The Four Types of Writing

Four Types of Writing:
There are four types of writing or four writing styles that are generally used. Knowing all these four different types of writing and their usages are important for any writer. A writer’s style is a reflection of his personality, his unique style, his voice and his way to approach his audience and readers.
Generally there are four different types or styles of writing. Following are their names and details:

1. Expository Writing:
Expository writing is a subject-oriented writing style, in which the main focus of the author is to tell you about a given topic or subject, and leave out his personal opinions. He furnishes you with relevant facts and figures and does not include his opinions. This is one of the most common type of writing styles, which you always see in text books and usually “How – to” articles, in which the author tells you about a given subject, as how to do something.
Key Points: * Expository writing usually explains something in a process * Expository writing is often equipped with facts and figures * Expository writing is usually in a logical order and sequence

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2. Descriptive writing:
Descriptive writing is a style of writing which focuses on describing a character, an event or a place in great details. It is sometimes poetic in nature in which the author is specifying the details of the event rather than just the information of that event happened.
Example:
In descriptive writing, the author will not just say: “The vampire killed his lover”
He will change the sentence, focusing on more details and descriptions, like: “The red-eyed, bloody vampire, flushed his rusty teeth into the soft skin of his lover, and ended her life.”

Key Points: * It is often poetic in nature * It describes places, people, events, situations or locations in a highly-detailed manner. * The author visualizes you what he sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels.
3. Persuasive Writing:
Persuasive writing, unlike ‘Expository Writing’, contains the opinions, biasness and justification of the author. Persuasive writing is a type of writing which contains justifications and reasons to make someone believe on the point the writer is talking about. Persuasive writing is for persuading and convincing on your point of view. It is often used in complain letters, when you provide reasons and justifications for your complaint; other copywriting texts, T.V commercials, affiliate marketing pitches etc. are all different types of persuasive writing, where author is persuading and convincing you on something he wants you to do and/or believe.
Key Points: * Persuasive writing is equipped with reasons, arguments and justifications * In persuasive writing, the author takes a stand and asks you to believe his point of view. * If often asks for a call or an action from the readers.

Some Great Pieces of Narrative Writing
4. Narrative Writing:
Narrative writing is a type of writing in which the author places himself as the character and narrates you to the story. Novels, short stories, novellas, poetry, biographies can all fall in the narrative writing style. Simply, narrative writing is an art to describe a story. It answers the question: “What happened then?”
Key Points: * In narrative writing, a person, being a narrative, tells a story or event. * Narrative writing has characters and dialogues in it. * Narrative writing has definite and logical beginnings, intervals and endings. * Narrative writing often has situations like disputes, conflicts, actions, motivational events, problems and their solutions.
Conclusion:These are the four different types of writing that are generally used. There are many sub-types of writing which may fall in any of those categories. A writer must know all these styles, so as to identify his very own writing style, in which he feels comfortable, or which his audience likes to read.