STYLE

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writing
STYLE
what is it?
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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

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grammar/style the relationship
STYLE
GRAMMAR
When we speak of GRAMMAR we are usually talking
about issues of correctness.
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.
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all writing is creative

• we can learn from creative writers
• effective writing is interesting and enjoyable to
  the reader
• no subject is really interesting its the
  writers job to make it so
• good advice SHOW dont TELL

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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
SHOWING
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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
-)
TELLING
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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
SHOWING
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another version
TELLING
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
-)
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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
SHOWING
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from American Exodus
TELLING
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
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from The Sea and the Wind that Blows
Walking or sleeping, I dream of boatsusually 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
SHOWING
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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 OBrian
SHOWING
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tips for showing more than you tell

• use specific, significant detailsdont say
  fruit say pomegranate
• use sensory images add in all five senses
• use good comparisons for your metaphorsnot
  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
  voicedont say He took a walk say, He
  sauntered down the street.
• take advantage of dialogue to reveal significant
  details
• dont pad it too much and dont be afraid to tell
  sometimes