How To Write Good: A Lightly Salted Guide to Stepping Up Your Wattpad Game.

Writing... with Style!

         Imagine yourself sitting in a theater. The lights have dimmed and the audience has gone quiet. A giant red curtain is spread across the stage before you. From within its velvet folds steps a figure...

Stop right there. The figure walking onto the stage is the narrator getting ready to introduce a story that's about to take place in front of you, but there's a lot we can gather from this person's appearance, the lines they speak, and how they speak them.

          The figure is a woman, wearing a saucy ensemble of lace and velour, her low cut bodice a declaration of fertility, rouge smeared darkly on her cheeks and lips in a pantomime of lust. She speaks with a London cockney and lures lubricious laughter from the audience with exaggerated gestures and tantalizing wit...

What sort of play are you about to watch? Will it be a parable about the virtues of puritan morality? Of course not. Everyone is precisely aware of what you're anticipating and the play hasn't even begun. Let's look at another scenario.

          The figure is wearing a long, dusty coat, a crumpled leather hat with a wide brim, and walks with a limp. He raises filthy hands to his scruffy chin, just beneath an unkempt, bushy mustache, and a spark of light from between his cupped fingers tells you he's lit a cigarette. He doesn't speak immediately but carries the weight of dark memories and when his words finally take shape, they drawl a sober caution as the curtains begin to part...

This is less obvious, but your expectations are still set based on your perception of this character, though he may not be a character at all. You haven't seen a single prop, witnessed even a hint of a backdrop, or heard one line from the principal cast, but you would be disappointed to see the sound stage for an episode of Friends.

Why, then, do we so often hear medieval fantasies told in 21st-century colloquialisms? 

This complaint isn't limited to medieval fantasy, and it isn't an inherent sin. 

I think of A Knight's Tale and Heath Ledger delivering a believable performance as William Thatcher in a loose retelling of Canterbury Tales. Exactly zero craps are given for anachronism, and there is plenty. Take a look at the trailer, and if there are any Firefly fans in my audience there's a little treat here for you too.

This is far from the only example; Ella Enchanted pulls the same stunt to a greater degree without complaint. Their success does not give you license to adopt the same patois simply because it's too much work to examine your word choices through the eyes of someone that lived, ostensibly, hundreds of years before you. 

Your style sets a distinctive tone. It's the brand and personality of your story. It doesn't require the same careful crafting that your characters demand, but it's enough like one that some consideration should be taken, and once you've made that choice, brace yourself to see it through.

Dark horror stories are likely told with fleshy drama, wading slowly through viscous waves of dysphoria, words delicately chosen to stretch tension to the limits of your frail endurance. 

Peppy high school comedies are gonna fist bump you with a lighter vibe, smackin' prose upside your melon to dunk you ass-deep in the protagonist's wacky hijinks.

Erotic thrillers will immerse you in the sweaty passions of bodies intertwining, hearts beating as one between dim lights and velvet sheets as hunger and satisfaction contend in a whirling, sensual fervor...

Ahem.

Most of the time, unless you have a specific purpose to do otherwise, the narrative style will be an essence that's flavoring an otherwise neutral presence. It shouldn't be so bland that the reader falls asleep between dialog, but neither should it be so bold that it steals attention from the thing it's there to convey.

This may seem contrary to everything I've tried to communicate here, but the best litmus test for your style is that it blends in so well that it isn't noticed at all. If it stands out because it's too different from your world and its characters, or because it's overpowering them, you'll be fighting it in every paragraph.