Style vs. Non-style Elements of Writing

[Naomasa298]

No, they are not. For the purpose of this thread, I am not referring to genre style.

They're all part of style, so I don't see why it should be separate?

So we're well advised to put the priority on this

Only *after* you have mastered the basics, which is the how.

 

[badgerjelly]

Style is determined by a piece of writing’s structural elements, like word choice, sentence structure, and tone and rhythm.

Non-style elements include its content, substance, and meaning.

According to the ancients, the meaning, substance and content should come first.

As Cato said, “Grasp the subject, the words will follow.” (Rem tene, verba sequentur.) Words come after, not before.

Aristotle initiated the tradition of making language “so transparent a medium that it disappears and interposes no obstacle or screen between the reader and the things it points to.” (Fish, How to Read a Sentence, page 39)

Should it be style over non-style elements, or non-style elements over style? Which one should be favoured? What value does style have?

Not sure if it helps but there is a field of study called Stylistics which is concerned primarily with a broader understanding of linguistics. It is commonly used in literary analysis too, but at the end of the day it is analytic rather than a guiding force. It offer a means to analyse a text objectively.

Stylistics encompases both meaning and structure. They are intertwined. The more recent developments in stylistics has been in how non-fiction is scrutinised with the same tools as fiction--political, marketing etc.,.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Mind you, I generally write in freeverse, which means that you are meant to create the form, as you write, to suit the content. But the other way can work too and some of the best poems I've written were when I decided to focus on a specific form. It can also be quite challenging but if you keep it up you can internalize the form and it becomes a template for meaning.

Very well said. Thanks for that.

 

[Louanne Learning]

They're all part of style, so I don't see why it should be separate?

Well, I wasn't thinking of genre style at all when I made this thread. Only how each individual writer expresses their writing.

I am sorry I wasn't more clear. That's on me.

 

[Naomasa298]

Well, I wasn't thinking of genre style at all when I made this thread. Only how each individual writer expresses their writing.

I am sorry I wasn't more clear. That's on me.

OK. The genre style is not a complete style in itself. Rather, it encompasses baseline elements, like creating tension, the ways to do that (such as by using short sentences and so on) and informs the author's own style - each writer then refines and develops it according to how they want to do it. That's why it forms part of a written style as a whole. Writers will use different styles (and voices) to write in a particular genre, and everyone will do it differently. I could write horror as King, Lovecraft, Dahl or Conan Doyle, for example. Or just as me.