What Kind Of Writer Are You

What Kind Of Writer Are You?

This may seem like strange question.  How do you define yourself as a writer?  Why does it matter?

You’ll need to be somewhat introspective regarding what kind of writer you are.  Generally speaking you define yourself by the following criteria:

1. The way you write.

2. What you write about.

3. Why you want to write it. 

1.  The Way You Write

It’s important for the first time writer to get settled in his writing by figuring out his writing style.  There are two elements to this.  First is the physical way you write.  Most people fall into one of the groups below.

Seat of the pants writer. This is where you just plop yourself down in front of the pc, typewriter, pen and paper, blood and a wall –whatever- you just start going nonstop to get your story down on paper. You couldn’t care less about editing, plotting, layout or any of those little distracting things keeping you away from the story.

Edit-as-you-go.  This is sort of an extension of SOTPW where you have all the fury and single mindedness of just ripping through the story but you take some time and meticulously edit as you go along.

Snowflake. You spend some time and make a plan.  You get a plot down, create some characters and mixmatch their behaviour.  You focus on the stages of the novel or story and get a good feel of where you want your story to go.

Outline.  The outline writer is probably one of the hardest working writers out there but they are also the most successful when it comes to writing great fiction.  They do an outline as big as some books and they always know exactly what they’re doing, where they need to go and how they are going to get there.

It’s important for the writer to know where he/she falls under.  The only way to know is to try it all and settle into one that works for you.

2. What You Write About

There are many genres and sub genres to choose from when you start writing so here is a list of the more common Genres.

You need to know this because when submitting your manuscript you need to know who to send it to.  A publisher of Fantasy novels isn’t going to be interested in True Crime.  Major Publishers have sub divisions that deal exclusively with a limited selection of similar genres when reading through the manuscripts.  Sending your manuscript to Science fiction when it’s supposed to be at Romance won’t score you points.

Also the book store needs to know where to self your book otherwise they’ll just keep it in the back room.  It happens.

3. Why You Want To Write It.

What you get out is proportional to what you put in.  If you’re writing simply because you want some money (I’m with you brother) then you need to put in the hours (many, many hours). 

If you write because it means something to you than that’s great, don’t stop.  Maybe you want to impress some friends, or up your profile.  Maybe you want to share an experience or educate.  Your reason for writing will essentially impact the way you feel about your work and it will shine through to those reading it.

As I mentioned in the start there are two aspect of the kind of writer you are. The second is all about your writer’s voice.  This is most evident in the narrative style in your writing and (as with everything else) takes time to properly develop.