Posts Tagged ‘sentences’
Snow Was General: Writing Beautiful Sentences
Last night, snow was general all over central Ohio. If you’re a James Joyce fan, you’ll hear the echo of this sentence to the end of Joyce’s story, “The Dead.” Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless…
Read MoreLee K. Abbott and the Power of the Sentence
In remembrance of my former colleague, Lee K. Abbott, I offer the first sentence of his story, “Time and Fear and Somehow Love”: Since, as she conceived it, the letter was to be the final word on the subject, she endeavored to start slowly, then lead up to, as fine drama does, those moments of…
Read MoreMuscle Up: Writing Stronger Sentences
We prose writers spend so much time thinking about characterization and plot that we often overlook the importance of the artfully crafted sentence. “All you have to do is write one true sentence,” Ernest Hemingway famously said. “Write the truest sentence that you know.” His work strove for accuracy, honesty, and clarity, and it all…
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