Saturday, June 15, 2013

You write, right?

Ugh, I'm so bored that I actually used homonyms for my title.


Wait, no. I'm so bored that I used homonyms for my title and actually created a meme about that. Can this get worse?

Well, during my 16-ish years of living the life of a literate human being, I have managed to identify different kinds of writings. However, some of these categories of writings make me want to create fail memes about them (and delete them before anyone sees them.) These writings annoy me not because of the category it is in, but rather, the writer might overdo or flaunt their category too much, and that gets annoying. For eg, if your whole novel is nothing but flowery language, it is kind of annoying.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not here to criticize you for "turning your coherent retrospection into sketches made of swirls and scribbles of a certain discerning language", rather to just give you an idea of the glorious varieties that the field of writing has, and embraces, every single.. day. And as long as you are literate, I'm sure there is a little bit of each of these categories in you, maybe more of one certain category. So here we go!

Sample sentence- "When you kill a man, you steal a life." Pg. 92, The Kite Runner.

1) Casual writers- "When you kill a man, you steal a life."
If you have textbooks written by such writers, you will surely ace your exams. This language is so easy to understand, and you actually don't need to bury your head into your un-used dictionary.

2) The Slang-lovers- "You ain't stabbin' a dude without going to jail."
Definitely fun to read, and wakes you up if found in the middle of a boring novel. This type of writers mostly use this language in dialogues. If you are a fan of Eminem, and your whole book is a conversation between Paulene FizzyBeans and Pauldean-grab-your-body-Beans, then you are in luck. Just rap out the whole novel, if you want.

3) Flowery language- "Without some sort of a supernatural endowment of immortality, we are all mortals. Hence, the value of life is not one speculation that must be underestimated, rather understood, because murder of any form or sort makes you a brazen assassin; brazen, because of your unsolicited decision to seize a fellow mortal's right to life."
Personally, I enjoy reading this sort of language because it makes even something so abrupt like writing about death, sound so beautiful and artistic. However, if I'd ever write a whole novel like that, I'm sure very few will buy it, because it is just so damn hard to understand!

4) Metaphors galore- "Stealing a man's life is like pilfering a valuable diamond, except life is much more valuable, hence making you liable to a punishment much more severe."
How do you compare a hairbrush to the Big Bang Theory (show/the actual theory)? They know it all! However, if your whole novel is like a bottle of tasteless comparisons, it will probably turn out to be a disaster.

5) Suspense.- "You killed a man. Murdered. Slaughtered. Manslaughter. And there was nothing left to do. But to suffer."
It is dark. It is scary. It is everything that haunts you. Behold! The suspense created by the magical use of too much punctuation. A. single. sentence. might. just. have. more. periods. than. w.o.r.d.s.

6) Philosophical- "One must not kill a man. By doing so, you are stealing something so endearing, that even suffering a life of sin would not suffice. You have stolen a life."
Maybe I'm the only one, but this sort of language reminds me of scarfed Arab warriors travelling through vast deserts on horses, searching for an hourglass. Idk. It is just so full of wisdom and makes you think about the meaning of life. One of the books with such language is probably The Alchemist.

7) Bringing Shakespeare back to life- "Thou had'st murdered, hence committed the biggest treason. Come here! Where goes't thou? I command thee, lay your weapons below."
As much as I love this sort of writing making English sound so cool, it is super hard to understand (and write as well). This is mostly found in old poetry, but there are some contemporary writers who still try to write like this.

8) Abrupt - "Killing means stealing lives." 
These blessed souls are super good at summarizing. They could probably turn a 300 page novel into a 30 page booklet. If only I could be one of them, I could've prevented losing marks in my English essay by being able to cut down my word length.

9) Waves of emotions- "You are there, weeping the sorrow bottled up inside of you, as you slowly reveal that you have killed the man. His innocence, his beautiful life has been stolen, and it is all your fault."
If the author wants, he can make you cry more than when you cried while watching A Walk To Remember. This is basically done by focusing more on feelings and emotions rather than the actual event itself.

10) Strictly shrewd- "A murder was committed."
I can imagine the character, wearing a suit and quietly talking to a robot. Similar to the Abrupt kind of writing, this is the opposite of Waves of emotions, because these writers seemingly don't show any emotions in their writing.Their writing is like a detached summary of events, almost robotic. The language is strictly formal, and does not go into depth.

11) Chick-flicky- "Jessica was so annoyed, that she wanted to KILL him."
Okay, I know that I have deviated from the original meaning of the sentence, but I just felt that I needed to describe this category as well. Now, I'm in no way saying that all chick-flick novels are pink, bubble-gum chewing, slumber party, lack of seriousness type, but yeah, girly for sure. xo

12) Author or Poet?- "Life is meant to be lived; men are not to be killed."
I know this sounds less like a poem and more of a slogan, but yes, I do remember reading some book which was pretty much a goddamn poem. If you write like that, I'd personally like to encourage you to make a living out of writing ballads rather than making people wonder if they had bought a novel or a collection of songs from High School Musical.

13) Dora the Explorer!- "I love killing men. Have YOU killed a man today?" 
Okay.. sorry. :P

I'm still trying to figure out which category I belong to. I think I have a bit of Flowery language, Metaphors and Slang, but sometimes I go on full Chick-flick mode as well. Ughh. I think I have a bit of every category. But mostly Flowery. Great, now I'm sounding like Suspense. Okay. Nice.

Can YOU think of any more categories? 

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hahahaha, this is the funniest shizz ever! I can't think of anymore category, but I think Im in the casual one :P

songbird said...

Lol, glad you could find a category! Thank you for your comment :)

the creation of beauty is art. said...

Ha, this is so true! I am looking at all of these, trying to decide which category I fit into.
the-creationofbeauty.blogspot.com

songbird said...

If you can't decide, you're probably a bunch of categories! Haha, thanks for reading!

Harisankar said...

Hey, that is quite an incisive post. Loved your classifications. And I hate this "Please prove you're not a robot" fillup before I post a comment!

songbird said...

Haha, glad you liked it! Yes, that robot part can get a bit... annoying :P Thank you for dropping by!