Troy

Or a book that's a revelation on how to develop your own writing style. 'Would be a tremendous help.

Thanks,

Troy

Lost in Some Story

Elements of Style by Strunk and White. If you don't have it, you'll need it. I swear by it. So do most other writers out there.

Good luck.
Lost

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ClancyBoy

There's no one book. Read every book, especially books outside your genre.

...Except for The Elements of Style. That will learn you the basics.

Strunk and White don't want you to develop your own style though, really. They're actually kind of anal, and probably think individualism is a back door to infiltration by the communists.

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Mike C

That book doesn't exist. The book that can teach you how to be a better writer doesn't exist; you're on your own, kid.

The only way you can develop your style is by writing til your fingers fall off. The only way you can become a writer is by reading good writing, and writing, and reading, and writing, ad ininitum.

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Amara-J

I lost my copy of Elements of Style... sigh.

Elizabeth George's "Write Away" is a book I swear by. It's not really a manual on how to develop your writing style, but she offers very practical advice for would-be fiction writers, in general. Here, have a look yourself. Link:

Amazon.com: Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life: Books: Elizabeth George

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Shavixmir

Write a one page anecdote from your life.
Then read it out loud, the way you want to actually tell it (record this if your memory is crap).
Then try to re-write it the way you want to actually have it read out loud.

Do this with another couple of one page stories/anecdotes (the sort of thing you say at birthday parties).

And then you'll notice that you start writing the way you want the story to be read out loud automatically.
It's a form of self-conditioning.

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Troy

Thanks to everyone for the answers. I posted the same thing on Yahoo! Answers and didn't even receive one answer whatsoever. I appreciate it.

William Zinsser's On Writing Well had a lot of material in it. He made a lot of good points, and summed them up the best way he could have by giving his own background knowledge with examples.

A reply to those who said to read/write all the bleeping time -- I do that, and vicariously so. See, I feel that my writing is too ordinary. I'm trying to figure out ways to give it a boost to have fun with it. But the problem is -- I can't! So what I'm thinking is to study over multiple authors' work, and understand what makes them unique.

Again, thanks for all the answers here, guys. I'm going to stick around and become a dedicated member here. I already like the forum.