Styles of narration

[Yorth]

If there is one thing that can be called the author's signature, it would be their style of narration. By that I mean every word that isn't the voice of a character. The words you choose to describe a scene are very important. Example, take these two sentence: My eyes shot open like a dragon waking up from his slumber. Flames scattered, tongues of fire lashed and whipped. It was if the flames had a mind of their own and they responded to my will. VS. I opened my eyes and by mare Loki's bootyhole were my enemies scarred. They flinched as the tongues of flame lashed out like the strands of medusa's hair. And medusa I was, but Perseus they had not. That day, my horrors-- No, my legend began.

The scene is the same, but the way it was described gave it very different undertones. While the first one was more punchy and straight to the point, the second one had more personality to it.

In my stories, I have experimented with both. They both worked marvelously and were well recieved by my readers. The problem that I face though is when I try to merge the two. Either I overdo it one way or the other or, in some cases, I completely misunderstand their utility. I wonder what's you guys' experience on the matter.

 

[PrincessFelicie]

This is definitely just gonna be my two cents, but I would say don't try to force it. You'll find your writing voice by, well, writing - experiment with style and prose on short, one to three pages stories, and see what you do and don't like.

 

[AliceShiki]

I usually just go with 1st person narration and the protagonist is always the one narrating things. She usually puts her PoV on things and her thoughts go in-between the scenes, but sometimes when I just need to show some things happened very quickly, she goes straight to the point.

Overall though, I think you should just go with the flow and do it in the way you're comfortable with~

 

[Kldran]

My general experience as a reader, is that mixing styles can be dangerous. Sometimes a story is entertaining to me, entirely due to how it is told, and having that change can drastically alter how much I enjoy the story. Personally, I'd expect that different stories work best with different styles, and there's likely no single best style. Though I am an advocate of consistency within a story if possible. Maintaining a consistent style between stories is less important unless you are trying to make all your stories appeal to the same reader-base.