This Will Change How You Think of Sentences Forever
Lesson 1 of "Who's got style?" Creating Perfect Sentences with Nina Schuyler
This is Part 1 of Nina Schuyler’s Sentence Masterclass
Welcome!
This is my favorite subject! I’ve taught this class or some rendition of it for over 17 years, and I’m still astonished at all a sentence can do.
Let me confess I’ve had a love affair with sentences, an affair that can be traced back decades to my teenage years. Beyond the content of the words themselves, style techniques, too, create meaning. Now I am talking about rhythm and sound, how writing is writing for the ear. Robert Frost writes in The Sound of Sense that the ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.
All writers, whether in the fictive or nonfictive world, rely on the same building blocks—words. But what a writer does with these words distinguishes a bland, ordinary sentence from one that memorably and musically shines. The course will focus on the sentence and all that it can do, not at the content level, but by its construction and style techniques. You’ll learn to write sentences that create a feeling of anxiety, euphoria, calm, and abundance, and much more. You’ll learn that there is an entirely different way to write, and it’s by writing with the ear.
Style is an amorphous term. I define it as: syntax, sound and rhythm, schemes and tropes, diction and imagery. For this first week, we’ll focus on syntax. Week 2 is a bit more about syntax and then sound and rhythm; Week 3 is more sound and rhythm; and Week 4 will look at schemes and tropes and diction and imagery.
Every sentence you write involves many decisions that are often made unconsciously. The more aware you are of these decisions, the more you can deliberately create content by the order of the words and the right words.
Occasionally, we’re going to bump heads with your English teacher and grammar rules. Not often, but now and then, as we bend and twist the sentence to create the kind of meaning that we want. Part of this course is to give you permission to do this. I’ll show you stunning sentences in published work that defy the rules or step outside your preconceived notion of what a sentence can do.
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