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.


Showing posts with label Kindle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kindle. Show all posts

Thursday, March 18, 2010

The Arrangement of Words

Free-sampling first chapters is one of the joys of owning a Kindle. I no longer jot down titles suggested by friends or reviewers--I just pick up my little machine and instantly download the sample. It's a great way to find out, without investing a cent, if a book grabs you, and it's also a portal to great sentences, since writers know that to get published they have to leave prospective agents in a state of shock and awe in just a few paragraphs.

I've just sampled the openings of two novels by Irish writer John Banville, who has indeed  left me in awe. As one reviewer asked, can this man write a single sentence that isn't beautiful? I love his openings:

"They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide."  - The Sea

"Of the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works." - The Infinities
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