STYLE GUIDE Part 1 - voice and styling components - Blaugust the Eleventh
The mix isnât new. Iâve been seasoning my sentences with equal parts newsroom punch and cultist incantation for years. But now Iâve gone full culinary-school on itâbreaking down the recipe so you can see which bits of bone and spice make it tick.
What youâll find ahead is my Voice and Style stripped down, dressed up, and paraded around for your inspection. Read if you like. Or better yetâsteal the bits you fancy and see what kind of delicious disaster your own voice can cook up.
And so: BEHOLD I am unmasked.
Portrait of the Artist as a.... STYLE GUIDE
Purpose
To create prose that feels like an overheard confession from a fevered mind, equal parts journalistic observation and cosmic dread â grounded in human experience, but spiked with strange geometry, impossible memories, and wry asides.
This guide marries voice (tone, mood, perspective) with mechanics (punctuation, capitalization, structure) to ensure consistency.
Core Voice & Style Principles
Voice is the distinct personality or worldview of the writer that comes through in the writing. Itâs who the writer is â their tone, attitude, and perspective. Itâs often consistent across different works.
Metaphor: If the writer were a person speaking to you, voice is what makes you recognize them immediately. Examples:
- Kurt Vonnegut has a dry, ironic, humanistic voice.
- Toni Morrison has a lyrical, empathetic, deeply cultural voice.
- Hunter S. Thompson has a chaotic, biting, hyperactive voice.
Style is how the writer expresses that voice on the page. It includes choices about sentence structure, diction, syntax, figurative language, rhythm, and form. Style can shift depending on the piece, genre, or audience.
Metaphor: If writing were fashion, style is the clothes the voice wears. Examples:
- Hemingwayâs style is spare and direct.
- Nabokovâs style is lush, complex, and erudite.
- Margaret Atwood can shift her style between dystopian clarity and poetic ambiguity, depending on the work.
Component Choice
1. Narrative Persona
- Unreliable narrator: Speak with confidence about the unknowable; admit ignorance with theatrical flair.
- First-person dominant, but slip into second-person to confront the reader or draw them into complicity.
- Let objectivity erode under the weight of sensory overload and creeping paranoia.
Example â Sandwiches shouldn't be a dare
The dip becomes necessity. You rehydrate what youâve leeched out. Moisture as marketing. You have created for yourself this culinary limboâdry ash made edible only through broth. The meat is but a memory, the bread is penance, the experience a palaver between what could have been great and the Lore2Â we construct.
You arenât eating lunch. Youâre participating in a system that devours its own origins and calls it authenticity.
2. Tonal Range
Oscillate between:
- Journalistic clarity â crisp, direct statements.
- Hallucinatory digressions â spiraling clauses, incantatory lists, and impossible imagery.
- Treat the mundane with reverence; treat the horrific with matter-of-fact casualness.
Example â Zen and the Art of Orchard Maintenance Â
Today, the air hovers in the low 70sâjust warm enough to fool the skin, just breezy enough to stir ancient pollen. Iâm slick with sweat, but it clings politely, not yet clawing at my eyes.
At my feet: a heap of limbs. Not human, not yet. Just branches, snipped and scatteredâa sacrificial mound that, should I glance away, may very well animate and rampage through downtown in a frenzied, chlorophyll-dripping spree.
3. Imagery
- Favor organic-mechanical juxtapositions: typewriters with tentacles, dusty ledgers that hum with static.
- Blend concrete sensory details (smell of ozone, grit in the teeth) with cosmic abstractions (angles that do not close, a silence that drowns).
- Avoid overusing classic Lovecraft adjectives (âeldritch,â âsquamousâ); invent your own or twist familiar ones.
Example â Excuse me but what is that? A throbbing mushroom cloud in the sky?
Letâs not mince words: the Trump-era war doctrine is scrawled in testosterone, mushroom-dicked madness, and a delusional belief that every geopolitical itch can be scratched with the throbbing tip of American might. Diplomacy? Please. Negotiation? Whatever. The art of the deal is best used to line my compost bin when I need more dead, useless carbon.
4. Rhythm & Flow
- Build momentum with long, winding sentences â then shatter it with abrupt one-line punches.
- Embrace repetition for ritualistic effect.
- Let paragraph breaks signal shifts in sanity, perspective, or time. Example â Something eternal smiles and the irises outlast us all
We seek out the resonantâtools still humming from use, a pot still stained from a hundred forgotten meals. Not what a thing is worth, but what it meant.  Continuity. A link in a long, strange chain of use, decay, and repurposing, it's stewardship of the left behind.