What is the authors technique?

As a writer, it is highly important that you decide your writing style in accordance with your story. You must choose your writing style carefully before you start your actual writing. Consider all the aspects of your story and make a well-thought decision. Using the appropriate writing technique can make all the difference between your story being a good one or an excellent one. Here, we list 5 different writing techniques, which will help you make an informed decision about which technique you may want to employ in your next book.

1. Narrative

In this writing technique, the writing is in such a way which narrates the story to an audience, as it is. The characters are introduced, and the story proceeds without the writer’s own voice being heard (or read) directly. As a writer, you need to make yourself one of the characters, and narrate the whole story from the character’s point of view. A narrative story has dialogues from various characters, various situations, conflicts and disputes, and a well-defined structure, i.e., a beginning, intervals, and an ending. To put it in simple terms, the narrative writing technique is the art of describing a story.

2. Persuasive

This technique contains not only the facts, but also opinions, biases, and justifications of the author. In this technique, you can voice your own opinion and make the readers understand your points and justifications, and in the process, give them a reason to believe in your point of view. Basically, it involves convincing the readers that your point of view is right. This kind of writing is most commonly found in newspapers or magazines, and even in television commercials.

3. Descriptive

Descriptive writing is one where the writer uses a large amount of detail to explain the situations or the story. This involves intricate details related to the characters, the setting, the situations, the story and the objects around them too. As an author, it is your duty to visualize what you see, hear, or feel and make the readers see what you see, hear what you hear and feel what you feel. The key to writing in this technique lies in the details. The more the details, the better the outcome.

4. Subjective

The subjective writing style is one where both sides of an argument are presented, without any bias. The writer can very well use the first person tone, but does not take sides. The main aim of this style of writing is to explain a particular process, providing all the details in a step by step and organized manner. As a writer, you need to list the pros and cons of both sides of the argument in an organised manner, and leave it up to the reader to make up their own mind. Such a writing style is often found in articles written in newspapers.

5. First Person

The first person style of writing enables you to incorporate your own views into the story. Instead of just presenting the facts, you can also write how you feel about certain events or situations. It is similar to the persuasive style of writing, but it does not necessarily involve convincing the reader to agree with you. It is perfectly fine if the reader disagrees. You just need to get your point across to the reader.

[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Pranay.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Pranay Kanagat is a freelance writer who has a love for writing on various subjects. In particular, he enjoys creative writing. He is also studying for an Engineering degree.[/author_info] [/author]

Good writing comes from the creativity inside you, making it hard to teach. But once your creative juices are flowing, writing techniques can act as the foundations for your work. There are a range of techniques available to writers that serve many different purposes, some help you highlight a point, while others aid the description of lifeless objects.

This descriptive writing technique compares one subject to a different subject even though they are not normally related. An example of a simile is, “Linda looks as thin as a toothpick.”

These are similar to similes, but instead of comparing things they go as far as to say to objects are the same. For example, “Life is a rollercoaster.”

Rhetorical questions are questions that do not require or expect and answer. They can be used to make the reader think about a point being made in the question. For example,” How am I supposed to live without you?” shows the story’s love interest, as well as the reader, how strongly the speaker feels.

Alliteration

Alliteration is a writing technique commonly used in poetry that links together at least two words by repeating the sound of the first word, which must be a consonant. An example would be, “The waves washed wistfully against the shores.”

Assonance

Another technique often seen in poetry, assonance is similar to alliteration but repeats vowel sounds instead of consonants. An example of assonance is “The man with the tan was the meanest in the land.”

Personification

This is a writing technique that gives human characteristics to something non-human, such as a car, animal or plant. Personification helps bring things to life, making them more interesting. For example, “The thunder grumbled like an old man,” or “The moon winked at me through the clouds.”

Onomatopoeia

This writing technique is where a sound is represented by a word, such as “whack,” “boing,” or “thud.” Onomatopoeia is used in all literature but commonly in comic books. An example of onomatopoeia is, “Beep! Beep! The drivers behind were becoming impatient.”

Emotive Language

Emotive language refers to adjectives and adverbs that are related to emotions. Emotive writing generates a sense of empathy in the reader. An example would be, “Lee was sad after hearing about the death of his grandmother,” or “Jane loved the chocolate cake.” Words like love and sad help the reader feel the emotions of the characters.

Colloquial Language

This is language used informally, such as the shortening and joining of words together that many people do in text messages. An example of colloquial language is “I ain’t going to the party anymore, I’m just gonna stay in.” Instead of “I’m not going to the party anymore, I’m just going to stay in.” This technique can be used by writers when speaking through a character in their story.

Hyperbole

This is the use of excessive exaggeration to highlight a point. Examples of hyperbole include “I’ve been waiting forever.” Literally, this means the speaker has been waiting his entire life. The reader however knows he has only been waiting a while, but it feels like forever.

Loved by writers and readers, alliteration and assonance are classic writing techniques in your toolbox. To tell a tale that tantalizes the throngs, try alliteration, which refers to using the same sound, usually a consonant, at the beginnings of words near each other in a sentence.

Conversely, assonance is the use of vowel sounds within words near each other in a sentence, such as the long ‘e’ and ‘i’ sounds in ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allen Poe: ‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…’

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is the best, most exciting literary writing technique authors can use. Well, not really.

It involves using exaggeration to make a point or get an idea across to your reader. Have you ever heard someone say they had to ‘wait forever’ for something to happen? They were using hyperbole. We can find an example of hyperbole in W.H. Auden’s ‘As I Walked One Evening’: ‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you / Till China and Africa meet’. China and Africa would never meet in the narrator’s lifetime; thus, he’s using exaggeration to show that he will love the person he’s speaking to for his entire lifetime.

Metaphors

For writers, finding a way to compare two things is sometimes a battle. Luckily, they can use metaphors, which are figures of speech in which writers describe or refer to something by mentioning something else. The connection between the two things referred to in the metaphor might not be readily apparent.

Writers have been using metaphors to compare things to each other for a very long time; for example, Shakespeare wrote the famous metaphor ‘All the world’s a stage’. The world isn’t literally a stage; he’s comparing the world to a stage on which men and women are actors, making the line a metaphor.

Similes

Similes are like metaphors, except similes must include a connecting word such as ‘like’ or ‘as’ (you can remember this rule by remembering that ‘simile’ and ‘as’ both have the letter ‘s’ in them); a metaphor, on the other hand, just says that one thing is another thing. A famous example of a simile is from the poem ‘A Red, Red Rose’ by Robert Burns: ‘O my luve’s like a red, red rose, / That’s newly sprung in June’.

Personification

Engaging text jumps off the page and ensnares readers. Using personification, which involves giving a thing, idea, animal, or anything else that isn’t human qualities that are normally associated with people (e.g. text can’t jump).

A famous example of personification comes from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web: ‘“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte, “That in itself is a tremendous thing.”’ In this book, Charlotte, a spider, is given the human ability to speak; note that the personification of animals is sometimes referred to as anthropomorphism.

Foreshadowing

Many great authors have used foreshadowing, a writing technique in which a writer includes hints in the text letting readers know what will happen at the end of the story. These hints can be very clear and forthright, or they can be exceedingly subtle. In an example of very clear foreshadowing, JRR Tolkien included this text in his book The Hobbit, when Gandalf tells Bilbo Baggins and his party: ‘Be good, take care of yourselves—and DON’T LEAVE THE PATH’. Of course, Bilbo and his companions leave the path, which readers can see coming due to the emphasis Tolkien used in the original warning.

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet includes numerous instances of foreshadowing; as one example, we can refer to Romeo’s line, ‘My life were better ended by their hate, than death prorogued, wanting of thy love’. This subtly references the end of the play, in which Romeo and Juliet both end their lives due to their family’s efforts to keep them apart.

Perhaps you’re not writing the next Romeo and Juliet, but these writing techniques should help make your writing more engaging.

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