“Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean, but betwixt them both,
they licked the platter clean!”

“I got a sense of the power of restraint from Hemingway, which is the smallest way to put it, because I got so much more than that from him. I learned the power of simple language in English. He showed what a powerful instrument English is if you keep the language simple, if you don’t use too many Latinate words.

“And from Faulkner, I learned the exact opposite, that excess can be thrilling, that ‘Don’t hold yourself in. Don’t rein yourself in. Go all the way. Go over the top, Overdo it.’ And between the two, it’s almost as if you’ve now been given your parameters. This is the best of one extreme and this is the best of another. And somewhere between the two you may be able to find your style in time to come.”
Norman Mailer

What an inspired idea — to pick two authors whose work you love with two very different styles and use them as the polestars for developing your own stylistic flair! When I think of two writers I’d recruit for this style-building strategy, Willa Cather and Charles Dickens spring to mind.

Willa Cather is a writer with a spare, lean style that reminds me of Hemingway: Like him, the words she left unsaid often convey as much as those on the page: There’s enormous emotional power in her silences. In contrast, Charles Dickens seems to revel in “over the top” writing and in artistic flourishes that seem excessive — after all, he was paid by the word. And yet, the color and joy and pleasure on the page that I feel when I read one of his novels is what draws me to him. To my mind, the one-of-a-kind characters that poured from his pen rival those of Shakespeare.

If I were to pluck some magic from each of these writers to make my own, here’s what I’d do: From Willa, I’d take the emotional undertow she creates through language that is simple yet precise and evocative. And from Charles, I’d take his flair for character description and exuberance.

How about you? If you had to pick two authors, one “fat” and the other “lean” — which two would you pick and why? And what qualities might you borrow from each to craft your own unique style? Something to ponder and play with as we all write on!