HELP: How To Critique Prose and Writing Styles

[Juliko]

I didn't see a topic like this anywhere, so I decided to make one myself, if that's okay. Everyone has different writing styles and prose, and no two pieces of prose are the same. But how exactly can you critique prose or written words in detail? How can you critique one's writing style without seeming repetitive or gushy? I'm trying to rectify this myself, as I feel like whenever I write reviews for books in my blog, I always seem to say stuff like the prose was good because X or the prose was bad because X, but nothing that really seems like a real literary review. Paragraph length, grammar, a story's tone, point of view, sentence structure, and flow are all important things in a story, and since we're all writers here in some way, learning how to review someone else's work is important because it helps them see things from an outsider's view and point out things and mistakes they didn't see before so they can improve. Discussion of all things critique, prose, and writing styles starts here! Feel free to give advice, talk about your own style, ask for advice, provide links or articles, anything goes!

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

What I generally do is mention it early on, and then only bring it up again if I notice a change. As for what to say, that's really something I had to pick up just by reading a lot of fiction, and a lot of analysis of fiction. But I'll just dip into the topic all the same:

Writing style is what we call the sum of a writer's chosen techniques of narration, the overall feel of their prose, the degree of complexity, formality and so on in their sentence structure, the accessibility of the vocabulary, the perspective and tense, the degree of descriptive detail, tendency to exposit or obfuscate, reliability of narrator, use of figurative or technical language, degree of realism in dialogue, and basically anything else that comprises execution rather than concept or content. (I say this - I'm sure that I'd amend this description after serious thought!)

Each of the above can be mentioned individually, and a practised reader will learn to discern the effect that these choices have. They will be able to say that their enjoyment of the story was interefered with by an unconventional perspective that seemed unnecessary rather than justified, or that the sentence structure was appropriately flexible dependent on the tone of different scenes, or whatever else. That really is sufficient in terms of reviewing writing style - what affected your reading experience? - let the author know.

My own style tends to be third person close, with a narrative register that leans a little towards being dry and wordy but is tempered by the vocabulary, emotional state and perspective of the POV character, including some internal monologue interjections from them. I abstract some dialogue and action, but not much, and I'm pretty light on description except as it matters to the POV character.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Style can be difficult to critique in the abstract. Being more specific and detailed about such things as word choice, sentence structure, etc, makes things easier, but it's also a lot of work for the average review, and something I'll only really do when beta'ing.

I remember by degree involved some study of stylistics, and it is a complex, technical (And often boring) subject when you really get into it