Dear Geist,

How do I go about developing my own unique style of writing?

Dear Charlie,

Three things:

Read books, periodicals, online material, advertising flyers, appliance directions, kids’ books, everything. Study the writing you admire, in any genre or medium, and describe the style: tone, pace, word choice, syntax, point of view.

Write in the style(s) you find particularly good. Write your own material, but cast it exactly as the expert writer has done: where they have four lines of snappy dialogue, you put in four lines of snappy dialogue; where they have a long sentence, you write a long sentence; where they write a wild verb, you write one, and so on. You won’t publish this work, of course; you’re imitating it to learn how the great ones did it.

). Write every day, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Write longhand and on the keyboard. Write in pen and in pencil. Don’t stop to think, or to dig up a ten-dollar word. The good stuff is what comes without being invited. In the words of the late great language expert H.W. Fowler: “Be direct, simple, brief, vigorous and lucid.”

It takes time to develop a strong, unique writing style, but if you read and write honestly to find out who you are and what you want to say, your style will be coming together from the get-go.

Some inspiring books:

Lightning Source, 2011.

by William Zinsser. Harper Perennial, 2016.

, by Vivian Gornick. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002.

by Joseph Williams and Joseph Bizup. Pearson, 2016.

Shambhala, 2016.

, by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd. Random House, 2013.

Anne Lamott. Anchor, 1995.