11
Found an old journal from 2018 and my writing voice has completely flipped
I stumbled on a short story I wrote for a local contest back then, full of flowery descriptions and big words. Now my stuff reads like someone talking to a friend... way more raw and stripped down. Did anyone else's style change after they stopped trying to sound smart?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
williamhenderson7d ago
Yeah, did anyone else go through a phase where they thought "utilize" was a much better word than "use"? My 2018 self would have called a cat a "feline locomotion device" if he thought he could get away with it. I remember one story I wrote where a character didn't just walk across a room, they "ambulated with deliberate, measured strides toward the dimly lit portal." That's just fancy talk for "walked to the door." Now my characters just slam the fridge door shut and mutter about needing more coffee. Feels a lot less like I'm trying to impress my English teacher from 2008 and more like I'm actually telling a story.
3
phoenixk647d ago
It was around 2019 when I realized I was writing to impress an English teacher I hadn't seen in ten years. Started cutting every adjective that didn't pull its weight, and my sentences got shorter. The big change came when I let myself use contractions and even the occasional sentence fragment. Feels more like me now, like I'm actually saying something instead of trying to decorate a cake that was fine to begin with.
2