stark prose like Hemingway, knowing sentence structure inside out will improve your style. Bad grammar and punctuation are style killers. Here are some things to avoid:

Dangling participles

For example, in ‘Running down the stairs, her dress hooked on a nail and tore’, it seems a character’s dress (independently of her) is doing the running. We can guess the subject of the sentence is the ‘her’ but the placement of the object ‘her dress’ in the subject position makes the dress the deed-doer. Better: ‘As she ran down the stairs, her dress hooked on a nail and tore. Here, ‘she’ is the subject.

Weird changes of tense

If your character is doing something now and suddenly we’re in the past, mid-sentence, with no contextualization, this is naturally confusing and bad style. For example: ‘I open the door and quickly slam it shut. He was still standing outside so I ran to the phone.’ The sentence shifts unexpectedly into the past tense, making it hard to tell what is happening when. Read tips on making sense of tense here .

Monotonous repetition

Repeating a word to much deadens writing. Although you might use repetition for effect (such as in Dickens’ famous opening, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’), this type of repetition is usually carefully arranged and structured for emphasis and effect.

Here, for example, repetition of the word ‘door’ makes the author’s hand too visible:

‘I ran to the door. The door was locked and I wasn’t expecting visitors, but I heard three knocks again. I stood behind the door, unsure whether I should open it. There they came again, more urgent.’

Better style would use a mix of nouns and pronouns, and different sentence structure, to avoid needless repetition. For example:

‘I ran to the door. It was still locked – I wasn’t expecting visitors. Three knocks thudded again. I froze, hesitant to open. More knocking, now urgent.’

Practice writing sentences where the main clause (the main subject and verb of the sentence) comes near the start versus near the end. Practice taking clumsy sentences and rewriting them for flow and concision. These exercises will help you improve your writing style.

4: Learn about style by giving and receiving writing feedback

The best books on writing style give you the theory, but giving and receiving writing feedback give you the practice.

The benefit of receiving critiques on your writing is that other aspiring or established authors may notice and comment on quirks and issues in your writing style you weren’t conscious of before.

The benefit of giving critiques is you learn how to pinpoint what isn’t working in others’ sentences and paragraphs. In the process, you become aware of how to avoid turgid style yourself.

[To give and receive constructive feedback, join Now Novel’s friendly critique community ].

Comparing different authors’ writing styles also gives useful insights:

5: Compare authors’ writing styles

Examining the quirks of different authors’ writing styles, their language choices, is often instructive.

In Ben Blatt’s fascinating book using statistics to explore the quirks of famous authors, Nabokov’s Favourite Word is Mauve , there are many insights into how authors’ styles differ. For example, James Patterson, whose thrillers are packed with common tropes, uses the most clichés of all authors Blatt surveys. Across his Alex Cross series, Patterson uses on average 160 cliches per 100,000 words. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner , uses just 71 per 100, 000 – less than half. Yet Hosseini is a more ‘literary’ author so this difference makes sense.

Blatt also ran other interesting experiments. For example, he found the three words that different authors use in at least half their books, at least once per 100, 000 words. This gave Blatt an approximation of authors’ favourite words.

David Baldacci, writing thrillers in contemporary settings, had the favourite words ‘web’, ‘laptop’, and ‘limo’. Compare with mystery author Agatha Christie’s ‘favourite’ words across 66 of her novels: ‘inquest’, ‘alibi’ and ‘frightful’. They’re related to her genre, as well as her nationality (‘frightful’ being a distinctly British adjective).

Thinking about what makes authors’ individual styles unique, from national quirks to genre-specific crutches, is useful. It illuminates how different the creative choices we make are, as well as the great wealth of different ways you can tell a story.

6: Edit for style after you draft

As authors, we often edit for plot and character holes, for typos and errors. Make a conscious decision to improve style, too, wherever possible. Clunky repetition? Cut it out. Dead simile or metaphor (e.g. ‘poor as church mice’)? Invent your own alternative that makes a fresher, less abused comparison.

Improving your writing style begins with paying attention to the words, expressions, phrases and sentence structures you choose.

7: Try writing styles that you wouldn’t usually use

There’s a reason art students often learn multiple media. For one, you learn control. Secondly, you gain versatility. Charcoal life-drawing; papier-mâché, watercolours. Trying different approaches broadens your horizons, expands your palette.

The same goes for writing style. If you usually write long, complex sentences, try writing a chapter where no sentence is longer than 8 words. Forcing yourself out of habitual writing style is a great way to unearth other possibilities. There’s creativity in trying new constraints.

8: Vary your writing style to suit subject, tone and mood

It wouldn’t make sense to discuss writing style without talking about tone and mood. The tone and mood of a scene in a story affects writing style. In a tense, dramatic scene, in rising action (a shootout, a chase), it makes sense for many sentences to be short and action-oriented. This increases the pace.

For example, here David Mitchell describes the reporter Luisa Rey in his Booker-shortlisted novel Cloud Atlas . Luisa is investigating a dodgy environmental cover up:

‘A more alert quarter of Luisa’s brain muscles in. Isaac Sachs left the Sixsmith Report in your VW. You mentioned the hood didn’t lock. He assumes this hotel is not safe and that we are being eavesdropped.’ (p. 140)

The brief, stepwise thoughts of the character mimic a person scanning their memory for details, and the style (including writing private thoughts in italics) shows the anxiety and tension of this whistleblower’s situation.

9: Use precise and selective adverbs and adjectives

Many writers have shunned adverbs. In his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , King writes:

‘I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day… fifty the day after that… and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions.’

Even so, King himself uses 105 adverbs ending in ‘-ly’ per 10, 000 words across 51 of his novels, according to Blatt in Nabokov’s Favourite Word is Mauve . The trick with using fewer adverbs is to use them effectively .

In the sentence ‘she ran quickly to the door’, ‘quickly’ is ineffective because the verb ‘ran’ could do the work of this word instead. If we write ‘she sprinted to the door’ or ‘she rushed to the door’, the sentence is saying ‘this is the character’s mental state’ (hurry) rather than ‘this is how the character’s running looks.’ We’re showing what matters, succinctly.

This is the stellar advice Ursula K. Le Guin gives on writing style and using adverbs and adjectives, in her writing guide Steering the Craft :

‘I would recommend to all storytellers a watchful attitude and a thoughtful, careful choice of adjectives and adverbs, because the bakery shop of English is rich beyond belief, and narrative prose, particularly if it’s going a long distance, needs more muscle than fat.’ (p. 62)

Writing style quote - Ursula K Le Guin | Now Novel

10: Develop a style appropriate to your audience

Audience is an important element to consider regarding writing style. A YA audience won’t have as extensive vocabularies as seasoned, older readers. If writing a YA novel, your revision process should include pinpointing excessively difficult words and finding simpler solutions that keep your story’s reading level age-appropriate. For example, you could easily replace a word like ‘octogenarian’ with ‘senior’.

Ready to improve your craft? Join Now Novel now for helpful feedback and brainstorm ideas for your story.

Scene writing tips: 5 ways to avoid filler
How to master plot development: 8 steps
Writing focus: 9 ways to improve yours
Tags abstract diction , concrete diction , diction , how to improve your writing , writing style

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

6 replies on “Writing styles: 10 tips to master ways of writing”

delicious tips,you’ve written it all so well. 🙂 I have learned a lot and I’m keen to improve my writing skills

Thanks so much, Nicoli. Thank you for reading. Glad to hear you’re motivated.

Well written, thanx for enlightenment,Certainly helpful for ameture like me Waiting for next treat ..I am subscribing it now

Thanks, Imran! Thank you for reading.

“Repeating a word to much deadens writing.” Hm, and I wonder where, upon this globe, Much is? 😉

That aside, I’ve been searching for an article like this for to show my friends! It entices me to peruse this blog a little more to see if I can find more gold nuggets. A pity I’m not American; I won’t be using those writing style guides mentioned. I’ll have to ask Google if it knows a British one.

Anyhow, thank you for sharing. Cheers!

[…] reading, they have to read the whole thing to understand the concept thoroughly. If a reader gets confused or complicated to read, they might not read the entire document. So, we have to keep the reader engaged in making them […]

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Definitive Guide to Writing Styles

April 26, 2024 by Richard Leave a Comment

This is our Definitive Guide to Writing Styles: Throughout history, writers have employed various styles and techniques to convey their ideas, emotions, and stories effectively. Each writing style has its unique characteristics, purpose, and impact on the reader, making it essential for writers to understand and master these different approaches. Whether you are a novelist, journalist, poet, or simply someone who enjoys expressing yourself through the written word, having a deep understanding of the diverse writing styles can help you improve your craft and communicate your message more effectively.

This comprehensive guide aims to provide a detailed overview of the numerous writing styles that have evolved from the classical to the contemporary, from the artistic to the technical. By exploring these styles, you will understand how writers have used language, structure, and tone to create compelling and impactful works across various genres and mediums.

In this guide, we will delve into the intricacies of each writing style, examining its key features, techniques, and examples from renowned authors who have mastered these approaches. We will also discuss the purposes and contexts in which each style is most effective, helping you choose the appropriate style for your writing projects and target audience.

Whether you seek to inform, persuade, entertain, or provoke thought, this guide will equip you with the knowledge and tools necessary to elevate your writing and leave a lasting impact on your readers. By understanding the nuances of each writing style, you can experiment with different approaches, develop your unique voice, and ultimately become a more versatile and accomplished writer.

So, let us embark on this journey through the fascinating world of writing styles, exploring the power of language to shape our thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. Whether you are a seasoned writer or just starting this definitive guide will be invaluable in your quest to master the art of written expression.

The Importance of Choosing the Right Writing Style

Choosing the appropriate writing style is crucial for effectively communicating your message and engaging your target audience. The right style can make your writing more compelling, persuasive, and memorable, while the wrong style can confuse your readers, disinterested, or even offend. Here are some key reasons why selecting the proper writing style is so important:

Clarity and Comprehension: Different writing styles are suited to different purposes and audiences. For example, technical writing aims to convey complex information clearly and concisely, while creative writing often employs figurative language and evocative imagery to engage the reader’s imagination. Choosing a style that matches your purpose and audience ensures that your intended readers understand and appreciate your message.
Credibility and Authority: Your writing style can also impact your credibility and authority on a subject. For instance, academic writing requires a formal, objective tone and rigorous citation of sources to establish the writer’s expertise and trustworthiness. Similarly, journalistic writing must adhere to accuracy, fairness, and impartiality to maintain the reader’s trust. Adopting the appropriate style can demonstrate your knowledge and professionalism in your field.
Emotional Impact and Resonance: The right writing style can also help you create an emotional connection with your readers. For example, a personal essay or memoir may use a confessional, reflective tone to invite the reader into the writer’s inner world and experiences. A persuasive essay, on the other hand, may employ rhetorical devices and a passionate, urgent tone to convince the reader to take action or adopt a particular viewpoint. You can create a more robust and lasting impact by choosing a style that resonates with your readers’ emotions and values.
Artistic Expression and Creativity: For creative writers, the choice of writing style is also an opportunity for artistic expression and innovation. Different styles, such as experimental, absurdist, or lyrical writing, allow writers to push the boundaries of language and form, creating unique and thought-provoking works that challenge and inspire readers. You can produce original and memorable pieces that showcase your talents and perspectives by selecting a style that aligns with your creative vision and voice.
Professional Success and Marketability: Finally, the ability to adapt your writing style to different contexts and audiences can also contribute to your professional success and marketability as a writer. Whether you are crafting a grant proposal, a marketing campaign, or a legal brief, being able to write in the appropriate style can make your work more effective and persuasive. Moreover, demonstrating versatility and skill across multiple styles can open up new opportunities and markets for your writing, increasing your visibility and value as a professional writer.

In conclusion, choosing the right writing style is essential for creating compelling, engaging, and impactful works. By understanding each style’s unique characteristics and purposes and selecting the one that best fits your goals and audience, you can elevate your writing and achieve tremendous success in your personal and professional endeavors. So, take the time to study and practice different writing styles and develop the skills and flexibility to adapt your writing to any context or challenge that comes your way.

The Writing Styles

Academic writing: .

Academic writing follows a formal structure and style for scholarly research and discourse. This writing style is used in various academic disciplines, such as the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, and is characterized by its objectivity, precision, and use of discipline-specific terminology. Academic writing includes research papers, dissertations, conference papers, and scholarly articles, among other forms. Writers must demonstrate their knowledge of the subject matter, engage with existing literature, and contribute original ideas or findings to their field of study. Effective academic writing is well-organized, thoroughly researched, and properly cited, following the conventions and standards of the specific academic discipline.

Absurdist Writing:

Absurdist writing presents irrational or meaningless situations, often to comment on the human condition. This writing style emphasizes life’s absurdity and pointlessness, using non-sequiturs, contradictions, and illogical plot developments to create a sense of disorientation and existential despair. Absurdist writers often use dark humor and satire to critique societal norms and expectations, exposing the inherent meaninglessness and chaos of the world. Effective absurdist writing requires a willingness to embrace the bizarre and the nonsensical, as well as the ability to use language and storytelling techniques to create a sense of unease and discomfort in the reader.

Analytical Writing:

Analytical writing examines and interprets a subject, often breaking it down into smaller parts to better understand the whole. This writing style involves critical thinking, research, and the ability to synthesize information from various sources. Analytical writing is commonly used in academic settings, such as research papers, literary analyses, and case studies, as well as in business reports and policy papers. The writer must present a clear thesis or argument, provide evidence to support their claims and draw meaningful conclusions based on their analysis. Effective analytical writing demonstrates the writer’s ability to think logically, interpret data, and communicate complex ideas clearly and concisely.

Apologetic Writing:

Apologetic writing defends a belief, idea, or action, often in response to criticism. This writing style is used by religious leaders, politicians, and activists to justify and explain their positions on controversial issues. Apologetic writing may involve:

Addressing counterarguments.
Providing evidence and examples to support one’s position.
Appealing to shared values and beliefs.

Effective apologetic writing is well-reasoned and persuasive and demonstrates a deep understanding of the issues at stake.

Argumentative Writing:

Argumentative writing presents a clear position on an issue and uses evidence to support it. This writing style is used by essayists, journalists, and academics to persuade readers to accept a particular point of view or take a specific action. Argumentative writing involves presenting a thesis statement, providing supporting evidence and examples, and addressing counterarguments. Effective argumentative writing is logical, well-researched, and engages with multiple perspectives.

Biographical Writing:

Based on extensive research and factual information, biographical writing tells the story of a natural person’s life. Biographers must gather data from various sources, such as interviews, letters, diaries, and historical records, to create a comprehensive and accurate portrayal of their subject’s life. This writing style requires a balance between presenting factual information and crafting a compelling narrative that captures the subject’s personality, achievements, and struggles. Effective biographical writing is well-researched, objective, and engaging, giving readers a deeper understanding of the subject’s life and legacy.

Blogging is a form of online writing that involves creating regularly updated content, usually conversational or personal. Bloggers write about various topics, from personal experiences and opinions to niche interests and professional expertise. This writing style often aims to inform, entertain, or persuade readers while fostering community and engagement through comments and social media sharing. Effective blogging requires a consistent voice, a clear focus, and the ability to connect with the target audience. Successful bloggers often develop a strong personal brand, cultivate a loyal following, and use their platform to influence, educate, or inspire their readers.

Business Writing:

Business writing involves communicating professionally in business, such as through emails, reports, proposals, or presentations. This writing style aims to convey information, make requests, or persuade colleagues, clients, or stakeholders concisely and effectively. Business writers must adapt their tone and style to suit the specific purpose and audience while maintaining a professional and courteous approach. Effective business writing is well-organized, error-free, and achieves the desired outcome, whether securing a contract, resolving a conflict, or sharing important updates.

Children’s Writing:

Children’s writing creates content suitable for young readers, often with educational or moral messages. This writing style may include picture books, chapter books, and middle-grade novels, each with unique conventions and age-appropriate themes. Children’s writers use simple language, imaginative storytelling, and engaging illustrations to capture the attention and hearts of young readers. Effective children’s writing requires a deep understanding of child development and learning and the ability to create fun and memorable characters and stories that inspire a lifelong love of reading. You might also want to check out 100 Children’s Story Ideas to Inspire.

Comic Book Writing:

Comic book writing involves creating stories and narratives through sequential art and text. This writing style is used by comic book writers, graphic novelists, and storyboard artists to craft engaging and visually compelling stories across various genres, such as superhero, fantasy, science fict ion, and horror. Comic book writing requires a deep understanding of visual storytelling techniques, character development, and world-building. Compelling comic book writing seamlessly integrates text and images, using dialogue, captions, and sound effects to guide the reader through the story. Check out our 100 Superhero writing prompts to inspire your writing.

Comedy Writing:

Comedy writing involves creating humorous content, such as jokes, sketches, or satirical pieces. This writing style aims to entertain and amuse audiences using various techniques, such as irony, sarcasm, exaggeration, and absurdity. Comedy writers often draw inspiration from everyday life, current events, and social norms, using humor to comment on or critique these subjects. Effective comedy writing requires a keen understanding of timing, delivery, and audience preferences and the ability to craft memorable punchlines and characters.

Confessional Poetry:

Confessional poetry expresses the poet’s experiences, often with intense emotions and vulnerability. This writing style emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, with poets such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell using their own lives as subject matter for their work. Confessional poets often explore themes of mental illness, trauma, sexuality, and family dysfunction, using vivid and sometimes shocking imagery to convey their innermost thoughts and feelings. Compelling confessional poetry requires a willingness to be honest and open about one’s experiences and the ability to use language and poetic techniques to create a sense of intimacy and emotional resonance with the reader.

Cosmic Horror

Writing Cosmic horror writing evokes fear of the unknown and humanity’s insignificance in the universe. This writing style, popularized by H.P. Lovecraft and other writers in the early 20th century, often features ancient, otherworldly entities that defy human comprehension and threaten to destroy or corrupt everything we know. Cosmic horror writers use vivid descriptions of alien landscapes, eldritch abominations, and sanity-shattering revelations to create a sense of existential dread and helplessness in the face of an uncaring cosmos. Effective cosmic horror writing requires a mastery of atmosphere and tone and the ability to use language and storytelling techniques to create a sense of mounting terror and despair.

Cyberpunk Writing

Cyberpunk writing explores the relationship between technology and society in a dystopian future. This style of writing, which emerged in the 1980s with works such as William Gibson’s “Neuromancer,” often features a world where corporations have replaced governments, virtual reality has blurred the line between the real and the digital, and cybernetic enhancements have created new forms of social inequality. Cyberpunk writers use vivid descriptions of neon-lit cities, high-tech gadgets, and gritty, street-level characters to create a sense of a futuristic and troubled world. Effective cyberpunk writing requires a deep understanding of science fiction tropes and themes and the ability to use language and storytelling techniques to create a sense of immediacy and social commentary. If you love cyberpunk writing, you will love our 50 Cyberpunk writing prompts .

Diaspora Writing

Diaspora writing reflects the experiences and identities of people displaced from their homeland. This style of writing often explores themes of exile, cultural identity, and the search for belonging, using the perspectives of immigrants, refugees, and other displaced people to create a sense of the complexity and diversity of the modern world. Diaspora writers may write in various genres, such as fiction, poetry, or memoir, using their experiences and communities to create deeply personal and broadly resonant works. Effective diaspora writing requires a deep understanding of the social, cultural, and historical contexts of displacement and the ability to use language and storytelling techniques to create a sense of empathy and connection with the reader.

Dialectical Writing:

Dialectical writing presents opposing viewpoints or arguments for a synthesis or resolution. This style of writing, which has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy, involves dialogue, debate, and logical reasoning to explore complex ideas and arrive at a deeper understanding of the truth. Dialectical writers often present two or more characters with conflicting viewpoints, using their arguments and counterarguments to gradually build towards a new perspective that incorporates elements of both sides. Effective dialectical writing requires a deep understanding of the subject matter and the ability to use language and rhetorical techniques to create a sense of intellectual engagement and discovery.

Dramatic Writing:

Dramatic writing involves creating scripts for the stage, often exploring severe themes and human emotions. Playwrights use this style of writing to craft powerful and thought-provoking stories that actors can perform in front of a live audience. Dramatic writing often delves into complex characters, relationships, and conflicts, using dialogue, action, and symbolism to convey meaning and evoke emotional responses from the audience. Effective dramatic writing requires a deep understanding of human nature and the ability to create compelling and believable characters and story lines.

Dystopian Writing:

Dystopian writing imagines a bleak future society characterized by totalitarianism or environmental collapse. This style of writing, which has its roots in works such as George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” often features a world where individual freedom has been sacrificed for the sake of social stability, where technology has been used to control and oppress rather than liberate, and where the natural world has been destroyed or depleted. Dystopian writers use vivid descriptions of oppressive regimes, conformist societies, and environmental devastation to create a sense of warning and critique about the dangers of unchecked power and human hubris. Effective dystopian writing requires a deep understanding of social and political issues and the ability to use language and storytelling techniques to create a sense of urgency and cautionary tale. If your story lines lean into the end of the world, you might want to check out our 100 Dystopian writing prompts .

Copywriting:

Copywriting creates persuasive content for advertising and marketing purposes. This writing style promotes products, services, and ideas, primarily convincing the target audience to take a specific action, such as purchasing, signing up for a service, or supporting a cause. Copywriters must deeply understand the target audience’s needs, desires, and pain points and use this knowledge to craft compelling messages that resonate with them. Effective copywriting is creative, concise, and emotionally engaging, using persuasive techniques such as storytelling, humor, and social proof to capture the audience’s attention and motivate them to act.

Creative Writing:

Creative writing encompasses imaginative and original writing, often in a literary context. This writing style includes various genres, such as fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction, and allows the writer to express their unique voice, style, and perspective. Creative writing often explores themes, emotions, and the human experience, using literary devices and techniques to create engaging and thought-provoking works. The primary goal of creative writing is to entertain, inspire, or provoke the reader while showcasing the writer’s artistic skills and imagination. Creative writing can be found in novels, short stories, poems, plays, and screenplays, among other forms. We have over 1000 Creative Writing prompts on our site!

Descriptive Writing:

Descriptive writing uses vivid language to describe people, places, objects, or experiences in great detail, creating a transparent and evocative picture in the reader’s mind. This writing style often employs sensory details, figurative language, and precise word choice to capture the essence of the subject being described. Descriptive writing can be found in various forms of literature, such as poetry, prose, and creative nonfiction, as well as in travel writing, nature writing, and product descriptions. The primary goal of descriptive writing is to help the reader visualize and experience the subject as if they were there, evoking emotions and creating a lasting impression.

Editorial Writing:

Editorial writing presents a publication’s or editorial board’s opinion on a current issue or topic of public interest. It aims to inform, persuade, or call readers to action, often taking a solid stance on a particular subject. This writing style requires a deep understanding of the issue and the ability to present a well-reasoned and compelling argument. Effective editorial writing is clear, concise, and thought-provoking, offering a unique perspective or solution to the problem being addressed.

Environmental Writing:

Environmental writing addresses ecological issues, nature, and the relationship between humans and the environment. This writing style is used by environmental journalists, activists, and nature writers to raise awareness about ecological problems, explore the beauty and complexity of the natural world, and advocate for conservation and sustainability. Environmental writing may include investigative reporting on issues such as climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, as well as personal essays and nature writing that celebrate the wonder and fragility of the earth. Effective environmental writing is informative and persuasive and inspires readers to take action to protect the planet.

Epistolary Writing:

Epistolary writing tells a story or conveys information through letters, emails, or other forms of correspondence. This writing style allows the reader to experience the story through the characters’ thoughts, feelings, and interactions. Epistolary novels, such as “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker and “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, are famous examples of this style. Effective epistolary writing creates a sense of intimacy and authenticity as the reader becomes privy to the characters’ private lives and relationships.If you enjoy writing through letters you may enjoy 100 Epistolary Writing Prompts for Telling Stories Through Letters

Erotica Writing:

Erotica’s writing depicts sexual experiences and desires in a literary or artistic manner. This style aims to arouse and engage readers by exploring sensuality, intimacy, and fantasy themes. Erotica writers often use descriptive language and imagery to create vivid and immersive scenes while developing compelling and relatable characters and relationships. Effective erotica writing requires a balance of explicitness and subtlety, as well as a deep understanding of human sexuality and desire.

Experimental Writing:

Experimental writing pushes the boundaries of traditional forms and styles, often in an avant-garde manner. This writing style, which emerged in the early 20th century with movements such as Dadaism and Surrealism, usually uses unconventional or fragmented narrative structures, stream-of-consciousness techniques, and linguistic experimentation to create a sense of artistic innovation and challenge to the status quo. Experimental writers may write in various genres, such as poetry, fiction, or drama, using their creative vision and technical skills to create intellectually stimulating and emotionally provocative works. Effective experimental writing requires a willingness to take risks and break rules and the ability to use language and form in surprising and inventive ways.

Existential Writing

Existential writing grapples with questions of existence, meaning, and the human condition. This style of writing, which emerged in the 20th century with writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir, often explores themes of freedom, responsibility, and the absurdity of life, using fiction, philosophy, and personal reflection to create a sense of the individual’s struggle to find purpose and authenticity in a seemingly meaningless world. Existential writers may write in various genres, such as novels, plays, or essays, using their experiences and insights to create deeply introspective and broadly relevant works. Effective existential writing requires a willingness to confront the big questions of life head-on and the ability to use language and storytelling techniques to create a sense of intellectual and emotional engagement with the reader.

Expository Writing:

Expository writing is a type of writing that aims to explain, inform, or describe a topic, idea, or process to the reader. The primary goal of expository writing is to convey information clearly and concisely without expressing personal opinions or biases. This writing style is commonly used in academic settings, such as textbooks, research papers, and essays, as well as in journalism, technical writing, and instructional materials. Expository writing often follows a logical structure, presenting information in a systematic and organized manner and using facts, examples, and definitions to support the main ideas.

Fanfiction Writing:

Fanfiction writing involves creating new stories based on existing characters or settings from popular media, such as books, movies, TV shows, or video games. This writing style allows fans to explore alternative storylines, relationships, and possibilities not addressed in the source material. Fanfiction writers often use their knowledge of the original work to create stories that are both faithful to the established canon and innovative in their own right. Effective fanfiction writing requires a deep understanding of the source material and the ability to capture the voices and personalities of the characters.

Fantasy Writing:

Fantasy writing involves creating stories set in imaginary worlds that often include magic, mythical creatures, and heroic quests. This writing style allows authors to explore themes and ideas that may not be possible in realistic settings, using world-building and character development to create immersive and compelling narratives. Fantasy writers often draw inspiration from mythology, folklore, and history, using these elements to create rich and detailed worlds that feel both familiar and new. Effective fantasy writing requires a strong imagination and the ability to create believable and consistent magic systems and world-building elements. If you enjoy fantasy writing we have many fantasy writing prompts on our sites, 50 Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Prompts , 100 dark fantasy writing prompts , 100 fantasy romance writing prompts , 100 fantasy romance writing prompts , 50 Fantasy Writing Prompts: Wizards and Dragons , and 50 fantasy writing prompts to inspire .

Fashion Writing:

Fashion writing covers fashion trends, designers, and the fashion industry. This writing style is used by fashion journalists, bloggers, and critics to report on fashion shows, designer collections, and street style trends. Fashion writing may also include:

Profiles of fashion icons.
Opinion pieces on the cultural and social impact of fashion.
Guides on personal style and fashion advice.

Effective fashion writing is engaging, visually descriptive, and captures the creativity and dynamism of the fashion world.

Flash Fiction:

Flash fiction is a concise form of storytelling, often under 1,000 words, that still manages to convey a complete narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. This writing style requires concision, precision, and a strong understanding of story structure and character development. Flash fiction writers must be able to create a compelling story, evoke emotions, and leave a lasting impact on the reader in a limited amount of space. Compelling flash fiction is often surprising, thought-provoking, and emotionally resonant, demonstrating the power of brevity in storytelling.

Food Writing:

Food writing describes and critiques culinary experiences, recipes, and food culture. Food critics, bloggers, and culinary enthusiasts use this style of writing to explore the art and science of cooking, the history and cultural significance of various cuisines, and the personal and social aspects of food and dining. Food writing may include restaurant reviews, recipe guides, and essays on food-related topics such as sustainability, nutrition, and the food industry. Effective food writing is sensory and informative and conveys the joy and passion of culinary exploration.

Ghostwriting:

Ghostwriting involves writing content officially credited to another person, often a public figure, celebrity, or expert in a particular field. Ghostwriters collaborate with their clients to capture their voices, ideas, and experiences and create written works that align with the client’s goals and intended audience. This writing style requires strong communication skills, adaptability, and maintaining confidentiality. Ghostwriters may work on various projects, such as memoirs, novels, articles, speeches, and social media content. Effective ghostwriting seamlessly blends the client’s vision with the writer’s skills, creating a final product that accurately represents the credited author.

Gothic Writing:

Gothic writing is a style that evokes mystery, fear, and the supernatural in a dark, atmospheric setting. This type of writing often features eerie or haunted locations, dark family secrets, and characters grappling with internal conflicts or external threats. Gothic writers use descriptive language and imagery to create a sense of unease and foreboding, often exploring themes of death, decay, and the unknown. Effective Gothic writing requires a mastery of atmosphere and tone and the ability to create complex and psychologically compelling characters. If you like Gothic writing you might like our 100 gothic fiction writing prompts .

Grant Writing:

Grant writing involves preparing proposals to secure funding for projects, programs, or organizations from government agencies, foundations, or other funding bodies. This writing style requires a clear understanding of the funding organization’s goals, priorities, and application requirements. Grant writers must effectively communicate the need for the proposed project, outline specific objectives and activities, and provide a compelling case for why the funding should be awarded. Effective grant writing is persuasive, well-organized, and strongly aligns with the proposed project and the funding organization’s mission.

Haiku is a Japanese poetic form consisting of three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable structure. This style of writing, which originated in the 17th century, often focuses on nature, seasons, and moments of epiphany or insight, using simple, concise language to create a sense of beauty, transience, and spiritual depth. Haiku writers use vivid sensory details and juxtaposition to create a sense of immediacy and connection with the natural world, often leaving room for the reader’s interpretation and reflection. Effective haiku requires a mastery of the form’s technical constraints and the ability to use language and imagery to create a sense of emotional resonance and universality.

Hard-Boiled Writing

Hard-boiled writing features tough, cynical characters in a gritty, crime-ridden setting. This style of writing, which emerged in the 1920s and 1930s with writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, often features a world where corruption and violence are the norm, where the line between right and wrong is blurred, and where the protagonist must navigate a treacherous landscape of double-crosses and moral ambiguity. Hard-boiled writers use vivid descriptions of seedy underworlds, fast-paced action, and snappy dialogue to create a sense of danger and excitement, often using the detective story as a vehicle for social commentary and critique. Effective hard-boiled writing requires a deep understanding of the genre’s conventions and themes and the ability to use language and storytelling techniques to create a sense of authenticity and raw, street-level realism.

Historical Writing:

Historical writing investigates and interprets past events based on primary and secondary sources. Historians, scholars, and researchers use this writing style to analyze and explain the causes, consequences, and significance of historical events, figures, and movements. Historical writing may also involve exploring the social, cultural, and political contexts that shaped the past. Effective historical writing is well-researched, objective, and provides a compelling narrative that sheds new light on our understanding of history. If you like writing about history, you might find our 50 historical fiction writing prompts helpful.

Horror Writing:

Horror writing aims to frighten and unsettle readers through suspenseful and disturbing content. This writing style often explores themes of fear, violence, and the supernatural, using vivid descriptions and plot twists to create a sense of dread and terror. Horror writers may draw inspiration from real-life fears and phobias and classic horror tropes and archetypes. Effective horror writing requires a deep understanding of what scares people and the ability to create believable and terrifying scenarios that linger in the reader’s mind long after the story ends. If you like horror you are in the right place, we have 100s of horror writing prompts to spark your creativity like: Daily horror writing prompts, 50 Lovecraftian horror writing prompts , 50 Horror Writing Prompts from Different Points of View , 365 Horrifying Horror Writing Prompts , 100 Vampire, Werewolf, Witch and Ghost Writing Prompts , 100 survival horror writing prompts, and 10 Horrifying Horror Story Prompts . We have many more articles and lists dealing with horror on our site.

Hypertext Writing

Hypertext writing uses hyperlinks to create non-linear, interactive narratives. This writing style, which emerged in the late 20th century with the rise of digital media, allows readers to navigate through a story or informational text non-sequentially, following links and pathways that reflect their interests and choices. Hypertext writers use branching storylines, multimedia elements, and user interactivity to create a sense of immersion and agency for the reader, often blurring the line between author and audience. Effective hypertext writing requires a deep understanding of digital storytelling techniques, user experience design, and creating compelling and coherent narratives that can be explored in multiple ways.

Invective Writing

Invective writing expresses strong criticism or verbal abuse towards a person or group. This style of writing, which has its roots in ancient Greek and Roman oratory, often uses harsh language, personal attacks, and rhetorical flourishes to denounce or discredit an opponent, often in a political or social context. Invective writers may use sarcasm, irony, and hyperbole to create a sense of moral outrage or righteous anger, usually appealing to the reader’s emotions and sense of justice. Effective invective writing requires a mastery of rhetorical techniques, a keen understanding of the audience’s values and beliefs, and the ability to use language and argument to create a sense of urgency and call to action.

Inspirational Writing:

Inspirational writing aims to uplift, encourage, and motivate readers. This writing style is used by motivational speakers, religious leaders, and self-help authors to provide guidance and support for personal and spiritual growth. Inspirational writing may include stories of overcoming adversity, quotes and affirmations, and practical advice for living a more fulfilling life. Effective, inspirational writing is empowering and compassionate and helps readers find meaning and purpose.

Journalistic Writing:

Journalistic writing reports on news, events, and issues objectively and truthfully. This writing style is used in newspapers, magazines, and online media outlets to inform the public about current affairs, politics, entertainment, sports, and other topics of interest. Journalistic writing follows a specific structure, often using the inverted pyramid format, which presents the most critical information first and gradually provides more details and background information. Journalists must adhere to ethical standards, such as accuracy, fairness, and impartiality, and verify their sources and facts before publishing their work. Effective journalistic writing is clear, concise, and engaging, capturing the reader’s attention and conveying the essential information quickly and efficiently.

Legal Writing:

Legal writing involves drafting legal documents, such as contracts, briefs, or opinions, and presenting arguments precisely and persuasively. This writing style requires a deep understanding of legal principles, case law, and statutory requirements and the ability to analyze complex legal issues and communicate them effectively to legal professionals and lay audiences. Effective legal writing is well-structured, thoroughly researched, and adheres to the legal field’s conventions and formatting requirements.

Lyrical Writing:

Lyrical writing employs poetic and melodic language to evoke emotions and imagery. This style of writing, which is often associated with poetry and songwriting, uses techniques such as rhyme, meter, and figurative language to create a sense of musicality and rhythm in the text. Lyrical writers often focus on themes of love, nature, and the human experience, using sensory details and symbolic imagery to create a sense of beauty, intimacy, and emotional depth. Effective lyrical writing requires a mastery of poetic techniques, a keen ear for language, and the ability to use words and phrases to create a sense of melody and harmony on the page.

Magical Realism Writing:

Magical realism writing incorporates fantastical elements into an otherwise realistic setting. This style of writing, which emerged in Latin American literature in the mid-20th century, often features supernatural or mythical events and characters that are treated as a natural part of the everyday world, frequently used to explore themes of cultural identity, political oppression, and the blurring of boundaries between the real and the imaginary. Magical realist writers use vivid descriptions of the natural and the supernatural to create a sense of wonder and enchantment, often leaving the reader questioning the nature of reality. Effective magical realism writing requires a deep understanding of the genre’s conventions and themes and the ability to use language and storytelling techniques to integrate the mundane and the miraculous seamlessly. If you like magical realism you might want to check out our Spellbinding 100 Magical Realism Prompts .

Medical Writing:

Medical writing involves communicating medical and health-related information to various audiences, such as healthcare professionals, patients, or the general public. This writing style covers multiple topics, from clinical research and drug development to patient education and health journalism. Medical writers must have a strong understanding of medical terminology, human anatomy and physiology, and the latest advancements in healthcare. Effective medical writing is accurate, precise, and tailored to the target audience’s specific needs and knowledge level, ensuring that complex medical information is conveyed in an accessible and engaging manner.

Memoir Writing:

Memoir writing is a form of autobiographical writing that recounts specific experiences, events, or periods in the author’s life. Unlike an autobiography, which typically covers the author’s life, a memoir focuses on a particular theme, relationship, or period of personal growth. Memoirists often reflect on their experiences, share lessons learned, and explore the broader implications of their individual stories. Effective memoir writing is honest, reflective, and emotionally engaging, allowing the reader to connect with the author’s experiences and gain new insights into the human condition.

Metafiction Writing:

Metafiction writing self-consciously addresses the conventions and artificiality of storytelling. This writing style often breaks the fourth wall, directly acknowledging the reader and the fictional nature of the narrative. Metafictional works may include self-referential elements, such as characters who are aware they are in a story or plot devices that are openly discussed and manipulated. Metafiction challenges traditional narrative structures by exposing storytelling mechanics and encourages readers to reflect on the relationship between fiction and reality. Effective metafiction writing requires a deep understanding of literary conventions, a willingness to subvert them, and the ability to create engaging stories that operate on multiple levels of meaning.

Minimalist Writing:

Minimalist writing uses simple, sparse language and focuses on the essential elements of the story. This writing style, which emerged in the mid-20th century with writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver, often features short sentences, limited descriptions, and a focus on action and dialogue rather than introspection or exposition. Minimalist writers aim to convey the most meaning with the fewest words possible, trusting the reader to fill in the gaps and interpret the subtext. Effective minimalist writing requires a mastery of concision and precision and the ability to create compelling characters and storylines using only the most essential details.

Motivational Writing:

Motivational writing encourages readers to take action and pursue their goals. Life coaches, business leaders, and success experts use this writing style to provide strategies and techniques for overcoming obstacles, building confidence, and achieving success. Motivational writing may include case studies, personal anecdotes, and practical exercises for setting and achieving goals. Effective motivational writing is energizing and action-oriented and helps readers develop the mindset and skills needed to succeed.

Mystery Writing:

Mystery writing revolves around a crime or puzzle that the protagonist must solve. This writing style often features a detective or amateur sleuth who uses observation and deduction skills to uncover clues and piece together the truth. Mystery writers use suspense, red herrings, and plot twists to keep readers guessing until the final reveal. Effective mystery writing requires careful plotting and pacing and creating complex, believable characters with hidden motives and secrets.We have lots of support for mystery writing on our site including 50 mystery whodunit writing prompts.

Narrative Writing:

Narrative writing tells a story, usually with a clear beginning, middle, and end. This writing style often involves a plot, characters, and a setting and may be based on real-life events or entirely fictional. Narrative writing aims to engage the reader by creating an immersive experience, using descriptive language, dialogue, and sensory details to bring the story to life. Common examples of narrative writing include novels, short stories, memoirs, and personal essays. A well-crafted narrative often consists of a conflict or challenge the main character must overcome, leading to a resolution or change in the character’s life.

Noir Writing:

Noir writing depicts a dark, morally ambiguous world, often in a detective or crime story. This writing style, which emerged in the mid-20th century with writers such as Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, usually features cynical, world-weary protagonists who navigate a shadowy underworld of corruption, deceit, and violence. Noir writers use vivid descriptions of urban decay, complex plotlines, and snappy, often sarcastic dialogue to create a sense of atmosphere and moral ambiguity. Effective noir writing requires a deep understanding of the genre’s conventions and themes and the ability to create complex, flawed characters and intricate, suspenseful storylines. Noir is such a great writing style/genre, check out our 150 tech noir writing prompts .

Op-Ed Writing:

Op-ed writing, short for “opposite the editorial page,” expresses a personal opinion on a current issue, often in a newspaper or magazine. Unlike editorials representing a publication’s official stance, op-eds are authored by individual writers, experts, or public figures. This writing style allows for diverse perspectives and often sparks public debate or discussion on important topics. Effective op-ed writing is persuasive, well-informed, and offers a fresh or provocative take.

Paranormal Writing:

Paranormal writing features supernatural or inexplicable phenomena in a realistic setting. This writing style often explores themes of ghosts, psychic abilities, and otherworldly creatures, using a blend of horror, mystery, and fantasy elements to create eerie and atmospheric stories. Paranormal writers often use their stories to explore deeper themes of life, death, and the nature of reality. Effective paranormal writing requires a balance of realism and the supernatural and the ability to create compelling characters grappling with extraordinary circumstances. We love the paranormal around here, and you might like our 50 paranormal romance story starters or 100 Paranormal Fantasy Writing Prompts .

Pastoral Writing:

Pastoral writing celebrates rural life and landscapes, often in an idealized or nostalgic manner. This style of writing, which has its roots in ancient Greek and Roman literature, usually features descriptions of rural settings, such as rolling hills, babbling brooks, and peaceful meadows, as well as characters who live in harmony with nature. Pastoral writers often use their works to contrast the simplicity and beauty of rural life with the corruption and complexity of urban society, sometimes as a form of social commentary or critique. Effective pastoral writing requires a deep appreciation for the natural world and an ability to evoke a sense of place and atmosphere through vivid, sensory descriptions.

Persuasive Writing:

Persuasive writing aims to convince the reader to adopt a particular viewpoint or take a specific action. This writing style presents arguments, evidence, and reasoning to support a position or claim while addressing and refuting potential counterarguments. Persuasive writing is commonly used in opinion pieces, editorials, advertisements, and political speeches. Effective, compelling writing must be well-researched, logically structured, and emotionally appealing to the target audience. The writer may use rhetorical devices, such as ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), and logos (logic), to strengthen their arguments and persuade the reader.

Philosophical Writing:

Philosophical writing examines fundamental questions and ideas about knowledge, reality, and existence. Philosophers and thinkers use this writing style to explore abstract concepts, challenge assumptions, and propose new ways of understanding the world. Philosophical writing often involves constructing logical arguments, analyzing existing theories, and engaging in critical thinking. Effective philosophical writing is clear, precise, rigorous, and open to multiple perspectives and interpretations.

Picaresque Writing:

Picaresque’s writing follows a mischievous hero’s adventures in an episodic, often satirical narrative. This style of writing, which originated in 16th-century Spain with works such as “Lazarillo de Tormes,” usually features a low-born, morally ambiguous protagonist who moves from one adventure to another, often as a means of social critique or commentary. Picaresque writers use humor, irony, and a sense of the absurd to create an understanding of the protagonist’s outsider status and the inherent flaws and defects of the society they move through. Effective picaresque writing requires a mastery of episodic storytelling, a keen eye for social satire, and the ability to create a compelling if not always likable, central character.

Poetry is a form of creative writing that uses language artistically to evoke emotions, ideas, or experiences. Poets employ various literary devices, such as metaphor, simile, alliteration, and rhyme, to create vivid imagery, convey deeper meanings, and explore universal themes. Poetry can take many forms, from traditional structures like sonnets and haikus to free verse and experimental styles. The primary goal of poetry is to express the poet’s unique perspective and evoke an emotional response from the reader. Compelling poetry is often concise yet powerful, using carefully chosen words and phrases to create a lasting impact. Please also see our 50 Poetry Writing Prompts Every Writer should try .

Political Writing:

Political writing discusses political issues, policies, and events from various perspectives. Journalists, commentators, and political analysts use this writing style to report on elections, legislation, and international relations and provide opinions and analysis on political topics. Political writing may include speeches, manifestos, and policy papers by politicians and advocacy groups. Effective political writing is well-informed and objective and engages with the complexities and controversies of the political landscape.

Review Writing:

Review writing involves evaluating and critically assessing a product, service, or work of art, such as a book, movie, restaurant, or consumer item. Reviewers provide their informed opinions, highlighting the subject’s strengths and weaknesses. This style of writing requires a deep understanding of the relevant industry or field and the ability to analyze and articulate the key aspects that contribute to the overall quality or value of the subject. Effective review writing is objective, well-reasoned, and provides valuable insights to help readers make informed decisions.

Romance Writing:

Romance writing focuses on the development of a romantic relationship between characters. This writing style often explores themes of love, desire, and commitment, using obstacles and conflicts to test the strength of the central relationship. Romance writers may write in various subgenres, such as historical romance, contemporary romance, or paranormal romance, each with unique conventions and tropes. Effective romance writing requires a deep understanding of human relationships and emotions and the ability to create compelling and likable characters for which readers can root.

Satirical Writing:

Satirical writing uses humor, irony, or exaggeration to criticize or comment on society, individuals, or institutions. This writing style aims to expose and ridicule human vices, follies, and absurdities, often to promote social or political change. Satirical writing can take many forms, such as essays, novels, plays, and cartoons, and usually requires a deep understanding of the subject matter being satirized. Effective satirical writing is witty, clever, and thought-provoking, using humor to highlight serious issues and encourage the audience to question the status quo.

Script writing:

Script writing involves creating scripts for various forms of visual media, such as films, television shows, plays, and video games. This writing style requires a unique format that includes scene descriptions, character dialogues, and stage directions. Scriptwriters must have a strong understanding of storytelling techniques, character development, and visual storytelling. They collaborate with directors, producers, and other creative professionals to bring their scripts to life on screen or stage. Effective scriptwriting creates engaging and memorable stories, compelling characters, and vivid scenes that captivate the audience.

Science Fiction Writing:

Science fiction writing speculates about future technologies, societies, and scientific discoveries. This writing style often explores themes of space exploration, time travel, artificial intelligence, and dystopian futures, using imaginative world-building and technical detail to create believable and thought-provoking stories. Science fiction writers may draw inspiration from current scientific research and theories and classic science fiction tropes and archetypes. Effective science fiction writing requires a balance of creativity and scientific plausibility and the ability to create compelling characters and storylines that explore the human condition in a futuristic setting.

Scientific Writing:

Scientific writing presents research findings, hypotheses, and scientific information in a structured, technical style. This writing style is used in academic journals, research papers, and grant proposals and requires a clear understanding of the scientific method, data analysis, and the relevant field of study. Scientific writers must effectively communicate complex ideas, methods, and results, using precise language and visual aids, such as graphs and charts, to support their findings. Effective scientific writing is objective, well-organized, and contributes to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Self-Help Writing:

Self-help writing provides advice and guidance for personal growth and improvement. This writing style is used by self-help authors, life coaches, and mental health professionals to offer strategies and techniques for overcoming challenges, achieving goals, and improving overall well-being. Self-help writing may cover many topics, such as relationships, career development, stress management, and spiritual growth. Effective self-help writing is practical and empowering, offering readers concrete tools and insights for creating positive change in their lives.

Social Commentary Writing:

Social commentary writing offers observations and opinions on social issues and cultural phenomena. Essayists, columnists, and cultural critics use this style of writing to analyze and critique various aspects of society, such as race, gender, class, and popular culture. Social commentary writing may include personal reflections and stories illuminating more significant social issues. Effective social commentary writing is insightful and thought-provoking, challenging readers to examine their beliefs and assumptions about the world.

Speech writing:

Speech writing involves crafting speeches for public figures, such as politicians, business leaders, or activists, tailored to the specific speaker and audience. This writing style requires a deep understanding of the speaker’s voice, style, objectives, and the audience’s expectations and concerns. Speechwriters must effectively convey the speaker’s message, using rhetorical devices, storytelling, and persuasive arguments to engage and influence the audience. Effective speech writing is clear, concise, and memorable, leaving a lasting impact on the listeners.

Sports Writing:

Sports writing reports on and analyzes sports events, athletes, and related issues. Journalists, bloggers, and commentators use this style of writing to cover a wide range of sports, from amateur leagues to professional competitions. Sports writing may include game recaps, player profiles, opinion pieces, and investigative reporting on doping, corruption, and social justice in sports. Effective sports writing is engaging and informative and captures the excitement and drama of athletic competition.

Stream of Consciousness Writing:

Stream-of-consciousness writing presents a character’s continuous flow of thoughts, impressions, and experiences without traditional narrative structure or punctuation constraints. This writing style aims to capture the inner workings of a character’s mind, often in a non-linear or fragmented manner. Famous examples of stream-of-consciousness writing include James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.” Effective stream-of-consciousness writing creates a sense of immediacy and psychological depth, allowing the reader to experience the character’s thoughts and emotions raw and unfiltered.

Technical Writing:

Technical writing communicates complex information clearly and concisely to a specific audience. This writing style is used in various industries, such as engineering, computer science, and healthcare, to create user manuals, product specifications, software documentation, and other instructional materials. Technical writers must have a deep understanding of the subject matter and be able to explain complex concepts and processes in a way that is accessible to the intended audience. Effective technical writing is well-structured, uses precise language and terminology, and often includes visual aids, such as diagrams, charts, and images, to support the text and enhance understanding.

Theological Writing:

Theological writing explores religious beliefs, practices, and spiritual ideas in a scholarly or reflective manner. Theologians, religious scholars, and spiritual leaders often use this writing style to analyze and interpret religious texts, doctrines, and traditions. Theological writing may also include personal reflections on faith, spirituality, and the human experience. Effective theological writing is well-researched and thoughtful and engages with the complexities and nuances of religious thought while remaining accessible to the intended audience.

Travel Writing:

Travel writing describes a traveler’s experiences, observations, and recommendations for visiting a particular destination or embarking on a journey. This writing style aims to transport the reader to the described location, providing vivid details about the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations encountered along the way. Travel writers often share their insights, historical and cultural context, and practical advice for other travelers. Effective travel writing is engaging, informative, and evocative, inspiring readers to explore new places and gain a deeper appreciation for the world around them.

Thriller Writing:

Thriller writing creates intense suspense and excitement, often in a high-stakes plot. This writing style usually features a race against time, a dangerous villain, and a protagonist who must use their skills and cunning to survive. Thriller writers use fast pacing, plot twists, and cliffhangers to keep readers in their seats. Effective thriller writing requires a mastery of suspense and tension and the ability to create complex and morally ambiguous characters.

Western Writing:

Western writing is set in the American Old West, often featuring cowboys, outlaws, and frontier life. This writing style frequently explores themes of honor, justice, and the struggle between civilization and wilderness. Western writers use vivid descriptions of the rugged landscape and colorful characters to create a sense of place and time. Effective Western writing requires a deep understanding of the historical and cultural context of the American West, as well as the ability to create compelling and archetypal characters.

Young Adult Writing:

Young adult writing targets readers aged 12-18 and often deals with coming-of-age themes. This writing style usually features teenage protagonists grappling with issues of identity, relationships, and the transition from childhood to adulthood. Young adult writers may write in genres such as fantasy, science fiction, or contemporary realism, using relatable characters and engaging storylines to connect with their audience. Effective young adult writing requires a deep understanding of the concerns and experiences of teenagers, as well as the ability to create authentic and compelling characters and story lines.

In conclusion, this comprehensive guide has provided a detailed exploration of the diverse and fascinating world of writing styles. From the classical to the contemporary, from the informative to the imaginative, each style represents a unique approach to the art of written expression, with its purpose, techniques, and impact on the reader.

Throughout this guide, we have examined the key characteristics and examples of dozens of writing styles, ranging from the concise and precise methods of technical and journalistic writing to the evocative and experimental forms of poetry and absurdist writing. We have also discussed the importance of choosing the appropriate style for your purpose and audience and how the right choice can enhance your work’s clarity, credibility, emotional resonance, and artistic merit.

However, it is essential to remember that mastering these writing styles is not simply memorizing rules and formulas. Instead, it is an ongoing exploration, experimentation, and growth process as you develop your unique voice and perspective as a writer. By studying the works of great authors and practitioners of each style and constantly challenging yourself to try new approaches and techniques, you can continue expanding your writing skills and creativity.

Moreover, in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, the ability to adapt and innovate with different writing styles has become more critical than ever. With the proliferation of new media platforms and technologies, writers must be able to craft compelling content across a wide range of formats and channels, from social media posts and blog articles to interactive narratives and immersive storytelling experiences. By deeply understanding the various writing styles and their potential applications, you can position yourself at the forefront of this exciting and transformative era in written communication.

As we conclude this definitive guide to writing styles, we encourage you to embrace the richness and diversity of the written word and continue exploring and experimenting with different approaches and techniques in your writing. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a passionate amateur, a poet or a programmer, a journalist or a novelist, the power to express yourself effectively and creatively through writing is one of our greatest gifts and responsibilities as communicators and storytellers. By mastering the art of writing styles, you can enhance your skills and impact as a writer and contribute to the ongoing evolution and vitality of the written word as a medium for human understanding, imagination, and connection.

About Richard

Richard Everywriter (pen name) has worked for literary magazines and literary websites for the last 25 years. He holds degrees in Writing, Journalism, Technology and Education. Richard has headed many writing workshops and courses, and he has taught writing and literature for the last 20 years.

In writing and publishing he has worked with independent, small, medium and large publishers for years connecting publishers to authors. He has also worked as a journalist and editor in both magazine, newspaper and trade publications as well as in the medical publishing industry. Follow him on Twitter, and check out our Submissions page .

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4‌ ‌Styles‌ ‌of‌ ‌Writing‌ ‌and‌ ‌How‌ ‌to‌ ‌Decide‌ ‌Which‌ ‌to‌ ‌Use

Your goal, whether writing fiction or nonfiction , should be to paint word pictures vivid enough to engage the theater of your reader’s mind. Readers love to be educated and entertained, but they remember forever when they’re emotionally moved.

So deciding which you’ll employ of the four main writing styles is crucial to leaving a powerful impression on the page. Study these so you can settle on whichever best helps you find your unique writing voice .

The 4 Main Writing Styles

1. Expository

What it does: Explains or describes.

It answers what, why, and how with facts, not opinion.

You’ll find expository writing in:

News articles
Historical accounts
Scientific and medical journals and articles
Instruction manuals
Self-help books

It may include quotes , links, tables, charts, and citations of sources.

Its function is to highlight key points and facts.

2. Descriptive

What it does: Offers a clear, concise description of a person, place , thing, or event, designed to engage readers’ senses and trigger the theaters of their minds .

The best descriptive writing avoids spoon feeding every detail to the reader, but rather offers just enough information to engage his senses . It can be found in every kind of writing.( Show, don’t tell )

3. Persuasive

What it does: Provokes action in the reader.

Its aim is to argue, using evidence that backs a certain perspective. It can be direct and bold and is found in:

Opinion pieces and editorials
Advertising copy
Academic papers
Cover letters
Letters of recommendation
Product reviews

4. Narrative

What it does: Tells a story. It has a plot, setting, and characters —a beginning, middle, and end.

You’ll find narrative writing in:

Stage and Screenplays
Creative nonfiction
Short stories
How to Decide Which Writing Style to Use

Your unique voice (what you say) and tone (how you say it) set you apart.

Ferociously self edit . Rewrite. Repeat. (All writing is rewriting.)

Rules to remember within each style:

Answer what, why, or how
Stick to facts
Avoid revealing your bias
Cite expert sources

Descriptive

Show, don’t tell
Engage the reader’s senses
Don’t spoon feed description; suggest
Use literary devices like metaphors and similes
Know where your audience is coming from
Acknowledge opposing views
Rely on credible credible (documented) facts
Appeal to the heart of the reader
Determine your narrator ( Point of View )
Develop your plot and characters
Create a strong story and character arc
Give readers a satisfying conclusion

Still struggling? Take my Free Writing Assessment and get personalized advice on how to improve.

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16 Types Of Writing Every Writer Should Master

Discover our guide with types of writing you can use in your next writing assignment; there are many different forms of writing to explore today!

As someone who makes a living writing for other people’s websites, I often adapt my writing style for different audiences and situations. The way I write conveys meaning beyond the words I use or what I say. Some forms of writing paint a picture, convince readers to act, or communicate facts using reliable sources. Choosing from the different types of writing and adapting to the requirements of a professor, business, or client is crucial to writing success.

Below, I’ll share the different types of writing you can practice and learn how to become a better writer .

1. Expository Writing

2. narrative writing, 3. persuasive writing, 4. descriptive writing, 5. technical writing, 6. diary writing, 7. business writing, 8. copywriting, 9. content writing, 11. critical writing, 12. scientific writing, 13. travel writing, 14. blogging, 15. technical writing, 16. academic writing, the final word on types of writing, how do i choose the right writing style for a piece, how can i learn to write in various styles.

Expository writing focuses on providing facts and research about a given topic. With some forms of writing like this, you’ll explore an idea in detail and expand on that idea using factual statements.

When writing an expository essay, you don’t seek to prove a point, persuade, or evoke emotions. Your goal is to explain something in an objective and balanced way. Read our guide to the best essay writing topics . Here are some examples of expository writing you’re probably familiar with, whether you’ve written them or read them:

Journalistic articles
How-to manuals
Assembly instructions

Stories are everywhere around you and provide ample opportunity to express your imagination.

In forms of writing like narrative writing, you tell a story that’s 100 percent truthful, primarily factual but embellished for reader enjoyment or fiction. Stories are everywhere around you and provide ample opportunity to express your imagination.

Examples of the narrative style include:

Biographies and autobiographies
Short stories
Narrative journalism

The journalist Hunter S. Thompson popularized this type of writing in his articles and essays, whereby his journalism often reads like a novel. If you’d like to learn more about this style, read our guide to narrative essays .

In a persuasive essay, your goal is to convince the reader to agree with you through strategic argumentation. To accomplish this, you employ various argumentation techniques like presenting supporting evidence for your argument, laying out points logically that slowly generate buy-in from the reader, and telling a story that evokes emotion to make the case. Politicians and leaders use persuasive writing to popularize ideas like Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope . If you’d like to learn more, read our guide to persuasive essays .

Examples of persuasive writing include:

Advertisements and marketing campaigns
Cover letters
Letters of recommendation
Business proposals
Persuasive essays
Persuasive social media posts
Persuasive journalism

Descriptive writing is a type of writing style that overlaps with others in this list. It’s one of the most common types of writing, as students often write descriptive essays in school. One of the essential concepts in descriptive writing is to “show, not tell.” Rather than simply saying what happened, explain the how and the why behind it to paint a picture. If you’d like to learn more, read our guide to descriptive essays . You’ll use numerous literary devices to accomplish this, such as:

Foreshadowing

For this writing style, you’ll choose a point of view to relate to readers. The POV can change the tone of the piece, with the third-person often sounding more formal and objective, while the first and second can seem informal. You may need a combination of more than one POV for the piece to work. Examples of POV usage:

First-person – I, We
Second person – You, Understood You
Third-person – He, She, It, They

Technical writing involves communicating something complex in a way the audience can understand. To accomplish this, the technical writer must have in-depth knowledge of the topic they’re explaining and an understanding of the audience’s experience level. Technical writing is devoid of personal opinions. Instead, it explains a topic or concept step-by-step or logically. If you’d like to learn more, read our guide explaining how to become a technical writer . Examples of technical writing include:

Research papers
Legal documents
Some textbooks
White papers
Academic writing
Medical journals
Technical documentation for products and software

Diary writing is a more personal form intended to log events in a person’s life and often their emotions. If you think you might be famous someday, keeping diaries could one day be resource materials for your auto-biography! Read our guide explaining the differences between a diary and a journal .

That point aside, many people use diaries as an external way to process how they’re feeling to deal with anger, regret, grief, fear, jealousy, and sadness. It’s cheaper than therapy. Diary writing can be a positive experience. People often write about what they’re grateful for, express their joy around fortuitous events, or set life goals and celebrate accomplishments.

Examples of diary writing include:

The Diary of Anne Frank
Leonardo Da Vinci’s diaries
Charles Darwin’s diaries
Marie Curie’s notebooks

Business writing is a commonly misunderstood type of writing. Many consider business writing stuffy and formal, but it’s a stimulating and well-paying field. A business writer follows a company style guide to convey an idea or concept for internal and, sometimes, external use.

For example, a business writer could take notes from an executive and turn them into a compelling business case for the wider team. They could also articulate the values of a business in everyday concise language for a presentation, pitch deck or company manifesto.

Copywriting describes using words to sell products and services to a target audience. A copywriter produces copy for websites, sales pages and email funnels. They aim to convince readers to act, for example, opting in for a lead magnet with their email address, taking out a trial or buying a product. A copywriter can also branch into social media and content writing. Copywriters can earn high-five and even six figures annually by providing this service to companies or clients.

The art of copywriting involves holding the attention of readers. For this reason, it’s a valuable skill for those writing online. A good copywriting formula can help a writer finish an article or blog post quickly. Learn how to become a copywriter .

Content writing is similar to copywriting. A content writer produces blog posts, articles, ebooks and guides for companies or online businesses. They may also write YouTube video scripts and social media posts.

A content writer typically charges clients a per-word rate, usually between four and ten cents, depending on the complexity of the topic. Content writing has become more popular for freelancers because most online businesses thrive on content.

A well-run niche website, for example, publishes a set number of SEO-optimized articles each month to increase traffic and revenue. The owner of this site depends on a team of knowledgeable content writers to achieve their publication and revenue goals. If you’d like to try this discipline, read our guide explaining what does a content writer do ?

Poetry is something most writers try for fun. It’s a surprisingly rewarding discipline as a writer can play around with words, imagery and sensory language. Usually, an aspiring poet isn’t trying their hand at this type of writing to supplement their income. Instead, it’s a creative challenge .

Perhaps the most accessible type of poetry to start with is Haiku. It’s a type of Japanese poetry whereby the first line contains five syllables, the second 7 and the third 5. Haiku is only one form of poetry to explore. Read our guide to the most common types of poetry . For example, consider this ancient Haiku by Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō:

An old silent pond A frog jumps into the pond— Splash! Silence again. – Matsuo Bashō

A critic considers a piece of popular media and analyzes it for a general audience. The most obvious example is a film critic who watches a film and then explains whether readers should watch it in newspaper articles or online.

Critical writing is often subjective rather than objective because it’s written from the reviewer’s point of view. After all, one person’s art is another’s trash! However, writing reviews requires deep knowledge and understanding of the topic or medium in question… or at least an ability to entertain readers with your point of view. Popular forms of critical writing include:

Film reviews
Game reviews
Music reviews

Scientific writing involves writing literature reviews, peer-reviewed journal papers, and grant proposals. They read the prevailing literature about a topic, review current thinking and then provide a synopsis and evaluation. A scientific writer backs up their argument or points with evidence and citations. Ideally, a scientific writer demonstrates precision, clarity and objectivity.

However, they’re usually writing for an expert audience who understands the topic, prevailing literature or works in the field. Therefore, a scientific writer doesn’t always have to explain basic concepts and ideas as they can assume their audience knows the basics.

Travel writing describes writing about your experiences while visiting a country, city or location. It sounds like a glamorous profession because you get paid to go on holiday! However, professional travel writers are often under strict deadlines and must see and do as much as possible quickly. That often cuts out any socializing. Travel writers also face competition from locals who can write about a location with more expertise than a visitor. Travel writers can earn a nice side income by blogging and writing about their trips online. For more, read our guide explaining how to become a travel writer .

Blogging is an immensely rewarding form of writing that started in 1997. If you’re going to start a blog today, expect competition. Reportedly, over 600 million blogs exist worldwide.

However, a writer can find success more easily if they write within a specific niche about topics readers are searching for, rather than their day or personal lives. The best blogs are self-hosted on WordPress and monetized through display advertising, affiliate promotions, and digital products. To learn more, read our guide to blogging for writers .

Technical writing is a specialized skill where writers take complex information and display it in a way that’s easy for readers to understand. Often, technical writing involves creating diagrams, graphs, charts and visuals to help explain the topic. Various sectors like finance, technology, IT, healthcare and STEM utilize technical writers to create articles and guides on specific topics. For more, learn how to get paid to write reviews .

Academic writing is used for all scholarly contexts, like school essays or college dissertations. It will almost always follow a structure and usually follows formatting guidelines like MLA or APA. Writing for academic purposes will involve research and narrative in a passive or third-person voice to maintain objectivity. Many resources are available to help with academic writing; check out our guide with the best essay-writing apps to get started.

Writers can explore many different styles, from creative to commercial. Selecting the right one depends on the reader, editor, publication, and writing goals . If you’re bored with one style, you can always try another for fun or to flex your creative muscles.

FAQs About Types Of Writing

Consider your audience and the style guide for the publication in question. Identify what type of writing the editor expects for this topic, publication, situation, or brand. Consider how your piece can inform, educate, inspire or entertain readers.

Reading their examples is one of the best ways to learn writing styles. Notice how the writer grabs your attention, unfolds their main points, and communicates with you. Then practice, and ask someone–preferably a writer–to give you some feedback.

Meet Rachael, the editor at Become a Writer Today. With years of experience in the field, she is passionate about language and dedicated to producing high-quality content that engages and informs readers. When she's not editing or writing, you can find her exploring the great outdoors, finding inspiration for her next project.

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50 Must-Read Books with Gorgeous Writing

Melissa Baron

Melissa is the author of TWICE IN A LIFETIME from Alcove Press and represented by Laura Cameron at Transatlantic Agency. She lives in Chicago and works as a technical writer to pay the bills. She is a former English major, and has never met a semicolon she didn’t accidentally abuse in some fashion. In her spare time, she explores Chicago, writes a lot, and hangs out with her fiancé and two cats. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok @melissabaronwrites.

View All posts by Melissa Baron

We book lovers read so much, and so widely, that we’ve seen it all. The good, the bad, the so-bad-it’s-good, the meh, the life changing. And we’ve all been exposed to countless writing styles. Some exceptionally beautiful books, however, rise above the rest…not just because it was well-written or it spoke to us or it felt like home, but because the writing knocked our socks off.

50 Must-Read Books with Gorgeous Writing BookRiot.com

These are the novels that end up with a thousand gorgeous lines scattered across social media, first lines scribbled in notebooks, underlined and reread over and over again because you didn’t want to forget it (and you read it out loud, too, because how is this sentence so perfect? ). Whole books of quotable, gorgeous material that are a joy to read because of the author’s use of language.

This is a list of books with gorgeous writing from beginning to end. Lush, descriptive, poignant language that paints a beautiful picture of the story you chose. Pick up one of these beauties, and know that you’re in for a treat you’ll savor for weeks to come after reading.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

“Janie Crawford left her hometown to get married, and comes back alone after a two year absence. Her story spans 40 years of her life and how Janie sought love in four relationships that shaped her. This is a novel about relationships, culture, politics, and tradition, through the eyes of a African-American woman growing up in the early 1900s, and it is gorgeously told.”

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The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

“A man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered Lettie Hempstock. As he sits by the pond (that she’d claimed was an ocean), the unremembered past floods back. And it is too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.”

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

“Seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that leads to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest.” The writing in this novel is so incredible, the story so moving and heartbreaking, that this one’s a must.

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

“Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what giants or wicked witches are to European culture: the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. Young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever peasant girl to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power.”

Her Body And Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

“A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. These short stories bend genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.”

Beloved by Toni Morrison

“Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.”

Honorable mention: Everything else Toni Morrison has written.

Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

“A sudden and powerful romance blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verge toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.”

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

“It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. Some riders live. Others die. At nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn’t given her much of a choice. So she enters the competition—the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen.”

Honorable mention: The Raven Boys series

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot

“Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The result is this memoir, a memorial for Mailhot’s mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father―an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist―who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame.”

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

“Four seekers arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.”

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

“Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, this classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.”

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

“Seraphina is a half-dragon, descended from a dragon mother who took human form and a father who has no particular fondness for Seraphina’s kind. Not that anyone else does either. Hers is a world where dragons and humans live and work side by side—but below the surface, tensions and hostilities are on the rise. When a member of the royal family is brutally murdered, she’s suddenly thrust into the spotlight, drawn into the investigation alongside the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian. As the two uncover a sinister plot to destroy the wavering peace of the kingdom, Seraphina’s struggle to protect her secret becomes increasingly difficult…and its discovery could mean her very life.”

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

“Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grows dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.”

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

“Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.”

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

“Allende’s debut novel brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife, Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future.”

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

“Miller’s novel is a thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the legend of Achilles and the Trojan War. A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, it brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad . An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, and a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner.”

Honorable mention: Circe

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa

“Grief-stricken after his mother’s death and three years of wandering the world, Victor is longing for a family and a sense of purpose. He believes he’s found both when he returns home to Seattle only to be swept up in a massive protest. With young, biracial Victor on one side of the barricades and his estranged father—the white chief of police—on the opposite, the day descends into chaos, capturing in its confusion the activists, police, bystanders, and citizens from all around the world who’d arrived that day brimming with hope. By the day’s end, they have all committed acts they never thought possible.”

The Wrath & the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh

“Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi’s wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch…she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend. She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.”

Whiskey & Ribbons by Leesa Cross-Smith

“Evi—a classically-trained ballerina—was nine months pregnant when her husband Eamon was killed in the line of duty on a steamy morning in July. Now, it is winter, and Eamon’s adopted brother Dalton has moved in to help her raise six-month-old Noah. This is told in three intertwining, melodic voices: Evi in present day, as she’s snowed in with Dalton during a freak blizzard; Eamon before his murder, as he prepares for impending fatherhood and grapples with the danger of his profession; and Dalton, as he struggles to make sense of his life next to Eamon’s, and as he decides to track down the biological father he’s never known.”

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

“Set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.”

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.”

The Gods of Tango by Carolina De Robertis

“Arriving in Buenos Aires in 1913, with only a suitcase and her father’s cherished violin to her name, seventeen-year-old Leda is shocked to find that the husband she has travelled across an ocean to reach is dead. Unable to return home, alone, and on the brink of destitution, she finds herself seduced by the tango, the dance that underscores every aspect of life in her new city.”

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

“The monster in Conor’s backyard is not the one he’s been expecting—the one from the nightmare he’s had every night since his mother started her treatments. This monster is ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd—whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself—Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.”

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

“White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes—each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned-becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.”

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

“A collection of linked short stories by American novelist Tim O’Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War, and the things they carried with them depending on their priorities, their superstitions, their dreams, and the things they hold closest to their hearts.”

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom

“This is the sort-of true coming-of-age story of a young Asian trans girl, pathological liar, and kung-fu expert who runs away from her parents’ abusive home in a rainy city called Gloom. Striking off on her own, she finds her true family in a group of larger-than-life trans femmes who live in a mysterious pleasure district known only as the Street of Miracles. Under the wings of this fierce and fabulous flock, the protagonist blossoms into the woman she has always dreamed of being, with a little help from the unscrupulous Doctor Crocodile. When one of their number is brutally murdered, she joins her sisters in forming a vigilante gang to fight back against the transphobes, violent johns, and cops that stalk the Street of Miracles.”

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

“Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee. Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free.”

Moonbath by Yanick Lahens

“After she is found washed up on shore, Cétoute Olmène Thérèse, bloody and bruised, recalls the circumstances that led her there. Her voice weaves hauntingly in and out of the narrative, as her story intertwines with those of three generations of women in her family, beginning with Olmène, her grandmother. Olmène, barely sixteen, catches the eye of the cruel and powerful Tertulien Mésidor, despite the generations-long feud between their families which cast her ancestors into poverty. As the family struggles through political and economic turmoil, the narrative shifts between the voices of four women, their lives interwoven with magic and fraught equally with hope and despair, leading to Cétoute’s ultimate, tragic fate.”

The Devourers by Indra Das

“On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man’s unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger’s behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins.”

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

“The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of “the Brotherhood”, and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.”

The Life Before Her Eyes by Laura Kasischke

“Diana stands before the mirror preening with her best friend, Maureen. Suddenly, a classmate enters holding a gun, and Diana sees her life dance before her eyes. In a moment the future she was just imagining—a doting wife and mother at the age of forty—is sealed by a horrific decision she is forced to make. In prose infused with the dramatically feminine sensuality of spring, we experience seventeen-year-old Diana’s uncertain steps into womanhood.”

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

“To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseparable. Roses grow out of Miel’s wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town. But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel’s skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they’re willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.”

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

“The circus arrives without warning. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. Behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance.”

Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin

“One night in winter, Peter Lake—orphan and master-mechanic—attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side. Though he thinks the house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the love between Peter Lake, a middle-aged Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young girl, who is dying. Peter Lake, a simple, uneducated man, because of a love that, at first he does not fully understand, is driven to stop time and bring back the dead.”

The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob

“Celebrated brain surgeon Thomas Eapen has been sitting on his porch, talking to dead relatives. At least that is the story his wife, Kamala, prone to exaggeration, tells their daughter, Amina, a photographer living in Seattle. Reluctantly Amina returns home and finds a situation that is far more complicated than her mother let on, with roots in a trip the family, including Amina’s rebellious brother Akhil, took to India twenty years earlier. Amina soon realizes that the only way she can help her father is by coming to terms with her family’s painful past. In doing so, she must reckon with the ghosts that haunt all of the Eapens.”

The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh

“Opening in Calcutta in the 1960s, this novel follows two families—one English, one Bengali—as their lives intertwine in tragic and comic ways. The narrator, Indian born and English educated, traces events back and forth in time, from the outbreak of World War II to the late twentieth century, through years of Bengali partition and violence, observing the ways in which political events invade private lives.”

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

“Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava—in all other ways a normal girl—is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others.”

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

“Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.”

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

“Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn’t a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs, the boy who might be the key to unlocking the secrets for Taylor’s past, is back in town, moody stares and all.”

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

“The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around—and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old, he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the form of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.”

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri

“Growing up in a small rice-farming village in 1980s Iran, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister, Mahtab, are captivated by America. So when her mother and sister disappear, leaving Saba and her father alone in Iran, Saba is certain that they have moved to America without her. But her parents have taught her that “all fate is written in the blood,” and that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. As she grows up in the warmth and community of her local village, falls in and out of love, and struggles with the limited possibilities in post-revolutionary Iran, Saba envisions that there is another way for her story to unfold.”

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

“It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.”

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

“This novel focuses on the theme of self-acceptance, family morals, and the possibly-deadly consequences of one’s mistakes. It is centered on the wealthy, seemingly perfect Sinclair family, who spend every summer gathered on their private island. However, not every summer is the same—when something happens to Cadence during the summer of her fifteenth year, the four “Liars” re-emerge two years later to prompt Cadence to remember the incident.”

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

“A story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.”

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

“In the class of the high school English teacher she has been haunting, Helen feels them: for the first time in 130 years, human eyes are looking at her. They belong to a boy, and Helen—terrified, but intrigued—is drawn to him. The fact that he is in a body and she is not presents this unlikely couple with their first challenge. But as the lovers struggle to find a way to be together, they begin to discover the secrets of their former lives and of the young people they come to possess.”

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

“The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, caught in the tragic sweep of history, The Kite Runner transports readers to Afghanistan at a tense and crucial moment of change and destruction. A powerful story of friendship, it is also about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

“This is the story of seven generations of the Buendía Family in the town of Macondo. The founding patriarch of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía, and Úrsula Iguarán, his wife (and first cousin), leave Riohacha, Colombia, to find a better life and a new home. One night of their emigration journey, while camping on a riverbank, José Arcadio Buendía dreams of “Macondo”, a city of mirrors that reflected the world in and about it. Upon awakening, he decides to establish Macondo at the river side.” Magical realism at its finest.

The King Must Die by Mary Renault

“This bildungsroman and historical novel traces the early life and adventures of Theseus, a hero in Greek mythology. Rather than retelling the myth, Renault constructs an archaeologically and anthropologically plausible story that might have developed into the myth. She captures the essentials while removing the more fantastical elements, such as monsters and the appearances of gods.”

The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield

In fifteen funny, colorful, poignant and mysterious stories, modernist Mansfield examines a range of themes integral to the human experience, from marriage, family, and death to duty, disillusionment, and regret in this commanding collection.”

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

“What if you couldn’t touch anything in the outside world? Never breathe in the fresh air, feel the sun warm your face…or kiss the boy next door? In Everything, Everything , Maddy is a girl who’s literally allergic to the outside world, and Olly is the boy who moves in next door…and becomes the greatest risk she’s ever taken.”

What are your favorite books with gorgeous writing?

The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists

Writing Psychologically-Realistic Characters in Fiction

A psychiatrist-novelist reveals her writing methods..

Updated May 22, 2024 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

As readers, we usually want fictional characters to be both unique and psychologically realistic.
Psychiatrist-novelists have a well of clinical experience teaching them how people feel, behave, and grow.
Writing techniques that help create psychologically-realistic characters are illustrated.
.Novelists have sometimes-unconscious reasons for choosing certain themes and characters to write about.

Good novelists create characters who are complex. unique, and have relatable human needs and feelings. Joyce Carol Oates is one of our best contemporary novelists, and has created a host of memorable characters. including a hippie, an imagined Marilyn Monroe, and a teenage boy. When she and I met and exchanged novels, she said: “You’re a psychiatrist and a novelist. What a great combination!”

There certainly are superb novelists who are also psychiatrists. Dr. Daniel Mason, for example, is both an inpatient psychiatrist and one of our finest contemporary writers of fiction. However, non- psychiatric physicians have also written psychologically rich characters. Dr. Abraham Verghese, for example, specializes in internal medicine. And many of the greatest novelists of all time who created complex characters: Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky were neither psychiatrists nor physicians.

So how, then, are psychiatrist novelists “a great combination"?

The advantages of being a psychiatrist-novelist

Humans are fascinated by other people and their behaviors. From earliest childhood , we listen to and read stories to show how people face challenging situations. We psychiatrists have an added advantage. In our clinical work, we are privileged to hear the most private thoughts and feelings of many people: their fears, the different ways they have tried to protect themselves in difficult and often traumatizing relationships and situations. We also see how they change and grow. When creating fictional characters, we have access to this well of knowledge to write imaginary but psychologically realistic people.

The challenges

When it comes down to the writing, though, physicians have a disadvantage. We're trained to write clinical case histories in a rigid format: presenting problem, history of present illness, past medical history, family history, and so on. This is totally unlike the process fiction authors must master to write characters that come alive on the page. We physicians must put aside that ingrained pattern of straightforward reporting if we are to write good fiction.

One psychiatrist-novelist’s process of writing

Is our process of writing fiction different from that of other novelists? What follows is my own method. I tend to think it is not; readers here may hazard their own guess.

Finding a topic gripping to the novelist

A novelist will spend countless hours in his/her imagination , even more writing sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, then even more rewriting. Because of this heavy expenditure of energy and time, we must find a topic that fascinates us so much we are willing (or needing) to invest the months and years necessary to write about it.

In my case, the idea for my novel of psychological suspense, The End of Miracles , came directly from my clinical work as a psychiatrist. Over a period of a few months, I was asked to see three women, each with an extended false pregnancy , a condition technically named pseudocyesis.

In addition to my clinical interest in evaluating and treating them, and my scientific interest in studying their hormone levels, I also thought: wouldn’t it be fascinating to write a novel in which, at some point, the main character develops pseudocyesis?

Why was this topic so appealing? Only during the course of writing did the realization of the likely roots of my fascination become apparent.

Having an overarching goal

I'd long harbored a creative need to write a novel. I also wanted to add an engrossing book to the world of literature in return for the pleasure I’ve received from reading fiction since my childhood. As a psychiatrist, I set myself additional goals . I wanted to show psychiatrists as they really are, not as the devious or incompetent stereotypes so often portrayed in books or films. I wanted to show that people who develop a serious mental illness are not that different from the rest of us.

Creating the characters

One method I used was to become an actor. I'd pretend to be a particular character and then "listen to" their inner monologue and dialogue. Probably the easiest chapters to write were about the psychiatrist in the novel. I simply imagined myself in my own office, sitting across from the main character, Margo, and having a therapeutic session with her.

Writing the psychological roots of behaviors

It was very important to me to make Margo’s thoughts and actions grow out of her psychology. Once I'd written enough to know her feelings and behaviors in the present, I added to prior chapters instances of thoughts and experiences that were roots of the current ones.

In the process of writing this way, I discovered a possible clue as to why I was so attracted to the theme of a false pregnancy. A memory came to mind: 5-year-old me seeing my mother very pregnant, seeing babies in fancy carriages, seeing women nursing their babies. Likely I wanted a baby then, too—yet never got to have one. But these women who’d developed false pregnancies with distended abdomens had found a solution to that problem! Why hadn’t I thought of that? Well, now I had.

Writing suspensefully

I’ve read many thrillers, and now used the techniques I’d observed in them to create tension and a page-turning experience for my own readers. In the most suspenseful sections, I kept chapter lengths short and hinted in their last sentences that something crucial was about to happen,

Sending the book out into the world

Publication was a joy mixed with an unexpected momentary sense of loss. In a way, it resembled what it’s like when a baby is born: for many months, you’ve had a private, intimate relationship, and then it ends. Similarly, when my novel was published, there was a brief sadness about sending it out into the world to make new relationships with its readers.

The audiobook re-creation

When we read a book, we're not actually reading the same book as its other readers. We filter what we see on the page through our own experiences and understanding of the world. With an audiobook, the narrator voices the story and the characters through their own response to the text.

For The End of Miracle 's Audible audiobook, I listened to many of their narrators read aloud sections of other books and of my own before choosing the one whose voice resonated best with the story. I would be entrusting this person to be a kind of co-creator with me. It’s been gratifying to read comments of those who’ve both read and listened, writing they very much liked the print version and loved the audiobook. Then, I am reassured that I made the right choice.

The effect on one listener, though, was unexpected and humorous. My teenage grandson wrote on his Facebook page: “After reading the novel I listened to the audiobook and it was a relief to hear the phrase ‘egg showered in sperm’ in someone else’s voice instead of my grandmother’s.”

Starkman, M. (2016) The End of Miracles: A Novel, She Writes Press.

Monica Starkman, MD is a professor of psychiatry emerita at the University of Michigan. Her novel The End of Miracles is a suspenseful story about a woman who unravels psychologically after harrowing infertility and a tragic miscarriage, the shocking choices she makes, and the psychiatrists and close ones who try to save her.

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Last updated on May 31, 2022

The 40 Best Books About Writing: A Reading List for Authors

For this post, we’ve scoured the web (so you don’t have to) and asked our community of writers for recommendations on some indispensable books about writing. We've filled this list with dozens of amazing titles, all of which are great — but this list might seem intimidating. So for starters, here are our top 10 books about writing:

On Writing by Stephen King
The Kick-Ass Writer by Chuck Wendig
Dreyer’s Englis h by Benjamin Dreyer
The Elements of Style by Strunk, White, and Kalman
The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison
How to Market a Book by Ricardo Fayet
On Writing Well by William Zinsser

But if you're ready to get into the weeds, here are 40 of our favorite writing books.

Books about becoming a writer

1. on writing by stephen king.

Perhaps the most-cited book on this list, On Writing is part-memoir, part-masterclass from one of America’s leading authors. Come for the vivid accounts of his childhood and youth — including his extended "lost weekend" spent on alcohol and drugs in the 1980s. Stay for the actionable advice on how to use your emotions and experiences to kickstart your writing, hone your skills, and become an author. Among the many craft-based tips are King’s expert takes on plot, story, character, and more.

From the book: “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

2. The Kick-Ass Writer by Chuck Wendig

If you haven’t checked out Wendig’s personal blog, head over there now and bookmark it. Unfiltered, profane, and almost always right, Wendig’s become a leading voice among online writing communities in the past few years. In The Kick-Ass Writer , he offers over 1,000 pearls of wisdom for authors, ranging from express writing tips to guidance on getting published. Written to be read in short bursts, we’re sure he’d agree that this is the perfect bathroom book for writers.

From the book: “I have been writing professionally for a lucky-despite-the-number 13 years. Not once — seriously, not once ever — has anyone ever asked me where I got my writing degree… Nobody gives two ferrets fornicating in a filth-caked gym sock whether or not you have a degree… The only thing that matters is, Can you write well? ”

3. Find Your Voice by Angie Thomas

Taking advice from famous authors is not about imitation, but about finding your own voice . Take it from someone who knows: Thomas is the New York Times #1 Bestselling author of The Hate U Give , On the Come Up , and Concrete Rose . While she’s found her calling in YA literature , she has plenty of insight into finding your own voice in your genre of choice. Written in the form of a guided journal, this volume comes with step-by-step instructions, writing prompts, and exercises especially aimed at helping younger creatives develop the strength and skills to realize their vision.

From the book: “Write fearlessly. Write what is true and real to you.”

4. The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner

Since its publication in 2000, The Forest for the Trees has remained an essential resource for authors at various stages in their careers. As an editor, Lerner gives advice not only on producing quality content, but also on how to build your career as an author and develop a winning routine — like how writers can be more productive in their creative process, how to get published , and how to publish well .

From the book: “The world doesn't fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life.”

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5. How to Write Like Tolstoy by Richard Cohen

From the book: “Great writers can be inhibiting, and maybe after one has read a Scott Fitzgerald or Henry James one can’t escape imitating them; but more often such writers are inspiring.”

6. Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

Smith is well-known for her fiction, but she is also a prolific essay writer. In Feel Free , she has gathered several essays on recent cultural and political developments and combined them with experiences from her own life and career. In “The I Who Is Not Me”, she explores how her own lived experience comes into play in her fiction writing, and how she manages to extrapolate that to comment on contemporary social contexts, discussing race, class, and ethnicity.

From the book: “Writing exists (for me) at the intersection of three precarious, uncertain elements: language, the world, the self. The first is never wholly mine; the second I can only ever know in a partial sense; the third is a malleable and improvised response to the previous two.”

Books about language and style

7. dreyer’s english by benjamin dreyer.

A staple book about writing well, Dreyer’s English serves as a one-stop guide to proper English, based on the knowledge that Dreyer — a senior copy editor at Random House — has accumulated throughout his career. From punctuation to tricky homophones, passive voice, and commas, the goal of these tools should be to facilitate effective communication of ideas and thoughts. Dreyer delivers this and then some, but not without its due dosage of humor and informative examples.

From the book: “A good sentence, I find myself saying frequently, is one that the reader can follow from beginning to end, no matter how long it is, without having to double back in confusion because the writer misused or omitted a key piece of punctuation, chose a vague or misleading pronoun, or in some other way engaged in inadvertent misdirection.”

8. The Elements of Style (Illustrated) by William Strunk, Jr., E. B. White, and Maira Kalman

A perfect resource for visual learners, this illustrated edition of The Elements of Style has taken the classic style manual to a new, more accessible level but kept its main tenet intact: make every word tell. The written content by Strunk and White has long been referred to as an outline of the basic principles of style. Maira Kalman’s illustrations elevate the experience and make it a feast for both the mind and the eye.

From the book: “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

9. Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale

If you’re looking to bring a bit of spunk into your writing, copy editor Constance Hale may hold the key . Whether you’re writing a work-related email or the next rap anthem, she has one goal: to make creative communication available to everyone by dispelling old writing myths and making every word count. Peppered with writing prompts and challenges, this book will have you itching to put pen to paper.

From the book: “Verbose is not a synonym for literary.”

10. The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker

Combining entertainment with intellectual pursuit, Pinker, a cognitive scientist and dictionary consultant, explores and rethinks language usage in the 21st century . With illustrative examples of both great and not-so-great linguistic constructions, Pinker breaks down the art of writing and gives a gentle but firm nudge in the right direction, towards coherent yet stylish prose. This is not a polemic on the decay of the English language, nor a recitation of pet peeves, but a thoughtful, challenging, and practical take on the science of communication.

From the book: “Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing—and why should we care?”

11. Eats, Shoots, & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

From the book: “A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. "Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife annual and tosses it over his shoulder. "I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation. Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

Books about story structure

12. save the cat by blake snyder.

Best known as a screenwriting manual, Save the Cat! is just as often named by authors as one of their most influential books about writing. The title comes from the tried-and-true trope of the protagonist doing something heroic in the first act (such as saving a cat) in order to win over the audience. Yes, it might sound trite to some — but others swear by its bulletproof beat sheet. More recently, there has been Save the Cat! Writes a Novel , which tailors its principles specifically to the literary crowd. (For a concise breakdown of the beat sheet, check this post out!)

From the book: “Because liking the person we go on a journey with is the single most important element in drawing us into the story.”

13. The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne

Shawn Coyne is a veteran editor with over 25 years of publishing experience, and he knows exactly what works and what doesn’t in a story — indeed, he’s pretty much got it down to a science. The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know outlines Coyne’s original “Story Grid” evaluation technique, which both writers and editors can use to appraise, revise, and ultimately improve their writing (in order to get it ready for publication). Coyne and his friend Tim Grahl also co-host the acclaimed Story Grid podcast , another great resource for aspiring writers.

From the book: “The Story Grid is a tool with many applications. It pinpoints problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer… it is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attack drawer, and it can inspire an original creation.”

14. Story Structure Architect by Victoria Schmidt

For those who find the idea of improvising utterly terrifying and prefer the security of structures, this book breaks down just about every kind of story structure you’ve ever heard of. Victoria Schmidt offers no less than fifty-five different creative paths for your story to follow — some of which are more unconventional, or outright outlandish than others. The level of detail here is pretty staggering: Schmidt goes into the various conflicts, subplots, and resolutions these different story structures entail — with plenty of concrete examples! Suffice to say that no matter what kind of story you’re writing, you’ll find a blueprint for it in Story Structure Architect .

From the book: “When you grow up in a Westernized culture, the traditional plot structure becomes so embedded in your subconscious that you may have to work hard to create a plot structure that deviates from it… Understand this and keep your mind open when reading [this book]. Just because a piece doesn’t conform to the model you are used to, does not make it bad or wrong.”

15. The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler

Moving on, we hone in on the mythic structure. Vogler’s book, originally published in 1992, is now a modern classic of writing advice; though intended as a screenwriting textbook, its contents apply to any story of mythic proportions. In The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers , Vogler takes a page (literally) from Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces to ruminate upon the most essential narrative structures and character archetypes of the writing craft. So if you’re thinking of drawing up an epic fantasy series full of those tropes we all know and love, this guide should be right up your alley.

From the book: “The Hero’s Journey is not an invention, but an observation. It is a recognition of a beautiful design… It’s difficult to avoid the sensation that the Hero’s Journey exists somewhere, somehow, as an external reality, a Platonic ideal form, a divine model. From this model, infinite and highly varied copies can be produced, each resonating with the essential spirit of the form.”

16. Story Genius by Lisa Cron

From the book: “We don't turn to story to escape reality. We turn to story to navigate reality.”

17. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

More than just a New York Times bestseller and the winner of the Booker Prize, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a distillation of the MFA class on Russian short stories that Saunders has been teaching. Breaking down narrative functions and why we become immersed in a story, this is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand and nurture our continued need for fiction.

From the book: “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?”

Books about overcoming obstacles as a writer

18. bird by bird by anne lamott .

Like Stephen King’s book about writing craft, this work from acclaimed novelist and nonfiction writer Anne Lamott also fuses elements of a memoir with invaluable advice on the writer’s journey. Particularly known for popularizing the concept of “shitty first drafts”, Bird by Bird was recently recommended by editor Jennifer Hartmann in her Reedsy Live webinar for its outlook take on book writing. She said, “This book does exactly what it says it will do: it teaches you to become a better writer. [Lamott] is funny and witty and very knowledgeable.”

From the book: “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.”

19. Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker

From the book: “When it comes to the eternal quandary of pantsing or plotting, you can keep a foot in each camp. But if your goals will require you to write with speed and confidence, an effective outline will be your best friend.”

20. Writing into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith

And for those who eschew structure altogether, we’ll now refer you to this title from profile science fiction author Dean Wesley Smith . Having authored a number of official Star Trek novels, he definitely knows what he’s talking about when he encourages writers to go boldly into the unknown with an approach to writing books that doesn’t necessarily involve an elaborate plan. It might not be your action plan, but it can be a fresh perspective to get out of the occasional writer’s block .

From the book: “Imagine if every novel you picked up had a detailed outline of the entire plot… Would you read the novel after reading the outline? Chances are, no. What would be the point? You already know the journey the writer is going to take you on. So, as a writer, why do an outline and then have to spend all that time creating a book you already know?”

21. No Plot, No Problem by Chris Baty

If you’re procrastinating to the point where you haven’t even started your novel yet, NaNo founder Chris Baty is your guy! No Plot, No Problem is a “low-stress, high-velocity” guide to writing a novel in just 30 days (yup, it’s great prep for the NaNoWriMo challenge ). You’ll get tons of tips on how to survive this rigorous process, from taking advantage of your initial momentum to persisting through moments of doubt . Whether you’re participating in everyone’s favorite November write-a-thon or you just want to bang out a novel that’s been in your head forever, Baty will help you cross that elusive finish line.

From the book: “A rough draft is best written in the steam-cooker of an already busy life. If you have a million things to do, adding item number 1,000,001 is not such a big deal.”

22. The 90-Day Novel by Alan Watt

And for those who think 30 days is a bit too steam cooker-esque, there’s always Alan Watt’s more laid-back option. In The 90-Day Novel , Watt provides a unique three-part process to assist you with your writing. The first part provides assistance in developing your story’s premise, the second part helps you work through obstacles to execute it, and the third part is full of writing exercises to unlock the “primal forces” of your story — aka the energy that will invigorate your work and incite readers to devour it like popcorn at the movies.

From the book: “Why we write is as important as what we write. Grammar, punctuation, and syntax are fairly irrelevant in the first draft. Get the story down… fast. Get out of your head, so you can surprise yourself on the page.”

23. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

If you feel like you’re constantly in the trenches of your “inner creative battle,” The War of Art is the book for you. Pressfield emphasizes the importance of breaking down creative barriers — what he calls “Resistance” — in order to defeat your demons (i.e. procrastination, self-doubt, etc.) and fulfill your potential. Though some of his opinions are no doubt controversial (he makes repeated claims that almost anything can be procrastination, including going to the doctor), this book is the perfect remedy for prevaricating writers who need a little bit of tough love.

From the book: “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

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Books about writing as a lifestyle and career

24. steal like an artist by austin kleon.

As Kleon notes in the first section of Steal Like an Artist , this title obviously doesn’t refer to plagiarism. Rather, it acknowledges that art cannot be created in a vacuum, and encourages writers (and all other artists) to be open and receptive to all sources of inspiration. By “stealing like an artist,” writers can construct stories that already have a baseline of familiarity for readers, but with new twists that keep them fresh and exciting .

From the book: “If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.”

25. Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison

From the book: “A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.”

26. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

No matter what stage you’re at in your writing career, Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones will help you write more skillfully and creatively. With suggestions, encouragement, and valuable advice on the many aspects of the writing craft, Goldberg doesn’t shy away from making the crucial connection between writing and adding value to your life. Covering a range of topics including taking notes of your initial thoughts, listening, overcoming doubt, choosing where to write, and the selection of your verbs, this guide has plenty to say about the minute details of writing, but excels at exploring the author life.

From the book: “Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”

27. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

What does it take to become a great author? According to the beloved writer Ray Bradbury , it takes zest, gusto, curiosity, as well as a spirit of adventure. Sharing his wisdom and experiences as one of the most prolific writers in America, Bradbury gives plenty of practical tips and tricks on how to develop ideas, find your voice, and create your own style in this thoughtful volume. In addition to that, this is also an insight into the life and mind of this prolific writer, and a celebration of the act of writing.

From the book: “Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!”

28. The Kite and the String by Alice Mattison

One of the most common dilemmas an author faces is the struggle between spontaneity and control. Literary endeavors need those unexpected light-bulb moments, but a book will never be finished if you rely solely on inspiration. In The Kite and the String , Mattison has heard your cry for help and developed a guide for balancing these elements throughout the different stages of writing a novel or a memoir. Sure, there may be language and grammar rules that govern the way you write, but letting a bit of playfulness breathe life into your writing will see it take off to a whole new level. On the other hand, your writing routine, solitude, audience, and goal-setting will act as the strings that keep you from floating too far away.

From the book: "Don’t make yourself miserable wishing for a kind of success that you wouldn’t enjoy if you had it."

29. How to Become a Successful Indie Author by Craig Martelle

This one’s for all the indie authors out there! Even if you’ve already self-published a book , you can still learn a lot from this guide by Craig Martelle , who has dozens of indie books — “over two and a half million words,” as he puts it — under his belt. With patience and expertise, Martelle walks you through everything you need to know: from developing your premise to perfecting your writing routine, to finally getting your work to the top of the Amazon charts.

From the book: “No matter where you are on your author journey, there’s always a new level you can reach. Roll up your sleeves, because it’s time to get to work.”

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30. How to Market a Book by Ricardo Fayet

From the book: “Here’s the thing: authors don’t find readers; readers find books . [...] Marketing is not about selling your book to readers. It’s about getting readers to find it.”

31. Everybody Writes by Ann Handley

The full title of Handley’s all-inclusive book on writing is actually Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content — which should tell you something about its broad appeal. Not only does Handley have some great ideas on how to plan and produce a great story, but she also provides tips on general content writing, which comes in handy when it’s time to build your author platform or a mailing list to promote your book. As such, Everybody Writes is nothing like your other books on novel writing — it’ll make you see writing in a whole new light.

From the book: “In our world, many hold a notion that the ability to write, or write well, is a gift bestowed on a chosen few. That leaves us thinking there are two kinds of people: the writing haves — and the hapless, for whom writing well is a hopeless struggle, like trying to carve marble with a butter knife. But I don’t believe that, and neither should you.”

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Books on writing poetry

32. madness, rack, and honey by mary ruefle.

With a long history of crafting and lecturing about poetry, Ruefle invites the reader of Madness, Rack, and Honey to immerse themselves into its beauty and magic. In a powerful combination of lectures and musings, she expertly explores the mind and craft of writers while excavating the magical potential of poetry. Often a struggle between giving and taking, poetry is, according to Ruefle, a unique art form that reveals the innermost workings of the human heart.

From the book: “In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single lifespan, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again”

33. Threads by Sandeep Parmar, Nisha Ramayya, and Bhanu Kapil

If you’re looking for something that explores the philosophical aspects of writing, Threads asks big questions about writing and the position of the writer in an industry that has largely excluded marginalized voices. Where does the writer exist in relation to its text and, particularly in the case of poetry, who is the “I”? Examining the common white, British, male lens, this collection of short essays will make it hard for you not to critically consider your own perceptions and how they affect your writing process.

From the book: “It is impossible to consider the lyric without fully interrogating its inherent promise of universality, its coded whiteness.”

34. The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner

Despite its eye-catching title, this short essay is actually a defense of poetry . Lerner begins with his own hatred of the art form, and then moves on to explore this love-hate dichotomy that actually doesn’t seem to be contradictory. Rather, such a multitude of emotions might be one of the reasons that writers and readers alike turn to it. With its ability to evoke feelings and responses through word-play and meter, poetry has often been misconceived as inaccessible and elitist; this is a call to change that perception.

From the book: “All I ask the haters — and I, too, am one — is that they strive to perfect their contempt, even consider bringing it to bear on poems, where it will be deepened, not dispelled, and where, by creating a place for possibility and present absences (like unheard melodies), it might come to resemble love.”

35. Poemcrazy by Susan G. Wooldridge

If you’ve ever felt that the mysterious workings of poetry are out of your reach and expressly not for you, Wooldridge is here to tell you that anyone who wants to can write poetry . An experienced workshop leader, she will help you find your inner voice and to express it through the written word. Giving you advice on how to think, use your senses, and practice your writing, Wooldrige will have you putting down rhyme schemes before you know it.

From the book: “Writing a poem is a form of listening, helping me discover what's wrong or frightening in my world as well as what delights me.”

36. Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison

From the book: “Don't be afraid to write crap — it makes the best fertilizer. The more of it you write, the better your chances are of growing something wonderful.”

Books about writing nonfiction

37. on writing well by william zinsser.

Going strong with its 30th-anniversary edition, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction is an evergreen resource for nonfiction writers which breaks down the fundamental principles of written communication. As a bonus, the insights and guidelines in this book can certainly be applied to most forms of writing, from interviewing to camp-fire storytelling. Beyond giving tips on how to stay consistent in your writing and voice, how to edit, and how to avoid common pitfalls, Zinsser can also help you grow as a professional writer, strengthening your career and taking steps in a new direction.

From the book: “Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.”

38. Essays by Lydia Davis

Ironically enough, this rather lengthy book is a celebration of brevity. As one of the leading American voices in flash-fiction and short-form writing, Davis traces her literary roots and inspirations in essays on everything, ranging from the mastodonic work of Proust to minimalism. In both her translations and her own writing, she celebrates experimental writing that stretches the boundaries of language. Playing with the contrast between what is said and what is not, this collection of essays is another tool to the writing shed to help you feel and use the power of every word you write.

From the book: “Free yourself of your device, for at least certain hours of the day — or at the very least one hour. Learn to be alone, all alone, without people, and without a device that is turned on. Learn to experience the purity of that kind of concentration. Develop focus, learn to focus intently on one thing, uninterrupted, for a long time.”

39. Essayism by Brian Dillon

In this volume, Dillon explores the often overlooked genre of essay writing and its place in literature’s past, present, and future. He argues that essays are an “experiment in attention” but also highlights how and why certain essays have directly impacted the development of the cultural and political landscape, from the end of the Middle Ages until the present day. At its heart, despite its many forms, subject areas, and purposes, essayism has its root in self-exploration. Dip in and out of Dillon’s short texts to find inspiration for your own nonfiction writing.

From the book: “What exactly do I mean, even, by 'style'? Perhaps it is nothing but an urge, an aspiration, a clumsy access of admiration, a crush.”

40. Naked, Drunk, and Writing by Adair Lara

From the book: “Write it down. Whatever it is, write it down. Chip it into marble. Type it into Microsoft Word. Spell it out in seaweeds on the shore. We are each of us an endangered species, delicate as unicorns.”

With a few of these books in your arsenal, you’ll be penning perfect plots in no time! And if you’re interested in learning more about the editing process, check these books on editing out as well!

ZUrlocker says:

11/03/2019 – 19:46

I'm familiar with several of these books. But for new authors, I urge you caution. It is very tempting to read so many books about writing that you never get around to writing. (I did this successfully for many years!) So I will suggest paring it down to just two books: Stephen King on Writing and Blake Snyder Save the Cat. Snyder's book is mostly about screenwriting, so you could also consider Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. Best of luck!

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IMAGES

How To Write a Novel: Part One
4 outside of the Box Tips for Writing a Fantasy Novel
How to Write a Novel: Step by Step Novel Writing Tips & Best Practices
10 Step to writing a novel Infographic
Simple Types Of Novel Writing Styles Simple Ideas
Top 22 Different Types of Books (Genres and Non-Fiction Options)

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COMMENTS

The 4 Main Writing Styles [& How Authors Can Find Their Own]
The 4 Main Types of Writing Styles. 1. Persuasive writing style. Let's say I wanted to write a book about the value of letting employees bring their dogs to work. One way to convince business leaders to adopt this idea is to use a persuasive writing style.
Understanding the 4 Writing Styles: How to Identify and Use Them
Each of the four main types of writing styles has multiple subsets of styles within it. Here are nine of the most common and important types of writing you'll see. Narrative Writing Character Voice. Character voice is a common writing style in novels. Instead of having an unknown narrator, the audience knows who is telling the story.
The 4 Main Writing Styles: Definitions, Examples, and Techniques
Explore the 4 main writing styles, including techniques and examples of expository, descriptive, persuasive, and narrative writing. Readers. Book Deals Newsletter; Authors. ... Narrative writing includes most novels and works of fiction. Unlike most poems or other types of descriptive writing, narrative style involves a much more developed plot ...
The 4 Main Types of Writing Styles and How to Use Them as a Writer
Here are some tips for writing with descriptive writing styles: Use literary devices such as metaphors and similes. Use well thought out adjectives and adverbs to describe nouns and verbs. Bring attention to small details. Use the 6 senses: sight, touch, taste, smell, sound, and feeling.
Exploring Writing Styles: Meaning, Types, and Examples
5. Creative writing style. Creative writing's purpose is to entertain, provoke thought, express feelings, and stretch the imagination of the reader. It's a way for writers to express themselves creatively by talking about all sorts of human experiences, like wild adventures, deep thoughts, or trying out new ideas.
How to Write a Novel: Steps From a Bestselling Writer
In this article, I will break down the major steps of novel writing into manageable pieces, organized into three categories — before, during, and after you write your manuscript. How to write a novel in 13 steps: 1. Pick a story idea with novel potential. 2.
How to Write a Novel: The Complete Guide to Novel Writing
Style; Theme; 1. Writing a Novel: Character. A character is a person in a book. No matter what genre you're writing in, readers are most drawn to compelling characters; moreover, a good plot is informed by the decisions that characters make, so you want to spend plenty of time developing your characters as you write your novel. ...
Writing Styles: What is Style in Writing?
Such differences in expression are the essence of style. Writing styles showcase how a writer reaches their point, encompassing the totality of the author's word choice, sentence structures, use of literary devices, etc. It is the gestalt of every decision, both conscious and unconscious, that the writer makes in the text.
Types of Writing Styles
Each of these writing styles is used for a specific purpose. A single text may include more than one writing style. Expository. Expository writing is one of the most common types of writing. When an author writes in an expository style, all they are trying to do is explain a concept, imparting information from themselves to a wider audience.
How to Find Your Writing Style: 8 Tips for Developing Voice and Tone
Follow these general guidelines to help you find that style and develop your writing voice and tone: 1. Be original. Focus on the point you are trying to make and say it as only you can. Avoid using clichés—they lack creativity and originality and imply that you can't think of anything else to write.
How to Write a Novel in 10 Steps: Complete Writing Guide
How to Write a Novel in 10 Steps: Complete Writing Guide. Written by MasterClass. Last updated: Aug 19, 2021 • 9 min read. Writing a novel requires dedication, organization, and discipline. Once you've decided on an idea or story, use our step-by-step guide to learn how to write your novel. Writing a novel requires dedication, organization ...
Writing Styles: 10 Tips to Master Ways of Writing
Forcing yourself out of habitual writing style is a great way to unearth other possibilities. There's creativity in trying new constraints. 8: Vary your writing style to suit subject, tone and mood. It wouldn't make sense to discuss writing style without talking about tone and mood. The tone and mood of a scene in a story affects writing style.
How to Find Your Writing Style [With Examples]
Here are some examples of how an author's writing style may vary: Wordiness - How much your narrative uses longer, run-on sentences versus short and choppy ones. Syntax - The structure of your sentences, the emphasis, pauses, word order and general style of writing typical sentences.
Definitive Guide to Writing Styles
Comic book writing involves creating stories and narratives through sequential art and text. This writing style is used by comic book writers, graphic novelists, and storyboard artists to craft engaging and visually compelling stories across various genres, such as superhero, fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
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The number in the square brackets below refers to the page that the beat should take place — assuming you're writing a 110-page screenplay. Structure. Opening Image [1]. The first shot of the film. If you're starting a novel, this would be an opening paragraph or scene that sucks readers into the world of your story. Set-up [1-10].
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Written by MasterClass. Last updated: Apr 20, 2022 • 3 min read. Generally, writers fit into one of two categories: fiction and nonfiction. Within those two categories, there are many different writing styles. Learn more about the different types of writers, who produce everything from plays to novels to instructional manuals.
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However, almost every bestselling author will have highly effective writing patterns and habits that help them reach their writing goals. In this post, we'll share some of their most commonly used tactics for starting and finishing a book. How to write a book: 1. Start with a book idea you love. 2.
4 Writing Styles & How to Use Them to Enhance Your Novel
Show, don't tell. Engage the reader's senses. Don't spoon feed description; suggest. Use literary devices like metaphors and similes. Persuasive. Know where your audience is coming from. Acknowledge opposing views. Rely on credible credible (documented) facts. Appeal to the heart of the reader.
What Is a Writing Style Guide, and Which One Should You Use?
A style guide ensures consistency and clarity in writing across an industry, company or project. English offers a ton of ways to write almost anything, even within one continent. Sometimes deciding which way to go is a matter of expression — like whether to say "traffic light" or "stop-and-go light.".
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The journalist Hunter S. Thompson popularized this type of writing in his articles and essays, whereby his journalism often reads like a novel. If you'd like to learn more about this style, read our guide to narrative essays. 3. Persuasive Writing. Business proposals are an example of persuasive writing.
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This book is best for fans of The Fault in Our Stars-style doomed teen romances or Colleen Hoover novels. Nicola Yoon 's Everything, Everything is available from publisher Penguin Random House . 6.

The 4 Main Types of Writing Styles

The difference between voice and writing style

1. Persuasive writing style

2. Narrative writing style

3. Descriptive writing style

4. Expository writing style

Start with the one that’s easiest for you to write

Then edit to make your writing clear and compelling

A note on memoirs

The Scribe Crew

Choose Your Test

The 4 Types of Writing

Common Places You’d See Narrative Writing

Common Places You’d See Expository Writing

Descriptive

Common Places You’d See Descriptive Writing

Common Places You’d See Persuasive Writing

Common Writing Styles to Know

Narrative Writing

Stream-of-Consciousness

Expository Writing

Descriptive Writing

Persuasive Writing

Opinion

What If You’re Unsure of a Work’s Writing Style?

How Can You Develop Your Own Writing Style?

Read Many Different Styles of Writing

Consider Combining Multiple Types of Writing Styles

Find a Balance Between Comfort and Boundary-Pushing

Summary: The 4 Different Styles of Writing

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The 4 Main Types of Writing Styles and How to Use Them as a Writer

What are Writing Styles?

The 4 Main Writing Styles & What They Mean

Style #1: Expository

Style #2: Descriptive Writing

Style #3: Narrative Writing

Style #4: Persuasive Writing

How to Use the 4 Main Different Writing Styles as a Writer

Expository Style Writing:

Descriptive Writing Style:

Narrative Writing Style:

Persuasive Writing Style:

Understanding Writing Styles Can Help You Be a Better Writer

Use these different writing styles as a fun writing exercise!

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What is Style in Writing?

What Authors Say About Writing Style

Elements of Writing Styles

Elements of Writing Styles: Word Choice

Elements of Writing Styles: Syntax

Elements of Writing Styles: Economy and Concision

Elements of Writing Styles: Literary Devices

Elements of Writing Styles: Context and Purpose

Different Types of Writing Styles

Narrative Writing Styles

Descriptive Writing Styles

Persuasive Writing Styles

Expository Writing Styles

Creative Writing Styles

Elements of Writing Styles: The Author’s Location, Time Period, and Influences

Writing Styles: Examples and Analyses

Ernest Hemingway’s Writing Style

Toni Morrison’s Writing Style

Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing Style