Style in writing is achieved by the author conveying their own personality through their words. A common way to do this is to refer to oneself. However, first-person is not always welcome in all fields of writing. A writer must find different ways to display their personality.

A way for a writer to achieve style is for them to have a clear voice. To establish a clear voice, a writer needs to know how to communicate as straight forward as possible in a manner that keeps the attention of the reader.

It is important to develop your own style. It is not something you can borrow. A writer can try and mimic the writing style of Steven King, but trying to copy someone else can come off as disingenuous. Writing something in your own voice is genuine and will keep people’s attention better than trying to write with someone else’s.

The motivation for writing with style is to keep the attention of the audience. A common misconception in writing is that a writer should write to entertain a specific group. Writing for an imagined audience is not helpful advice; it is impossible to write for the masses because every reader is different. Terry is going to like a different book than Jerry.

Since writing for an intended audience is impossible, a writer should write for themselves, rather than an imagined audience or even their editor. A writer does not need to worry about readers they will lose due to style, because they are not writing for those readers. By entertaining yourself in your writing, you will entertain your intended audience. In my own experience, I know some of my better pieces of writing have been on topics that I truly care about.

While writing for yourself may seem contradictory to the idea of keeping an audience, writing for yourself works in tandem with keeping an audience. There is a difference between losing a reader for confusing writing and losing a reader because they do not like your style. You will not win over a reader that does not like how you write. Unclear writing may cause you to lose a reader that your style otherwise would have won over. Readers do not want to read things that do not make sense or are riddled with errors, even if it is a story that the reader may enjoy. When I am reading articles or even fanfiction, I know I lose interest if what I’m reading does not make sense.

Writing for yourself can help your confidence as a writer, by allowing you to let go of concerns about your audience. This can help you to develop your own style. Writing for yourself can also help in coming across as genuine and keep readers engaged. By writing to please yourself you are not disregarding your audience, you are simply writing for your true audience, the reader worth writing for.