I’m always on the lookout for articles to help me improve as a writer. This roundup of some recent reads that spoke to me might also be of interest to you. If so, please keep reading.
1. A lot of us spend time studying the way writers we admire construct sentences. (I’m guilty of this.) But what if we spent more time studying entire paragraphs? Would that help our reading game? Matt Bell thinks so. He writes, “all of this focus on the sentence can be at the cost of the paragraph—and far more than the sentence, I think the paragraph is the main unit of sense and storytelling in fiction.”
Check out Matt’srecent craft essay, “How to Study Paragraph Structure,” for insights on how some highly successful writers construct stunning paragraphs, with examples from some of Matt’s favorite novels of the year so far. (I love the example he pulls from Ann Patchett’s novel Whistler, which is one of many paragraphs in that beautiful novel that grabbed my attention.)
2. But let’s not forget about sentences. Especially opening sentences. In another recent craft essay, flash fiction writer and Fractured Lit editor Tommy Dean diagnoses a problem he sees in many flash fiction submissions: writers relying on catchy “one-liner” openers that aren’t connected to the story.
“I often see writers using clever one-liners as story openers, and they feel separate from the story,” Tommy writes in “One Liners Aren’t Hooks.” “A better approach is to tie this hook, this one-line opening to a story, to the disruption that hopefully gives the story life in the first place. We want the next sentence to flow naturally from the opening line, drawing us in rather than interrupting us with something unattached.”
3. Speaking of firsts, Linda Carroll makes a great case for why legendary novelist Kurt Vonnegut’s first rule is the only rule of writing that matters. (Vonnegut wrote eight rules for writing, and I love them all, but I think Linda is on to something here.)
4. Battling brain rot. In the business-focused publication Fast Company, Eve Upton Clark champions deep reading as a cure for brain rot.
“Deep reading … isn’t just passively scrolling whatever our feeds throw at us without scrutiny or pause,” she writes. “It’s slowing down enough to approach what you’re reading in a critical and analytical manner. It’s putting yourself in a character’s shoes, if you’re reading fiction.” Deep reading “also prioritizes understanding as well as knowledge—which aren’t always interchangeable. Research even shows deep reading is effective at countering misinformation, as well as reducing stress and loneliness.” I’m all for reducing stress and loneliness.
5. The view from “flownover” country. As a Midwesterner, I’ve never been fond of the term “flyover country” and its implication that there’s nothing interesting or remarkable happening between the coasts. So I was happy to read fellow Midwesterner Tom Drury’s essay on writing from flyover country in LitHub.
“In the phrase flyover country,” he writes, “the imagined subject is the one flying over (the person in the airliner, drinking gin and tonic in the glow of one screen or another, wondering what sort of terrible situation would actually make the oxygen masks drop down…scarcely aware of the land and lives going on below). But I want to adjust the terminology a bit, to say flownover country, shifting the perspective to the ones on the ground, because that’s who I was, growing up, the one on the ground, the one being flown over.”
He adds, “I can tell you that being flown over on those summer nights of my childhood didn’t make me feel insignificant. Instead I felt a mysterious sense of possibility, of a world and universe infinitely larger than the town. I mean, there it was, you couldn’t miss it. And just because I had no access to that larger world at the time, it didn’t mean I never would, it didn’t mean I couldn’t dream of it.”
Bonus link: One more thought-provoking and inspiring craft essay I read this week comes via Flash Fiction Magazine. “Hooking the Reader to Your Character,” by Timons Esaias, offers two intriguing methods for getting readers to care about our characters, especially in flash fiction. (Note: following these methods will require a bit of work on your part–but not extreme heavy lifting–and for those interested, there’s a good writing prompt at the end. Maybe something to work on this weekend or next week.)
There you have it for this week. As always, I appreciate your thoughts or impressions about any of the articles linked above. Please comment.
Have a good weekend.
Image via Pexels.
I especially was interested in “Deep Readin”.I get frustrated when I find myself relating something from a book I’ve read, but can’t remember the title of the book. Me,, commanding my brain to work more efficiently is really odd what you think about it
I really need to more deep reading myself. Too often I get caught up in scrolling social media for no real reason. It fragments our attention.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Oh, man, what a resource. Thanks for pulling these together, Andrew!
Thanks for reading!
Thank you, Andy. This Friday Five is a goldmine of good stuff (nothing like an alliterative cliche to make your day).