By Zack "Period 5 Token Male" Krajnak
Writing has a lot of rules. Grammar, citing, format, where to publish, even what pronouns can be used in which essays. A point of contention between all writers, though, seems to be how to manage the writing process. Start with a mind-map or an outline? Worry about grammar before or after the organization is finalized? Take it nice and slow, or become Stephen King and get 5 pages done in 2 hours every day (and a novel done every month)? Any discussion about how anyone starts their draft will almost certainly be met with a “Well. The way I do my prewriting stage…” before launching into an Iliad worthy epic about how they, personally, write their essays. Why so much disagreement? Why the incessant need to explain and rehash and restate why they do the things they do? Why all the rhetorical questions? Why do we care?
Writers, obviously, are people. People, obviously, are individuals (unless you have an identical twin. Sorry you guys). Thus it follows that writers are individuals (except for twins), so wouldn’t that appear through their writing? Of course it does, usually in the form of voice. A writer’s voice is the unique way they put together their writing, excessive, use, of, commas being an excellent example. Some people like to put together lengthy, eloquent, beautiful sentences that they must think flow from their keyboard like ink from a leaky pen, and, of course, they must be held together with multiple conjunctions. Others write very short sentences. Then they call it a day. Like fingerprints and actual voices, these minute, or extreme as the case may be, differences make it easy to tell one author’s work from another’s. Of course, ghost writers, like voice actors, can manage a passable facsimile of other’s voices, so it's not a foolproof way of determining authorship. Surely there is more that distinguishes writers from one another. And there is.
The aforementioned writing process is generally split into five stages. They are, in their usual order, pre-writing, drafting, editing, revision, and rewriting. Obviously some of these steps require other ones first; you can’t edit or revise a draft that isn’t there yet, and there isn’t much point in pre-writing after you’re done rewriting. However, more than a few of the steps don’t necessarily have to take place in that order. It depends on the writer. Some writers, like myself, do lots of pre-writing while writing the draft, always keeping the plan just a few steps ahead of the piece itself. Others compile a cohesive plan and definite course of action complete with quotes, citations, and key points pre-prepared before they even put the proverbial pen to paper. And for most, editing and revising are not individual steps but part of a fluid process of improving the initial draft. All of these differences point to small aspects of a writer’s personality. If you do less pre-writing (or perform it in a more relaxed manner), it typically comes from a tendency to be disorganized or spontaneous, though not always. All I know is that those writers I know who complete what are essentially entire essays in bullet points are much more organized in the rest of their life than I could ever hope to be, with my notebooks filled with scribbled notes, ideas, and food stains.
Then it's a question of correlation versus causation. Well, not really. We develop our personalities long before we develop our writing style, so anyone’s writing quirks most probably stem from their personality (although this is a generalization; certainly some people may pick things up from others and run with it, but things we develop for ourselves usually stem from personality). One of the more widely accepted (and my personal favorite) models for different personalities is the Myers-Briggs personality test. It divides people into 16 different personality types with 8 traits split between 4 categories. (You can read more about the test and how it relates to writers here) There isn’t really any scientific data about the different personality types in relation to writing style or to anything outside personality, really, but we can make some generalizations.
Statistics and graphic courtesy of moonrat
As one might expect, most writers are introverts; the more cerebral the person, the more likely they’ll express themselves through writing, not loud complaining in a crowded bar. With respect to fiction writing, thinkers (the T in the third category) may be more plot or situation driven due to their planning ability and likelihood to focus on events rather than people, but feelers (the F in the same category) would perhaps be more drawn to romantic or character driven works. With the same respect, thinkers might be more likely to do non-fiction works, like journalism or biographies due to their strong connection to facts and reality, while the feelers among us would perhaps be more frustrated with reality, and chase the romantic feelings we can express more freely in fictitious works. It’s enough to make you wish we had better data on it, huh?
If you’ve got input about how your personality affects your writing, or want to ask me about how my personality affects mine, you can contact me at zack.krajnak@gmail.com or by finding me in one of the dark corners in the school that I inhabit due to my status as an INTP. And feel free to suggest witty titles.
