Whether you’re writing Regency romance in a verbose (wordy) style, or you’re writing stark prose like Hemingway, knowing sentence structure inside out will improve your style.īad grammar and punctuation are style killers. 3: Play with how you structure sentences and avoid mistakes You’ll lift the veil of what distinguishes the writing styles of favourite authors what makes them effective. Keeping a reading journal like this will benefit your style over time. Take a moment to analyse how it’s put together why it works. When you come across a sentence or paragraph you love, write it down in a book for insight and inspiration. You don’t have to copy out the whole of Pride and Prejudice. Famous painters learn by reproducing masterworks Bach learned composition in part by copying out the works of his predecessors. Many great artists have learned by copying the masters. For example, the Yale writing centre offers concise, helpful grammar tutorials you can download here.Ģ: Copy out favourite paragraphs by authors you love If you don’t want a print guide, try writing style guides on universities’ English department pages. ‘Paralyzed by the neurotic lassitude engendered by meeting one’s past at every turn, around every corner, inside every cupboard, I go aimlessly from room to room.’ As Kane writes ‘delaying the principle thought increases its importance’. This is a sentence where the main clause is put near the end rather than the beginning. He uses the following example by Joan Didion to illustrate the ‘periodic sentence’. For example, there is a whole chapter on different sentence styles. Kane’s Oxford guide goes into minute detail. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.’ Although Strunk and White’s guide has been criticized for shortcomings (one reader on Goodreads singles out the antique advice to write ‘persons’ rather than ‘people’), there is still plenty of good advice on improving style. Two classic style guides are Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (a long-standing prescribed text for many writing courses in the US) and The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing by Thomas S. This post goes into some detail, but it’s worth getting a print style guide that you can dip into often, one that covers the rules of grammar and punctuation comprehensively, as well as stylistic devices you can use to vary your prose. So how do you master different ways of writing and develop a writing style that is completely your own? 1: Get a good writing style guide (Arundhati Roy has this kind of style.) Another might use little comparison, preferring stark, spartan imagery. One author might use simile and metaphor a lot. What makes each author’s style different? Sentence length and structure, vocabulary, mood and tone. Strong style in writing invites readers to live in your world. Put together a building without some thought to design, and who’ll want to live in it? Forget to add the right supports and the roof could cave in. Like each of these other media, great writing, a great story or sentence, has structure. The parallels to painting, writing a piece of music or designing a building are useful. characteristic of a particular period, place, person, or movement.’ ( Oxford English Dictionary). Style, as a broad term, refers to ‘a way of painting, writing, composing, building, etc/. Read 10 tips for developing and mastering your language use: First: What is style in writing? Yet mastering different writing styles is equally important if you want to convey your story to readers with creative precision. Developing the story content of your writing – your characters, plots, dialogue and other areas – is important.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |