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.


Monday, March 14, 2011

In the tribe of the sentence watchers


"Some people are bird watchers, others are celebrity watchers; still others are flora and fauna watchers. I belong to the tribe of sentence watchers. Some appreciate fine art; others appreciate fine wines. I appreciate fine sentences. I am always on the lookout for sentences that take your breath away, for sentences that make you say, 'Isn’t that something?' or 'What a sentence!'” 

"Alone a word is just a word, a part of speech clustered in a category; it looks over at other words it would like to have a relationship with (it’s almost a dating situation) but has no way of connecting with them. And then a verb shows up, providing a way of linking up noun to adjective, and suddenly you have a sentence, a proposition, a little world. 'Beautiful Joan sighed.' 'John was angry.' 'I am proud.' 'Crucial decisions await'."

from How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One by Stanley Fish

Go here for Entertainment Weekly reader ideas of great sentences. It's a motley collection, punctuated by the kind of outraged comments I stopped teaching eighth grade to get away from. But there are a few sentences worth reading.

A better collection is here. Number 8 gets my vote, maybe because I hadn't heard it before.

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2 comments:

  1. KenyonMarch 17, 2011 at 2:15 PM

    The comment about number 8 gets my vote

    Creative Thought Process: Methinks I shall write the greatest opening line ever. Donesies.

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  2. DavidlindMarch 23, 2011 at 9:00 AM

    “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

    This one really does it for me, number 24, although maybe it's just the place one happens to be in when reading down the list. So many great lines.

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