Whats your style...

What’s Your Style

What’s your style is as rudimentary question as what’s your name, where we always try to attach ourselves with some emerging trends, patterns and persons. Let’s start with writing style. So what’s your writing style is the big question for a modern writer. Every writer or everyone who writes something ponders upon this question at least in his initial stages of writing. While some people who are nerdy and callous towards the literature may think ‘You got a style for your time waste!’ On the other end the literary freak thinks ‘Oh! Poor fella’ and some may even go the edge of arguing.

So coming back to the question ‘what’s your writing style’, most people try to identify their works with a limited set of authors called as classics. Many people and even the critics themselves always try to correlate a newbie’s works (anyone other than a classic can be called a newbie) with that of classics. Here comes one more question ‘what is a Classic’. There are types of classics: classic (past) and modern classic. Oxford dictionary suggests the definition: Classic = judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.

One reason people give for comparing is that some people got inspired by these so called classics which supposedly dragged them into respective field. Surpassing the diplomatic questions and answers for time being moving into the mindset of typical suburban writing newbie who has managed to get his hands on some of the ‘popular’ novels might be something like this as I know.

Anything that is swadeshi humor the first thing that occurs to my mind is works of RKN, I mean RK Narayan. And something that shows some ‘political’ aspects may reflect Mulk Raj Anand, and something that is non-fiction swadeshi writings related to some studies might bring Chetan Bhagat into the frame, I would daresay that he’s a new classic who rose to classic with his very first work beacause of it being one of its kind in our country, well if its got anything magical Tolkien used to come into the picture until Rowling managed to grab the position. While the detective stories try to throw light on Conan Doyle and if those contained anything related to some ancient cults or beliefs it’s definitely Dan Brown this time. It is Chekhov when the characters make you feel very real and where the routine shows up with their happy and sad fates entwined. A rich prose and early modern writings immediately take us to Shakespeare.

To how much extent this comparison is good or beneficiary is always a statement of doubt. This comparison is not only just in the field of writing, a newbie in any field is sure to do the same comparing himself or being compared to so called classics. Its like someone who shows great skill in cricket compares himself to Sachin Tendulkar or if he happens to be a bowler it might be Glen Mc Grath, Shane Warne, or I would say that funky hair style Malinga managed to come onto the platform of the ‘classics’ after his excellent game in IPL. Similarly for someone attached with chess it is Viswanath Anand, and Roger Federer and Rafel Nadel would grab the classic tag in tennis, well the fans of them still fight about one being greater than the other (I personally place Federer above Nadel).

For a new director there is classic for each genre like sci-fi has got matrix, back to the future (Avatar and Inception are latest counterparts) and related to violent horror ‘saw’ has got no competition (My knowledge of horror movies is limited so I can’t talk more).

Einstein, Gauss, Newton, Galileo etc might do it for physics.

There are global classics and local classics as far as I understand it. When you ask someone to describe anyone, for each character or trait they say, you get a picture in your mind, the so called classics.

Local classic can be explained as Classic in a small neighborhood whose existence may be time limited, for example if u r trying to attempt JEE the one in your neighborhood who is now in some IIT is classic from your parents point of view I would rather say he/she has been presented as a classic to you by your parents and teachers. The existence of his classic tag ceases when another person in that neighborhood gets a better rank, where the new person effectively replaces him.

Though the set accepted as classics internationally is limited it’s an ever growing set of which you could be a part if your work and heart are driven by same desire.

So finally is it good or bad ‘the comparison’ is statement of debate. Well don’t worry so much on it you can’t help it life is like this.