Hi!

So i have a lot of experience with writing style for a variety of reasons but here is my main tips:

Read. Seriously. The best way to be a better writer is read as much as possible in as many different genres and styles as possible. No matter what genre you write in read nonfiction, poetry, memoir, fantasy, romance, lit fic, etc. and spread out writing styles within there. Read braided memoirs, lyric memoirs, lit memoirs, celebrity memoirs, micro memoirs.

Imitate styles. So you read a book. Whether you liked it or hated it, grab a journal and write in that style for 500 words. I find that a writing style you don’t like reading is one you like imitating. This way you can find out which style or parts of style you lean towards.

Record your voice. You have a story to tell. Before you open the Word Doc open the voice recording app and just tell the story. Don’t think. Just tell. Than, listen and notice your cadence, phrasing you like, words you skip, what you assume the listener (future you) knows. We tend to talk in a “early version” of our writing style.

Change it up! So you found your style. (You hate quotation marks and love lyrical writing) but your writing story or an essay and you’re really struggling to make a lyrical. That’s OK! It doesn’t need to be!  One of the things I learned while writing my thesis is that an author doesn’t need to have a writing style for their whole life. They just need to have a writing style for that one piece of work. Often there is similarities in each piece of work in our writers repertoire but it doesn’t need to be the same and maybe even shouldn’t.

Finally, I heard this quote once that really changed how I write: a good story isn’t written it’s edited. All of my first drafts are butt. I just use the first draft to get my ideas out, if I compare my first draft to a published book, I feel like a dumb dumb who should not be writing. But that book I’m comparing it to went through hundreds of drafts and had hundreds of eyes on it before it got published. All that matters is you get your story and then after taking a break from you, you can come back and make it into a style That’s really you.

Hopefully that helps but i can send books with unique writing styles if you’d like - a good starting point to imitate:3