If the sentence is "the fundamental unit of a work of literature," then a good sentence should be the goal of a good writer. But what is a good sentence?
Found another excellent lesson for writers online, entitled HOW TO WRITE A GREAT SENTENCE. What I like most about the article is what we know – there is no definite way to write a great sentence.
Beginning with an explanation of "style" by the use of "creative devices, grammar, diction, tone, rhythm and cadence," the article says all of those elements "taken as a whole" is "style."
For examples to compare styles, the article chose William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.
Faulkner wrote purple prose with long, convoluted sentences. Whereas Hemingway wrote short, clipped, concise, pithy sentences capturing, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the flicker of modern life.”
The tempo of the writer's sentences reflect the speed of the lives they depicted. "Faulkner basks in the heat of south" while "Hemingway flits at life in the city." While Faulkner lounged, Hemingway rushed.
Faulkner said of Hemingway, "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
Hemingway said of Faulkner, "Poor Faulkner, does he really think big emotions come from big words?"
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Faulkner House, 624 Pirate Alley, New Orleans
where Nobel laureate William Faulkner wrote his first novel Soldiers’ Pay, 1925 |
The article illustrates examples of each writer's work, chosen as they serve "the acute ends of he spectrum of sentence structure."
Long sentences? Short sentence. Medium length sentences. Vary them to turn your writing into music, let your writing sing, give it a pleasant lilt, a harmony.
OK, I knew a lot of this but the article is a good reminder. I recommend it, expecially to beginning writers.
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That's all for now,
Love the comparison of Hemingway and Faulkner. Here are two offerings I particularly enjoy for the music.
ReplyDeleteJane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Charles Portis (True Grit)
People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.
Dylan Thomas (A Child's Christmas in Wales)
ReplyDeleteOne Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
Marley was dead: to begin with.
Both are excellent.
Louis L'Amour:
ReplyDeleteThey were four desperate men, made hard by life, cruel by nature, and driven to desperation by imprisonment.
Harlan Ellison:
He shone with a steady off-green aura that surrounded his body, radiated from the tips of his hair, crawled from his skin, and lit his way in the darkest night.
I hadn't read Portis, but I agree with the offerings. And thank you for the video.
ReplyDelete