Your Hosts: Brandon, Piper, Dan, and Howard

We fielded some questions on style, diction, and paragraphing:

Is it okay to have pretty prose in a straightforward adventure story?
How do author voice and character voice differ?
How do you prevent paragraphs from rambling?
I feel like my writing is derivative of the writers whose work I read. How can I find or develop my own voice?
How much does diction play into genre fiction?
Is it okay to write in a natural speaking voice?
During which part of the writing process do you pay attention to style?

By Way Of Correction: "Unaccompanied Sonata," by Orson Scott Card, is the story about anxiety of influence. "Tunesmith," by Lloyd Biggle Jr., is about music, and even has the name "Bach" in it, but it's not the story Howard described.