I’ve been an email subscriber to the website Mythcreants for years. They are a speculative fiction, media, and game (of the TTRPG variety) website for creatives. They analyze media and break things down on a craft level, and I find their work very helpful.

A few days ago Chris Winkle of Mythcreants wrote an article called “Which of These Six Prose Styles Are You Writing?” I thought I needed to take a look at it because my writing style hasn’t been to everyone’s tastes (a slightly recurrent theme is that it reads like middle grade, which blows my mind), and see if there was anything in it that could possibly help me out. It never hurts to analyze your work with the help of a third party.

The six styles are:

• Casual
• Conversational
• Flowery
• Lyrical
• Utilitarian
• Stately

I first tried to figure out what Son of the Siren was. It’s written in third-person and I tried to use a “fairy-tale narration” voice. I had a hard time narrowing this one down. I think it’s a tie between lyrical and stately (with stately, there’s an example with T. Kingfisher, which, although my prose isn’t exactly like that, there are some similarities there). But I can’t help but think there is something casual about my writing at the same time, although it doesn’t quite fit the examples Mythcreants provides.

Here are the definitions to the ones I chose for Son of the Siren:

LYRICAL

While a flowery flare may deliver delightful imagery, a passage of lyrical prose holds not metaphor, but music. When all goes well, these lilting lines ring in the ear and roll off the tongue.

To compose our lyrical lilts, we place prose into pleasing patterns. Create cadence with word and sentence stress, rhythm by repeating form and phrasing. Whether consonance or assonance, similar sounds make nice neighbors. Then trim, trim, trim – before a stray syllable wrecks the effect.

Strong lyrical style is expressive, elegant, understated. More subtle than flowery prose, it flows like poetry without the flourishes. Readers may admire its music without knowing why.

STATELY

I would be remiss if I neglected the pseudohistorical narration common to fantasy and historical fiction. If overtly modern words and phrases are paired with a seemingly ancient setting, it clashes terribly. So, what are we to do?

The answer is what I hither refer to as “stately” prose. For the goal is not to delve into vulgar words of yore, but to paint the past as grand and glorious. In some works this may be showy, in others quite subtle.

It begins with the banishment of words the reader might perceive as modern. Current idioms, slang, and curse words are all exiled to the desolate reaches beyond the page. Contractions, too, may be avoided. Or perchance they are avoided in narration, yet present in dialogue.

Then the writer progresses to old-style grammar, reordering words accordingly. Words well-known, but infrequently employed, are brandished with abandon. Finally, archaic words such as thither, aught, and ere may be resurrected should the writer be bold enough.

CASUAL

What if words, but informal? It’d be like the stuff we say all the time. Or maybe how we post online, except very demure, very mindful. ‘Cause if we ditch caps and punctuation, our readers may just murder us. While casual style gets paired with conversational a lot, they can go solo too.

Why make our prose casual? So it’s authentic and relatable. And maybe it can get those sticks out of our asses, so we actually loosen up and joke around a bit. Got a blank character you want readers to identify with? Need more personality and snark? A little casual lingo might do the trick.

So that’s why, now how do casual prose? Start with how you’d talk to a friend. Maybe you drop extra words or slur some syllables. Forget posh and polish, it’s sentence fragments, slang, idioms, and cursing for the win. Harness your inner don’t-give-a-shit.

Now, if you wanna use someone else’s lingo, that’s real difficult. Impressive, but difficult. Go learn their speech I guess.

As for The Darkening Gate, starting with The Name and the Key, the point of view is first person, past tense. I hope that the lyrical style is there, but I do believe the prose leans more towards conversational. In The Step and the Walk, which is an epistolary novel written in the form of a diary, it’s even more conversational because Andresh is writing to his reader, and talks to them openly, even asking questions here and there.

Here’s the definition for conversational:

So, what’s conversational prose? Well, have you ever opened a book, only to feel like someone is speaking to you in a loose, rambling style? Maybe it has a few casual words and phrases, like “okey dokey” or “you betcha.” (Yes, I did grow up in Minnesota, why do you ask?) But really, being conversational is less about fussing over every word and more about what you include and how.

You’ll know conversational prose because it talks to you directly, meanders into tangents and anecdotes, expresses strong opinions, and includes details that are frankly unnecessary. Did you need to hear I was from Minnesota? No, you did not. And to state the obvious, conversational writers like to answer imagined questions or even comment on their own writing.

Now, if you’re like me, you might wonder why we would want this. I’m glad you asked (in my mind). A big benefit is that it gives our writing some personality. A good personality? That depends on who you ask. But your narrating character will come across stronger for it. Similar to casual style, it can give your prose a little humanity, and the world could use some humanity these days.

We do need an appropriate narrative premise for this one. If that’s missing, readers may be confused by who is talking to them or how. If you like it, give either a first-person character retelling or epistolary narration a try. Or you can do it with omniscient prose, if you’re a weirdo.

What’s nice about this article is that not only does it explain what each type of prose is, but it also gives you examples directly from speculative works, and then explains the setbacks to using each one of them.

I don’t have a consensus about how people feel about my prose–Son of the Siren was complimented AND criticized–but I’m hoping with going with a first-person conversational style for The Darkening Gate trilogy, people will be drawn to the characters and their stories as they narrate it.

We’ll see. Writers, check out the article yourself and see what your prose style says!