Writing Good Nonfiction Sentences… one exercise each Friday.

First the necessary introduction. NOTE: several of these exercises are inspired by How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One by Stanley Fish, Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin, and other sources.

A good essay has a goal—to convince, delight, enlighten, instruct, warn, or to review and question. Part of becoming an accomplished writer involves understanding the work that every word must accomplish. 

Each sentence has specific work to do. In a very real sense, sentences are the basic building blocks of writing. Lay down one word after another until you have created a logical idea in the mind of the reader and that is a sentence. Do it with grace and style and that’s good writing. But in order to write a good sentence (or to read and appreciate a good one), it helps to understand the various ways a sentence can function in the essay. Forget about content (for the moment) and try pushing the envelope with these exercises about sentences. 

THE EXERCISES: These brief exercises require you to write a nonfiction sentence. Sometimes they require that you write several. Look at the examples and follow the directions after “assignment.” AND Whether this is specified or not in the instructions, on the same page you should also explain the sentence in detail. Don’t be surprised if the explanation takes up a lot more space and time than the sentence. What does the sentence you wrote accomplish? What did you learn by writing it and thinking about it? How might you have learned a skill you can transfer to other writing? 

That said, this assignment is pushes sentence-length to create a single “monster sentence.” There is a model and explanation following. My students loved this assignment.

Continue reading →