Much of my advice often follows the path of finding a middle between extremes in your styles of writing. This allows the use of all sorts of techniques that hook some people but not others. If a particular style you are using does not appeal to someone, if you keep a lot of your writing in between using too little or too much of something they will probably like some other aspect of your writing. Most readers often fall inbetween this point too, that a lot of what they like to read are techniques used enough to highlight aspects of the book, but not over take it. Sometimes however, it is both fun and rewarding to throw all the other advice out the window and just write with certain styles and techniques cranked all the way up with no middle ground.
Many popular sub genres fall into one of these extreme writing styles. For example Pulp writing tends to have very little of the following: dense continuity, character growth, interior monologues – but tend to have lot of action, adventure, and character actions that seem familiar or repetitive (favorite lines or battle techniques, situations that follow similar patterns, familiar types of background characters occur, etc). By hewing to these extremes of very little of some themes and quite a lot of others a very different writing style can be made.
Another popular sub-genre is POV fantasy books. This style often goes over the same events through different eyes, with new discoveries made each time. In this genre inner monologues occur often more than dialog or action, dramatic irony is used very frequently, but pacing is much slower than normal. Even with only three aspects being more extreme it still sets the tone as something very different than most narratives.
One great way to see what types of writing you like to do with certain aspects over the top is to write short stories. This is better than investing the time into long novels and then realizing you don’t write in that style well. Another way to experiment with it is to write certain chapters with certain elements ramped to eleven. The main hero has seen all of her family die, all of her plans go to waste and the person that did it is right in front of her with only a dozen guards standing in her way. In that case, even if the rest of the chapters have balanced action and dialogue, that specific chapter might have no dialogue at all, and just be one descriptive action scene after another as she hacks her way to the ultimate confrontation. This technique allows you to use a lack of moderation to enhance only one part of a narrative, without making the whole work done in a specific style.
Going to extremes isn’t something I would recommend without a plan. I wouldn’t just say to yourself “I want to do a book with tons of dialogue and a lot of humor, and practically no inner monologues or descriptions at all, just funny witty things said the whole time and also make it a 1000 page epic!” just to try to create a new genre. There will be people that like that style of book, but probably much more that will find it off putting. Also along the lines of above, it is more palatable if only a few things in the book are extreme. See each aspect of a book (methods of writing, subjects focused on, action to interaction quotient, tone, amount of humor, levels of irony, popular tropes used, etc) as different “dials.” If only a few dials are ramped up, then it is easier for people to take then the whole book being completely out of the norm to the point of alienation.
So in the end I guess I am recommending even for extreme writing, to have some moderation. How surprising.
I have not received a lot of complaints about the lack of poll, so I will do without it again.
World Info for Allmother’s Fire:
Travel times between most islands is measured in days or weeks. There are some large islands that seem to be more out in the periphery which take closer to a month, but those are only gone to very rarely, as the rewards are not normally worth the extra costs of stocking up for months’ worth of supplies for your crew. Getting to one specific island may take you a month if it follows a different path than yours, but on its way you will probably cross at least 3 or 4 other islands that you can stop and get new supplies.
There are horror stories of those running out of supplies and not even being able to hook any flying animals enough to get food, but clouds when passing by ships seems to automatically refill barrels if treated right by Woodsingers, so running out of water is never an issue. The only reasons people would risk going long without supplies is if they have no place they think is a safe haven nearby (which some rather aggressive Air Pirates with notorious ships do) or if exploring for legends. It is said some where is an island that the true daughters of the Allmother live on, and whoever goes there will receive her blessing. No one has gone there and returned to tell the tale, even if everyone is sure they heard of a friend of a friend of a friend who thinks they saw that island once.