I've Got Style

I apologize for the late post, but I got a little distracted on the 4th, so I never got around to writing it. Anyway, we're going to talk about formats today. That sounds super lame, right? No! It's the most exciting thing ever!

When I first started writing stories, I used your typical straightforward style. Single-spaced walls of text. Or the essay inspired double-spaced. But then I started writing fan fiction and posting it on a site, and for it to post properly, you had to single-space it, and put an extra space between each paragraph. I started to write all my stories like that, because I liked how it broke up the walls of text into easily digestible chunks. Nowadays I have a style in Word labeled "Novel" that puts extra space between paragraphs. I've been using this basic style for years now. Years.


Compare them. Compare!

So then recently (by which I mean last November), I realized I could change it up a little. I could play with formatting. A Conspiracy of Ravens was the first story in which some used the internet, and the first in which someone sent a text message. I'm not sure how it took me that long. I was writing a lot of steampunk stuff set around 1900. That's my excuse.

Anyway, I developed a format for text messages, and one for the posts made by my blogger character. I've used the latter in my current tale when my protagonist posts on a forum.

Texts!

Blogs!

It might seem like unimportant stuff, but I think it might help the reader get into the story by making things look how they would actually look. You don't have to imagine that the conversation people are having is via text, because you can see it.

Let me know what you think of varying formats and styles within a book. It is distracting or beneficial?

See you Friday!