Imagine four writers sitting down to write a story about a Nigerian wedding.
The bride is two hours late. The groom is sweating in his agbada. The MC is shouting into a microphone. The aunties are gossiping, the children are running around, and Uncle Shege has already eaten twice.
Imagine four writers sitting down to write a story about a Nigerian wedding.
All four writers are writing about the same wedding. They have the same characters, the same setting, and the same events.
But when you read their stories, they don’t feel the same.
One makes you laugh. Another makes you feel nostalgic. One explains the traditions behind the wedding, while another assumes you already know them. One describes the smell of jollof rice and the sound of the talking drum. Another focuses on the bride’s American in-laws, who cannot understand why nobody seems concerned about the time.
Why? Because writing style is about more than the story being told. It’s also about how the story is told.
As readers, we often know when we love a book’s writing style, even when we cannot explain exactly what we love about it. We know when a story feels authentic, when the dialogue makes us laugh, when the descriptions transport us somewhere, or when a narrator’s sarcasm makes us feel as though we’re sharing an inside joke.
But what exactly are we responding to?
Let’s find out, using four imagined writers telling Nigerian stories from different backgrounds.
What you’re getting into
- The Writer Behind the Story: How Experiences Can Shape What We Read
- Author Voice: Why Some Writers Feel Instantly Recognizable
- Narrator’s Voice: Who Is Telling You the Story?
- Character Voice: Why Everyone Shouldn’t Sound the Same
- Diction: The Words That Shape Your Reading Experience
- Description: What the Author Chooses to Show You
- Exposition: How Much Information Does the Story Give You?
- Narration: How the Story Unfolds
- Sarcasm, Humor, Irony, and Other Techniques
- Language and Cultural References: What Does the Story Assume You Know?
- Four Writers, One Scene: Which Version Speaks to You?
- So, What Exactly Are You Noticing When You Read?
- Your turn: Become a more curious reader
1. The writer behind the story: How experiences can shape what we read
Imagine our four writers are:
- The Nigerian living in Nigeria who has never travelled outside the country. They know Nigeria through their everyday experiences. Their stories might draw on familiar neighbourhoods, family dynamics, local expressions, traffic, power outages, market negotiations, weddings, and the unwritten rules of social life.
- The Nigerian living in Nigeria who travels. They experience everyday Nigerian life while also encountering other cultures. They might notice differences in how people communicate, organise events, express affection, or relate to family. Travel may give them new comparisons, but it doesn’t automatically make them more knowledgeable about Nigeria than someone who doesn’t travel.
- The Nigerian immigrant living in America. They grew up in Nigeria but now live in America. They might draw on memories of home, their experiences in America, and the differences they notice between the two countries. Their stories might explore homesickness, belonging, cultural misunderstandings, or maintaining Nigerian traditions abroad.
- The third-generation Nigerian American who has never visited Nigeria. Their grandparents or great-grandparents may have come from Nigeria, while they grew up in America. Their stories might explore inherited traditions, family stories, identity, belonging, and the desire to understand their roots.
Now, imagine all four writers describing the bride’s late arrival.
The Nigerian who has never travelled might write:
The MC had announced the bride’s arrival six times. The aunties had complained eight times. Uncle Shege had finished his second plate of jollof rice. The bride was still nowhere to be found.
The Nigerian who travels might write:
Somewhere between the scheduled time and the actual arrival, the wedding had entered that familiar Nigerian waiting period when nobody knew what was happening, but everybody had an opinion.
The immigrant might write:
Two hours late. I could practically hear my mother reminding me that Nigerian time was a real thing, no matter how many years I’d lived in America.
The third-generation Nigerian American might write:
Grandma called it African time. Dad called it tradition. I called it the reason my feet were killing me in these shoes.
These are possibilities, not rules. Any of these writers could produce any of these sentences.
As a reader, what might you notice?
Perhaps one passage makes you think about the experience of living between two cultures. Another makes you laugh because the details feel familiar. A third makes you think about the differences between cultures, while the fourth makes you curious about inherited identity.
Your experiences as a reader influence which details stand out to you, too.
Question for you: Have you ever read a story that made you feel as though the author understood something about your life without needing to explain it? What was that detail?
2. Author voice: Why some writers feel instantly recognizable
Have you ever picked up a book and thought, I know this author’s writing. I can tell it’s them?
That feeling may come from the author’s voice.
Author voice is the distinctive personality that comes through a writer’s work across different stories. Some authors make you laugh even when their characters are having terrible days. Some excel at emotional intimacy. Others are reflective, dramatic, lyrical, suspenseful, or wonderfully direct.
Consider three descriptions of the same groom waiting for his bride.
The groom was beginning to regret every decision that had brought him to this moment.
The groom’s smile had the brittle quality of a man who had paid for a five-star service and received a two-star experience.
He checked his watch again. Around him, laughter rose and fell, plates clattered, and her nieces were running around. He wondered whether she was coming at all.
The first leans towards comic exaggeration. The second uses sarcasm. The third creates tension through atmosphere and the groom’s thoughts.
An author can use all these approaches in one book. Voice doesn’t mean every sentence must sound the same. It means there is a recognisable sensibility behind the choices.
As readers, we might prefer one author’s humour, another’s emotional depth, and another’s ability to describe a setting so vividly that we can almost smell the food.
Question for you: What makes you fall in love with an author’s writing? Is it their humour, their emotional depth, their descriptions, their dialogue, or the way they understand human relationships?
And have you ever read a book whose plot you enjoyed but whose writing style didn’t work for you? That difference matters: enjoying a story and enjoying how it is told are related, but they aren’t exactly the same thing.
3. Narrator’s voice: Who is telling you the story?
Imagine the author is a filmmaker. The narrator is the voice guiding you through the film, deciding what you see, what you hear, and what information you receive.
The narrator’s voice is the personality and attitude of the voice telling the story.
Consider these three versions of the groom’s experience.
First-person narration:
I watched the groom check his watch for the fifth time. If the bride didn’t arrive soon, somebody would have to explain to him that this was a wedding, not a hostage negotiation.
Third-person narration with a humorous tone:
The groom checked his watch for the fifth time. He was beginning to suspect that his bride had mistaken their wedding for an appointment she could reschedule.
Third-person narration with a serious tone:
The groom checked his watch. Around him, the guests continued to laugh and talk, but the knot in his stomach tightened. She had promised she would be there.
Notice that the first uses I, while the other two use he. But the difference isn’t just the pronouns. The attitude towards the situation changes, too.
A narrator might be playful, judgmental, sympathetic, distant, unreliable, or deeply intimate with a character’s thoughts.
Sometimes, the narrator knows things the characters don’t. In other stories, the narrator can tell us only what one character sees, hears, or believes.
As readers, this affects how much we trust the information we receive and how close we feel to the characters.
Question for you: Have you ever read a book where you distrusted the narrator, suspected they were hiding something, or felt that they were deliberately misleading you? How did that affect your reading experience?
And when a story is told in first person, do you automatically believe everything the narrator says? Remember, a character can be mistaken about themselves, other people, or what really happened.
4. Character voice: Why everyone shouldn’t sound the same
Now let’s talk about the people inside the story.
Character voice is how an individual character expresses themselves through dialogue, thoughts, and sometimes the way the narration reflects their perspective.
Imagine the groom is a reserved businessman, his best friend is a comedian, and his aunt is a woman who has first-class in crossing boundaries.
The groom says: “Has anyone heard from her?”
His best friend says: “Bro, should we send a search party or start sharing the souvenirs?”
His aunt says: “I said it from the beginning. A woman who cannot respect time will not respect her husband.”
The aunt’s statement reveals her beliefs. The best friend’s joke tells us something about his personality and relationship with the groom. The groom’s short question might suggest restraint, anxiety, or irritation, depending on the context.
Character voice can be influenced by age, personality, education, profession, region, language, family upbringing, and social relationships.
A character might speak differently to their boss than to their best friend. Someone who is usually confident might become hesitant around a person they desire. A character who jokes constantly might suddenly become formal when they’re hurt. As readers, we learn to recognize these differences, sometimes without consciously noticing them.
Question for you: Can you remember a book in which you could identify a character just from their dialogue, even before you saw their name? What made that character’s voice distinctive? And have you ever read a book where every character seemed to have the same personality, sense of humor, or way of speaking? How did that affect your enjoyment?
5. Diction: The words that shape your reading experience
Diction means word choice. It is one of the most noticeable parts of writing style.
You can describe the same event using different words, and those words will influence how you feel about it.
Consider these sentences:
- The bride arrived late.
- The bride finally made her grand entrance. Clock it…
- The bride kept three hundred people waiting.
- The bride swept into the hall as if time had been invented for everyone else.
All four describe a late arrival, but they carry different attitudes.
The first is neutral. The second sounds celebratory. The third emphasizes inconvenience. The fourth is dramatic and slightly mocking.
Diction can also influence how a setting feels on the page.
Compare:
The street was busy.
With:
Hawkers threaded between cars, danfo drivers leaned on their horns, and a woman balancing a tray of bottled water on her head shouted at a driver who had blocked her path.
The second version uses specific words and details to bring the street to life.
Word choice also affects how characters express love, anger, desire, respect, and disappointment.
A character might say, “I miss you.”
Another might say, “The house has been extremely quiet since you left.”
A third might say, “Haba. You could at least pretend you remember you have a girlfriend.”
Each line communicates something slightly different about the speaker and their relationship.
As readers, we respond to these differences. Sometimes a simple sentence feels more intimate than an elaborate declaration. Sometimes a character’s carefully chosen words reveal more than a long speech.
Question for you: Think about a romantic scene you loved. Was it the grand declaration of love that moved you, or a smaller, quieter sentence that revealed how much the characters meant to each other? What did the author’s choice of words make you feel?
6. Description: What the author chooses to show you
Description is how a writer uses details to help you imagine a person, place, object, or experience.
Let’s return to the wedding.
One writer might describe the bride’s lace, jewelery, gele, and makeup. Another might describe the sweating guests, the smell of food, the sound of the talking drum, and the vendors arguing outside.
A third might focus on the groom’s hands tightening around his phone.
All these descriptions can be effective. The question is which details matter to the story.
Description isn’t about mentioning everything the writer can see. It is about selecting details that create an atmosphere, reveal character, move the story forward, or make a moment memorable.
Consider these examples.
A neutral description: The room was crowded and hot.
A sensory description: Heat gathered beneath the hall’s low ceiling. Perfume mingled with the smell of ewa agoyin, and the event planner argued with Aunty Ruka through the MC’s announcements.
A character-filtered description: The hall was too hot, the music too loud, and the perfume too sweet. If one more auntie squeezed her cheeks, she was going to leave her own wedding.
The last description is shaped by the character’s mood. She isn’t merely reporting the environment; she is experiencing it.
This is why two writers can describe the same place differently. One notices beauty, another notices discomfort, and another notices the details that reveal something about the people in the room. As readers, we may feel transported into a scene because the writer chose exactly the right details.
Question for you: Have you ever read a description that made you feel as though you were physically present in the setting? What could you see, hear, smell, or feel? Was there one detail that made the scene particularly memorable?
7. Exposition: How much information does the story give you?
Exposition is the information a writer gives you so you can understand the story. It might explain a character’s history, a family relationship, a cultural practice, or why a particular event matters.
Let’s say the wedding involves a tradition that some readers may not know.
The writer could explain it directly: In her family, the wedding ceremony included a series of customary introductions that acknowledged the union of two families, not just two individuals.
Or reveal it through dialogue: “You cannot just skip the introductions,” her mother said. “This is not only about you and your husband. Our families have to meet properly.” (MY FAVORITE)
Or reveal it through action: Her father welcomed the groom’s family, exchanged greetings with the elders, and called for the customary introductions to begin.
Each method gives you information differently. The first explains. The second lets you learn through a character’s words. The third lets you observe the tradition unfolding.
Writers from different backgrounds may make different assumptions about what readers know. Someone writing primarily for readers familiar with Nigerian wedding customs might leave certain details unexplained. Someone writing for readers unfamiliar with those customs might provide more context. But not all Nigerians know the same things, either. A Yoruba wedding, an Igbo wedding, a Hausa wedding, and a Nigerian wedding in a diaspora community may involve different practices. Traditions also vary between families.
As readers, we may enjoy learning about unfamiliar customs, but too much explanation can interrupt the story. Too little can leave us confused.
Question for you: Have you ever encountered an expression, tradition, or cultural reference in a book that you didn’t understand? Did the author explain it naturally, or did you have to stop reading and look it up? And when you already know a tradition, do you enjoy seeing it represented in a story, or do you sometimes wish the author would explore a less familiar aspect that tradition?
8. Narration: How the story unfolds
Narration is the act of telling the story: conveying what happens, what characters do, what they think, and how events unfold.
It is connected to the narrator’s voice, but the two aren’t exactly the same. The narrator’s voice concerns how the telling sounds; narration concerns the telling itself.
Imagine a character discovering that her fiancé has been hiding something from her.
Straightforward narration: She opened his laptop and found the email. She read it twice before closing the screen.
Dramatic narration: The email was only three lines long. She read it once, then again, waiting for the words to rearrange themselves into something less devastating.
Humorous narration: She had always believed in giving people the benefit of the doubt. Apparently, she had been giving him the benefit of an entire legal department.
Each version controls the pace and emotional impact differently.
A writer might summarize three uneventful months in a paragraph, then spend three pages describing a single conversation because that conversation changes everything.
Narration also determines how information is revealed. The writer might tell you the truth immediately, let you discover it alongside the character, or deliberately withhold information to create suspense.
As readers, we experience these choices as pacing, tension, surprise, anticipation, or emotional immersion.
Question for you: Have you ever read a scene so slowly that you wanted to shout at the character to hurry up? Or a scene that moved so quickly you wished the author had given you more time to process what happened? How did the pacing affect your enjoyment of the book?
9. Sarcasm, humor, irony, and other techniques
These are tools writers use to shape your reading experience. They aren’t complete writing styles by themselves, and they can appear in almost any kind of story.
Let’s return to our groom.
Sarcasm: A sharp or mocking remark.
“Wonderful. I have paid for a wedding, and apparently, we are now hosting a waiting competition.”
Humour: Something that makes you laugh or smile.
Uncle Shege had arrived for the ceremony at noon, eaten at one, and returned to the buffet at two. By three, he was the only person at the wedding who seemed genuinely satisfied with the proceedings.
Irony: A contrast between what is expected and what actually happens, or between what someone says and what they mean.
The wedding planner, famous for her punctuality, was the only person who had forgotten to bring a watch.
Exaggeration: Deliberately making something seem bigger, worse, or more extreme for effect.
The groom had checked his phone so many times that even the battery was beginning to lose hope.
Metaphor: Describing one thing in terms of another to create an image or meaning.
His patience was a candle burning at both ends.
Repetition: Repeating a word, phrase, or structure to create emphasis or rhythm.
She had waited for the apology, waited for the explanation, waited for him to become the man he had promised to be.
These techniques influence how we interpret characters and situations. A joke might relieve tension, reveal insecurity, or make a painful moment easier to bear. Sarcasm might signal affection between friends, or it might reveal contempt.
As readers, we also learn to recognise when a character’s words don’t match their feelings.
Question for you: Have you ever laughed at a character’s joke, only to realize later that the humor was hiding something painful? Did that change how you understood the character?
10. Language and cultural references: What does the story assume you know?
Now let’s return to our four writers.
The Nigerian who has never travelled might use local expressions, references, and rhythms that feel natural to them. They might mention a neighbourhood, a particular kind of bus, or a familiar family interaction without explaining it because, in their experience, it is ordinary.
The Nigerian who travels might consciously compare expressions or notice how a phrase lands differently in different settings. They might also choose not to explain familiar Nigerian expressions, trusting the scene to communicate their meaning.
The Nigerian immigrant in America might write characters who move between Nigerian expressions and American idioms. Their stories might explore how a phrase or behaviour is interpreted differently in different cultural settings.
The third-generation Nigerian American might use Nigerian words learned from parents or grandparents alongside American English. They might be deeply familiar with certain family traditions while still learning about regional differences or everyday life in contemporary Nigeria.
But these are possibilities, not rules. A person’s background doesn’t automatically determine their vocabulary, fluency, knowledge, or writing style.
Language is also about register: the way we change how we speak depending on the situation.
A character might say:
- To their boss: “I’ll send the report before the end of the day.”
- To their friend: “I’ll sort it out today, don’t worry.”
- To their sibling: “Abeg, leave me alone. I’ll do it!”
The same person can use all three forms of speech. What changes is the relationship, context, and emotion.
Writers can use Nigerian English, Pidgin, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or other languages in dialogue. The important thing is whether the language suits the character and setting.
As readers, we may enjoy seeing familiar expressions on the page. We may also discover new expressions, learn about different communities, or notice when a character’s speech doesn’t feel convincing.
Question for you: Have you ever read a Nigerian character whose dialogue felt so natural that you could almost hear their voice? What made it convincing? And have you ever encountered dialogue that felt forced, as though the author was trying too hard to make a character sound Nigerian? What was missing? (Don’t come for my watery pidgin, lol)
11. Four writers, one scene: Which version speaks to you?
Imagine a Nigerian woman returns home after living abroad for ten years. She attends a family gathering and discovers that her relatives still treat her like the teenager who left, even though she has built an independent life.
Here are four possible approaches.
Writer A: The Nigerian who has never travelled
Aunty had barely dropped her handbag before three women surrounded her. One wanted to know why she wasn’t married yet. Another wanted to know whether she had brought anything for the children. The third simply wanted to know whether America was as fine as people said.
Writer B: The Nigerian who travels
I had seen this kind of family gathering in different countries: the questions disguised as concern, the advice nobody had requested, the familiar insistence that love gave everyone the right to an opinion. But there was something about returning home that made every question feel more personal.
Writer C: The Nigerian immigrant in America
My mother asked whether I was still seeing the nice boy from university. I was thirty-two, had a mortgage, and managed a team of twelve people. But in my mother’s eyes, I was still the girl who had left Nigeria with two suitcases and an attitude.
Writer D: The third-generation Nigerian American
Grandma called me her American granddaughter, even though I had never lived anywhere else. At every family gathering, somebody asked when I was coming to Nigeria. I had started wondering whether Nigeria was a place I could visit, or a place I was expected to become.
Notice that none of these passages is inherently more Nigerian, more authentic, or better written than the others. Each makes different choices about what to notice, what to explain, how to use humour, and which emotions to bring to the foreground.
As readers, you might connect most strongly with one version. Another might challenge your assumptions. A third might introduce you to a perspective you hadn’t considered.
Question for you: Which passage would make you want to read the rest of the book? What drew you in: the character’s situation, the language, the humor, the emotional tension, or the questions it raised? Your answer is a reminder that reading is an interaction between the story and the person experiencing it.
12. So, what exactly are you noticing when you read?
Here is a quick guide to the elements of writing style you can start recognising in your favourite books.
- Author voice: The distinctive personality that comes through a writer’s work.
- Narrator’s voice: The personality and attitude of the voice telling a particular story.
- Character voice: The way an individual character speaks, thinks, and expresses themselves.
- Diction: The words the writer chooses and the feelings or associations those words create.
- Description: The details that help you imagine a scene, setting, person, or feeling.
- Exposition: The information the writer gives you to help you understand the story and its context.
- Narration: How the writer tells and organises the events of the story, including what is revealed and when.
- Literary techniques and language choices: Sarcasm, humour, irony, metaphors, repetition, dialogue, cultural references, and other tools that shape the reading experience.
These elements work together. An author might have a naturally humorous voice, choose a sarcastic narrator, give one character a very formal way of speaking, describe the setting through sensory details, and reveal family history through dialogue rather than a long explanation.
Those choices combine to create the reading experience.
You don’t need to know every literary term to enjoy a book. But learning to recognize these elements can help you understand why a particular scene moved you, why a character felt real, or why one book’s prose worked for you while another’s didn’t.
13. Your turn: Become a more curious reader
The next time you pick up a romance, family drama, thriller, or literary novel, try asking yourself a few questions as you read.
- What did the author make me notice first?
- How does the narrator influence the way I see the characters?
- Do the characters sound like distinct individuals?
- What do the author’s word choices make me feel?
- Can I picture the setting? Which details helped me imagine it?
- Does the author explain unfamiliar traditions naturally?
- How does the writing make me laugh, feel suspense, or connect emotionally with a character?
- Does the story challenge or reinforce what I believe about Nigerian life and culture?
You don’t need to turn every reading session into homework. These questions are simply invitations to notice more.
You might discover that what you love about a particular author isn’t just the plot, but the way they make ordinary conversations feel electric. You might realise that you prefer spare, direct prose to elaborate descriptions. You might find yourself drawn to narrators who are funny but unreliable, or characters whose dialogue reveals everything they refuse to say directly.
You might even discover that you enjoy different writing styles for different moods.
And that’s perfectly fine.
Writing style isn’t simply what happens when a writer puts words on a page. It is the result of choices about language, perspective, detail, rhythm, information, and emotion. As readers, we experience those choices—even when we don’t know their names.
A writer’s experiences may influence those choices, but they don’t determine them completely. Writers can learn about places they have never visited, write characters whose lives differ from theirs, research unfamiliar customs, and develop techniques that don’t come naturally at first.
And readers bring their own experiences, expectations, and cultural knowledge to the page.
The goal isn’t to decide which kind of writer produces the most Nigerian story. It’s to understand what each story is doing, what it makes possible, and why it affects us the way it does.
So, the next time you read a story, don’t just ask, “What happened?” Ask yourself, “How did the author make me experience what happened—and why did it work for me?”
That is where appreciating writing style begins.
My writing style? I love exploring the nuances of Nigerian life, culture, relationships, and the beautiful ways our experiences shape us. And did you notice I used four Nigerians with four different backgrounds to explain writing style to you? That’s the kind of thing I do in my books, too: layered characters, cultural details, emotional depth, and stories that give you more to think about than just the romance. If you enjoyed this, go and buy one of my books. 😉