: Re: How do you find your unique style? Let me preface this by saying I am quite young as writers go, only 20. Oftentimes as I am writing, I find myself simulating the style of whatever I most

@Kevin153

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A great way to discover your style is to force yourself to exhibit it. And a great way to force yourself to exhibit your style is to write with one habit tied behind your back. Or tied up and locked in the basement. But definitely tied up.

The idea is: Pick one habit, temporarily forbid it, and rewrite a short piece without being able to lean on that habit.

Here are some habits, and some ways to temporarily tie them up:

To be. Rewrite a piece without any form of the verb to be. If you can't use to be, you force yourself to think about your other verbs, and some other parts of speech, and the way you construct sentences. Then rewrite again using what you've learned, and using to be if you want to.
Adjectives and adverbs. Rewrite a piece with no adjectives. Or with no adverbs. For extra credit, rewrite with none of either. This forces you to think about the kinds of color that modifiers add, and forces you to find other ways to paint with those colors. Choosing better nouns and verbs, perhaps. Or playing with sentence structures. Or fragments. Then rewrite again using what you've learned, and using modifiers if you want to.
Sentence structure. Rewrite a piece using sentences no longer than 10 words (or seven words if 10 is too easy). Rewrite the same piece using sentences no shorter than 20 words (or 30 or 35 if 20 is too easy). Then rewrite again using what you've learned about sentence lengths and structures.
Excessive extra extraneous words and wordiness. Yah, you gotta have 'em. But how many? And which ones? Take a piece that's about 700 words long. Delete one tenth of the paragraphs (round up). Then delete one tenth of the remaining sentences. Then delete one tenth of the remaining words. Notice what you've lost. Count the words and remember the count. If it's more than 500 words, keep cutting, and count again. Your final count is now your word limit. Rewrite your piece to add back in everything you've lost, but without exceeding your word limit. This forces you to find more compact ways to say what you're trying to say, and to create the effects you're trying to create.

By tying a habit behind your back, you force yourself to rethink how you overrely on that habit. You have to find other ways to create the same effects. And by playing with other ways, you learn all kinds of stuff about how words and sentences and sonority and rhythms and punctuation work. And you learn how to choose those things deliberately, instead of out of habit.

And by choosing deliberately, you discover your style.

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