Writing Styles: Examples, And The Best Ways To Find Yours

Writing styles differ from person to person. As a writer, you have a gift of creativity and can use your art as a way to elicit feelings in your readers through your specific writing style. Writing a book may make people laugh, take them on a journey, or fill them with knowledge.

Writing can be an art form if you use it to express yourself and learn the art of doing it well. Most writers will find themselves falling into a specific style of writing. That could be writing poetry, non-fiction, writing a novel, children’s literature, or even screenplays.

You develop your writing style and aesthetic around your interests, education, knowledge of writing, and the books you read. Let’s talk about different styles of writing and how to find your own.

Writing styles: what you learn

• What are writing styles?
• Types of writing styles
• What are the 4 styles of text?
• Examples of writing styles
• How to find your writing style

What are writing styles?

Writing styles are the way in which the narrative of your writing comes across to other readers. Various aspects of writing styles include your sentence structure, syntax, and voice and provide your writing with an overall tone or mood.

Each writer has their own, natural style, and this can change from project to project. However, you may find that certain authors typically maintain a cohesive writing style. Essentially, an author’s writing style can be recognized from work to work.

Types of writing styles

There are various types of writing styles and a few different ways to think of writing styles, particularly for authors. First, you have your personal writing style, which is what we explained above.

This style is the specific way your writing reads. But, writing styles are only one of the considerations of style that an author can offer. There are aesthetics and nuances that you can purposely tweak in order to give your audience your art.

Here are some examples of how an author’s writing style may vary:

• Wordiness: How much your narrative uses longer, run-on sentences versus short and choppy ones.
• Syntax: The structure of your sentences, the emphasis, pauses, word order, and general style of writing sentences.
• Word choice: This can mean swearing or not, using more complex words versus simpler ones, and more. The word choice in your writing style can help readers understand the perspective of the narration.
• Tone: The tone in writing is like the attitude the author has toward a subject matter. If they dislike something, the tone could be short and negative, or the opposite if they enjoy what they’re writing about.
• Mood: The mood differs from tone because it’s the overarching feeling readers take away through the writing. The mood can be altered through the use of tone, word choice, and other literary devices.

However, writing styles also refer to the intent of what you’re writing.

What are the 4 styles of text?

Four main writing styles dominate text: expository, descriptive, persuasive, and narrative. Let’s take a look at each one.

Expository Writing

This is the most common type of writing. This blog post is an example of expository writing, as I’m explaining a concept and providing information. However, expository writing often doesn’t include the author’s opinions.

Descriptive Writing

You’ll most often find descriptive writing in fiction (and creative non-fiction too!). This is when authors write in a more descriptive style and create more of a visual rather than just relay facts.

Persuasive Writing

This writing style is mostly used in order to persuade others to take some sort of action. Persuasive writing includes cover letters, reviews, advertisements, web copy, and more. The goal is to convince the readers of something one way or another.

Narrative Writing

Narrative writing styles are usually exclusive to fiction and used when the writer constructs a story and plot by using descriptive writing to help you visualize it.

Tip: These different writing styles aren’t typically exclusive to one project. You can use variations of them in a single work, which is often what books do. We’ll cover some specific examples to help you understand further below.

Examples of writing styles

Sometimes it’s easier to understand through examples rather than just simply reading a definition. These examples will help you get the gist of what writing styles are and how you can create your own.

Expository writing style examples:

As stated above, expository writing is the most common type and basically just relays necessary information.

Here are some examples of expository writing:

Descriptive writing style examples:

You can write in a number of different ways with descriptive writing styles. Even expository writing can include descriptive writing within it. These nuances really get granular, but matter to your biggest fans.

Here are examples of descriptive writing:

Persuasive writing style examples:

Remember when you had to write a persuasive essay in school in order to learn how to make an argument? That’s what persuasive writing is. You want your readers to leave agreeing with you on some matter.

Here are examples of persuasive writing:

Narrative writing style examples:

When you think of books, they’ll typically fall under this writing style. If you’re trying to discover your personal writing style, you’ll likely be writing in the narrative style.

Here are examples of narrative writing styles:

How to find your writing style

I like to write in two different styles to express who I am as a person and access my creativity. For these two styles, I actually own two separate blogs: one on travel parenting and one on my faith.

My travel/parenting blog allows me to express myself with humor. This allows parents to identify with me by seeing the lighter side of parenting. My faith blog is a more serious destination where readers can come to learn more about the Bible.

I enjoy writing in both styles. The two blogs allow me to enjoy these writing styles without confusing my readers. So how do you, as a writer, find your place in the writing world and develop a writing style that suits you? Here a four ways that you can find and develop your own writing style.

1. Read a lot

Reading allows you to learn from other people’s knowledge and lets you immerse yourself in their world. It allows you to develop your own writing style.

Reading other people’s work will influence your own writing. This is because we tend to write in a similar way to what we read on a regular basis. If you aren’t currently reading every day, I encourage you to. Find something that interests you and start reading, whether it be a book, website, or another place.

Make it a daily habit to spend at least half an hour devouring someone else’s work. As you read more and more, your own style of writing will deepen. It will develop based on your own experiences and the influences you have.

You can broaden your own horizons as an author by reading various styles of writing. Reading will show you new ways of wording sentences and creative ideas you hadn’t thought about.

2. Be honest about who you are

When you write, remember to stay true to who you are. Writing is an art form that allows you to express yourself from within. This includes your values, beliefs, feelings, and who you are as a person. Trying to write a comedic piece when you don’t usually use humor will be difficult and often not read well.

When you write something that is not from who you are, it can confuse your reader and be difficult to sustain your voice. When your style doesn’t flow, it makes it harder for the reader to identify who you are. They may not want to read more of your work.

When you write from within, the reader is able to see parts of who you are as a person and can get to know you better. Trying to be someone you are not will hinder your writing journey, not help it.

An example to learn from

A while back, I read a book on business growth. It was a good book and I learnt a lot from it. I started reading the author’s other books. Shortly after this, she changed styles. The trend was beginning to bring in swear words to make someone seem “kick ass.”

This author jumped on that trend and began swearing through all her books. One of her books had so many swear words her book would have been several pages shorter if she had left them out.

This writer delighted in telling her readers that this particular book had only taken her four hours to write. The problem was that you could tell that it didn’t have the flow or content of her other books. It felt as if she created it to make money rather than give to the reader.

I felt like she was trying to be someone she wasn’t. I lost interest in her work and didn’t bother after that. It felt a bit sad because she had some good information to share but had appeared to lose sight of who she was as a writer.

When you write from who you are, you will not need to change your style part way through. Find your own style of writing and own it!

3. Write what comes with ease

Writing as part of who you are should come naturally and not be a huge struggle. You may have times that you feel like you have writer’s block, or struggle to come up with what you want to say, but this shouldn’t be the norm.

If you find that writing in general is difficult, it could be for several reasons:

• You have not created a writing habit to allow it to flow for you
• You lack inspiration for your topic
• You are not writing in a style that is true to you

If you have created a proper writing habit and you are stuck, try getting inspiration. This could mean reading other forms of writing to refresh you or taking a break from writing.

A half an hour walk while you listen to music may be all it takes to put you back on track. If you are still struggling, then chances are, you are not writing in a style that is congruent to who you are.

4. Express yourself naturally

I’m an extrovert and I thrive spending time with people. As you can tell, I love to use a conversational writing style when I put pen to paper. For me, writing is a way I can share my thoughts and feelings with someone if they were sitting next to me.

That style of writing comes naturally to me and flows easily. When you write, choose a style that allows you to express yourself. That may be in expressing yourself through creative writing, allowing the poet in you to come alive, or sharing your life experiences in a helpful how-to form.

Whatever it is, it should leave you feeling like you have shared what you want to. You should feel energized and excited about your work, not drained and struggling to create more.

Writing styles: take your next step

Once you have found your style, the only other thing you can do is write, write, and keep writing. The more you write, the better you will express yourself through your words. You have a gift to write and you need to use it to share your message with the world.

Take our free Publishing Path Assessment to discover which writing journey is best for you so you can share your writing style with the world!