Are you a reader who values a writer's style as much as the meaning it conveys?

Are you a writer who seeks to refine your own style?

Would you like to improve your understanding of the techniques writers use to create beautiful sentences?

Welcome to the search for the perfect sentence!


Most readers and writers focus on the content of a piece--the ideas it conveys, the story it carries, the events it chronicles. "So many books, so little time" we readers chorus, rushing through our stories, newspapers, websites. "Is it finished?" we writers ask. "Have I written enough words? Have I gotten the content across?"

Here we'll focus on the style of writing more than its content. We'll slow down. We'll read very short passages, sometimes single sentences, and we'll savor their wordcraft. We'll examine why each word was chosen, how they were arranged into sentences, and how those sentences evoke our responses. In the process, I hope we'll become more careful, perceptive readers and more effective writers.


Beautiful writing is everywhere--on the sports page of the morning paper, in the novel that relaxes you at night, in your grandmother's love letters found in the attic. If you would like to contribute a passage for close reading, with or without your own interpretation of its techniques, please email me at jtarasovic@gmail.com.


Sunday, September 26, 2010

Travel Writing that Lives up to its Subject

When I bought a travel guide for our trip to Yellowstone, I was looking for clear and useful information. I didn't expect to find sentences that would evoke the same kind of awe I felt gazing at hundreds of bison scattered across a vast valley in the Wyoming sunset.

Brian Kevin, author of Fodor's Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks (2009), surprised me with the beauty and elegance of his language:

"A bull elk strides like a general across the lawn of the former cavalry barracks, his bugle call echoing the reveille that once proclaimed sunrise and sunset at Fort Yellowstone. His harem grazes silently among stately stone buildings, where the ghosts of soldiers and settlers mingle with wide-eyed park visitors and rangers directing traffic. " With his lovely imagery, strong verbs, and sound effects, he captures perfectly the intersection of nature at its most majestic with humans who sometimes threaten to overrun it.

If you've visited the hot springs at Mammoth, you'll appreciate his description of the landscape as "somewhere between an ice palace and an ashtray."

Don't let a little poetry keep you from looking for Kevin's guide books--this one was the most useful of the half dozen we carried. And the photos by Jeff Vanuga are gorgeous.