writing
what is it?
what is style?
• it is a matter of the choices you make as a writer
• it is an extension of your use of grammar
• it can help you reach and connect with your
readers in immediate and engaging ways
• it can either obscure ideas or reveal them
• it can be creative, poetic, and enjoyable
grammar/style: the relationship
GRAMMAR
When we speak of
GRAMMAR we are
usually talking about
issues of correctness.
STYLE
When we say STYLE
we are talking about
your creative choices
as a writer.
Grammar and Style are part of the same continuum.
Essentially they refer to the same thing: the choices a writer
makes and the effects those choices have on the reader.
all writing is creative
• we can learn from “creative” writers
• effective writing is interesting and enjoyable to
the reader
• no subject is really interesting; it’s the writer’s job
to make it so
• good advice: SHOW don’t TELL
from In Our Time
They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the
wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were wet
dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of
the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two
soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. They tried to hold him
up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water. The other five stood
quietly against the wall. Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good
trying to make him stand up. When they fired the first volley he was sitting
down in the water with his head on his knees.
– Ernest Hemingway
another version
Six cabinet ministers were terribly executed. One was sick so they took him
out to the wall and tried to make him stand up. They did not care that he was
already almost dead with disease. They brutally killed him without any
feelings of guilt or remorse. It was a sad event.
– Me :-)
“
Writing is very seldom a matter of
saying things; it is a matter of
showing things.
– Flannery O’Conner
“
The surest way to arouse and hold
the attention of the reader is by
being specific, definite, and
concrete…
– William Strunk, Jr.
from Light in August
There was a track and a station, and once a day a mixed train fled shrieking
through it. The train could be stopped by a red flag, but by ordinary it
appeared out of the devastated hills with apparitionlike suddenness and
wailing like a banshee, athwart and past the little less-than village like a
forgotten bead from a broken string.
– William Faulkner
another version
There was a train station. Once a day a train came through. It could be
stopped by using a red flag, but usually it just went through.
– Me :-)
from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Lamplight here, and lone, late: the odor is of pine that has stood shut on itself
through the heat of a hot day: the odor of an attic at white noon: and all of the
walls save that surface within immediate touch of the lamp, where like water
slept in lantern light the grain is so sharply discerned in its retirement beyond
the sleep of the standing shape of pines, and the pastings and pinnings of
sad ornaments, are a most dim scarce-color of grayed silver breathed in
yellow red which is the hue and haze in the room; and above me, black;
where beyond bones of rafters underlighted, a stomach sucked against the
spine in fear, the roof draws up its peak…
– James Agee
from American Exodus
Although we have nearly forgotten it, the spread across the South of a
vigorous rural structure which we now call a problem was itself the product of
a machine invented barely five generations ago.
– Paul S. Taylor
from “The Sea and the Wind that Blows”
Walking or sleeping, I dream of boats—usually of rather small boats under a
slight press of sale. When I think how great a part of my life has been spent
dreaming the hours away and how much of this total dream life has
concerned small craft, I wonder about the state of my health, for I am told
that it is not a good sign to be always voyaging into unreality, driven by
imaginary breezes.
– E. B. White
from The Things They Carried
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at
Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant
Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In
the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under
a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last
hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White
Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing
her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he
loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. She was a
virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she
wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her
respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines
of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself.
The letters weighed ten ounces. They were signed "Love, Martha," but Lieutenant
Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he
sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his
rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking
the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and
wonder if Martha was a virgin.
– Tim O’Brian
tips for showing more than you tell
• use specific, significant details
don’t say fruit; say pomegranate
• use sensory images: add in all five senses
• use good comparisons for your metaphors—not clichés
• vary your sentence structure and match the rhythm of your writing to
what you are writing about
• put the actions in the verbs and make the actions specific; avoid “be”
verbs and passive voice
don’t say “He took a walk;” say, “He sauntered down the street.”
• take advantage of dialogue to reveal significant details
• don’t pad it too much and don’t be afraid to tell sometimes
group work
1.
form groups of three
2.
each person take a turn sharing the piece of writing
you brought in, explaining in specific terms why you
think it represents good style
3.
as a group, write three to five qualities that you think
make for an interesting and/or effective style
share findings with class…