: What Do People Mean When They Say You Write From A Different Time Period? I was told recently that my writing style mimics a style of writing that is no longer in fashion. What do people

Vote Up Vote Down

If you read Charles Dickens, he writes in a way that wouldn't get published nowadays. At times he uses long introductions to events so that the reader has to wait ages for something to happen. He can be very wordy and some descriptions are far longer than anyone would write today. Look at the length of some of his sentences and paragraphs. He can go off on rants about issues that were current for him but not absolutely essential for the story. Sometimes he changes narrative perspective in the middle of a passage and speaks directly to the reader.

This does not make Dickens a bad writer but writers at the time did these things.

Also, you might like to consider things like how women are described, particularly in relation to men. For example, many of Wilkie Collins' women are frail.

Punctuation has also changed. For example, look at the use of semicolons in 'Robinson Crusoe'.

(0)