>>7506470
"a writer is a reader driven to imitation" the stock advice here is that you just have to keep writing

but I'd also keep in mind that there are a lot of decisions to make in every sentence. write towards an aesthetic end on a small and large scale. starting out this "aesthetic end" is probably best thought of as "what would I want to read?"

so if you write "Barbara stuck her dick in Jim's ass with force" and then say wellll as a reader I'd like to see "Barbara, with force, stuck her dick in Jim's ass." but then you also think wellll overall I don't think I want to be so literal so you rewrite it "Barbara, with force, slid her johnson into Jim's hole" and then a month and 40 pages later you realize Barbara's forceful dick has great thematic relevance so you go back and tweak it according to its new importance, etc etc etc

>I'm worried that this may arise from me subconsciously trying to imitate the books I have read in the past

That's exactly the thing. And it's okay. In a creative field like literature people often forget that imitation is in the core of human learning.
A unique style comes after alot of writing. Usually after you have completed a few works, for some people it comes after being published, even. You need to get really comfortable with transforming whats on your mind into prose, then your own unique voice will slowly be revealed. You could also try and tweak elements of your style once it is established, even if it is too simillar to someone elses at the begining.

Read early Dosto and compare with Gogol. Obviously a (good) imitation).

>>7506497
kek

Read short stories by Kafka, Hemingway, Le Guin, Nabokov. All masters in their respective styles.

Everyone starts with short stories.

>Cleon is introduced

Show he is simple minded but satisfied by letting him converse with his horse. If he is stupid, when the reader reads about him the language should be playful, easy, fluid, but with a hint at a depth below the surface. Make him act like a careless or clumsy or stupid person, he drops and breaks something, he trips over something, show through physicality.

>Aramis is introduced,
Have him deal with a conflict in reflection, maybe the crops are failing, maybe he has conversation with a traveler about a recent event war/succession/plague, writer in his voice, have him seated like Rodin's Thinker.

>The landscape is introduced
This should come first before the characters, so we can place the characters in their surroundings, the farm the village the dock etc not the other way around

>Sophos
Sophos is your tyrant/villain/madman, make him move and gesticulate, run and tip things over, show he is mad through his actions.

Kafka was famous for always moving his characters through an environment.

Edit yourself, you have a lot of useless sentences and you don't really tell any sort of story in that page. Consider what you want to say. Is your story Sophos tricking Cleon into killing Aramis, but Cleon fucks it up and kills Sophos instead? Is your story Aramis learning a lesson from Cleon about the nature of life? Is it about strange visitors and how they affect the Fool the Wiseman and the Madman? Is it a parable? What's going on, set it up early, where's my foreshadowing at.

I can summarise your entire page in one sentence:

"In a river town farmer Cleon wipes his face with dirt crusted fingers, his master Aramis sits in reflection and the madman Sophos spins and falls in fervorous protestation, all three know the words."

When you can edit everything you say into a much more compact form, you realise your prose is not saying or showing anything.

I did like the bit where you described what they eat.

>>7506497
So true.
TFW thematic relevance is usually emergent Bullshit

>>7506543
Thank you very much. This is the best feedback I've had on /lit/ so far.

Just keep intentionally and semi -intentionally aping the style of authors you like with short stories and you'll develop your own voice without even realising.

>>7506470
What program is this that you're using to write?

>>7506470

>How can I get comfortable with my own writing style?

Concentrate on writing good sentences; every word is optional until it isn't. Aim for clarity and concision. Try to write by implication - what you don't say is as important as what you do say. And never let anyone fucking see the first draft because the first draft is always fucking shit. (I don't care if you're the reincarnation of Hemingway. Your first draft is always shit, no motherfucking exceptions.) Style is what happens when you shape that pile of shit through editing, so stop giving a fuck about style and get to fucking work.

>>7506470
Think up your own stylistic tricks and develop a unique internal monologue.

>>7506497

>if you write "Barbara stuck her dick in Jim's ass with force"

...you're fucking doing it wrong. This gets the same sentiment across with fewer words and a stronger verb: "Barbara shoved her dick in Jim's ass."

With the original example, you wait until the end of the sentence to find out that Barbara used force when shoving her dick in Jim's ass. My revision implies the level of force through the verb "shoved". You don't need nine words where seven will do - especially when the seven produce a clearer mental image with concise language.

>>7506600
>>7506584
>minimalism as standard
no

Guys, how do I make the text pushed in just a little like it is in OP's image? Whenever I write, I use the tab button. Although, my page is 6 inches by 9 inches, and there's a 1.5 inch margin, is that why mine would look different?

>>7506572
Pages on Mac (which is shit)
The font is Hoefler Text at 8pt (footnotes at 6pt).
Each paragraph has its first line indented by 0.57cm.
I screenshotted the page and gave it a border (of 10% width), with a shot from Hard to be a God (2013 Russian film) as the background.

>>7506584
Your overuse of expletives weakens your point

>>7506607

>minimalism as standard

It can be a standard, but not the standard. And what's so wrong about concision, anyway? How does "Barbara stuck her dick in Jim's ass with force" read better than "Barbara shoved her dick in Jim's ass"?

What I've said is not an argument against long sentences or adverbs or whatever other horseshit you think I'm implying. Use them if your style calls for those things. But language matters more than style; we'd all be praising the purplest of prose otherwise. If you absolutely need to write "Barbara stuck her dick in Jim's ass with force", you should have a reason for doing that - maybe it's from a report written by a police officer about Jim's rape. The language used in that sentence sounds like a recounting of someone else's story through an "objective" lens. "Barbara shoved her dick in Jim's ass" gets across the same idea and sounds less like a cop reading their paperwork to their superior officer. Concision of language is about using the right words to get a specific image or mood across. If your "narrator" is a cop typing up a police report, you can probably get away with a more "formal" approach to narration with longer sentences and somewhat weaker verbs.

>>7506543
>if a wikipedia page can summarise a plot it needn't be any longer

>>7506607

Strike a balanced between minimally autistic and vocabulary ejaculation.

If a child is the narrator, use simpler sentences and words. Author's love the child narrator because they can both hint at subtle adult things and keep simple short sentences the reader doesn't tire from. It may become a crutch but it will still help you walk.

Multiple narrators is a whole other kettle of fish.

Effectively what you are doing as a writer, is delivering senses to the reader. You are the sense and emotion God.

Inside your little universe the read is lost, she can only follow your lead. It is up to you as a God to reveal and hide in equal measure your creation. You hold the power of attention, the power of feeling, you can arouse or disgust, enthrall or bore.

All of the various books you get recommended on /lit/ you as a reader know before opening them "hey this is probably good, or a lot of people think its good". In many ways that ruins the experience of discovery.

If you are contrarian by nature, you will think- nah fuck this guy, I'll read it, but I know it's shit.

If you are passive by nature, you will think- even if I don't really enjoy it or get it, I'm going to pretend I do no matter what, if people find out I'm not as smart as them they will hate me.

It's quite impossible to remain neutral. Now as you read whatever the book might be, your preconceptions might change or they might be reinforced, that depends on how open minded you are and how good the author is at convincing you that it's worth to keep reading on.

To all keen writers out there, read as little as possible about your prospective authors, just get their books and dive in. Take notes on what you like, if you loved a sentence or a paragraph write it down, adapt it, steal that fucker. If you liked a plot device, or a setting, or you thought something was done cleverly or the exact opposite it was stupid or felt forced, write that down too. Taking notes helps reinforce your original view and then reshape and sharpen insight on later re-readings. Treat reading seriously, there is definitely a formula to a good story but it also has to feel natural and real. Remember almost every word you read was written and rewritten and re-edited and re-imagined at least 6 or 7 times from the writers original idea to the printed copy before you.

The >>7506607
It's preferable to the overwrought mess that op posted.

>>7506630
Is that what I wrote or is that what you interpreted from what I wrote because the critical nature of my tone elicited an emotional response which erased any impartiality you might have had?

Bad writers describe who their characters are and what they are going to do, then spend very little time on the doing part.

Good writers tell you more with less words, they show you how a person walks or talks or is dressed, they give you descriptive scenes of action with many moving pieces. Exposition is fine if something happens. A story has to be going somewhere, otherwise it's just two people sitting in a room talking for 300 pages. If it's going somewhere, you can't possibly describe everything in flowery prose, or you'd be stuck 2 feet outside the front door, writing about the clouds and the cracks in the pavement and the neighbours fence and the weeds growing in the lawn and the car parked on the opposite side of the street and how the silence reminds you of a time when children used to play outside and the streets where filled with laughter and mischief and how you don't even know your neighbours anymore and how the world is definitely growing apart despite being so close toge...

Meanwhile your character has taken two steps out the front door and your story hasn't progressed at all. Most people don't want to read your opinion on life or be preached to, they want to be shown it through colourful settings and fun relatable characters that react in natural ways to situations that arise, in ways which on further introspection from the reader reveals to them your opinion on life or whatever.

That's if you want to tell a story.

If you want to share philosophical insight, then by all means write philosophy.

>>7506652

>If a child is the narrator, use simpler sentences and words.

This sort of leads into another piece of advice: never think of yourself as the narrator of a fictional story. The narrator is another character, even if that character is God.

The film adaptation of "300" has shitloads of crazy action sequences and over-the-top characters because that story is being narrated by a Spartan named Dillos. He wants to rile up his fellow Spartans before another battle with Persia's armies. Why wouldn't he exaggerate details and make the 300 seem like brave warrior gods?