Most writing-style advice focus on style elements. Here I present a systemic approach based on sentence structuring that makes your ideas easy to organize, and helps develop your own writing style.
The poem “Breakfast” by Jacque Prévert illustrates my approach to academic writing. For this purpose, I focus on the strategy Prévert used in this poem to direct the readers towards an emotional goal waiting at the end of the piece.
He poured the coffee
Into the cup
He put the milk
Into the cup of coffee
He put the sugar
Into the café au lait
With a little spoon
He stirred
He drank the café au lait
And he put the cup back onto the table
Without speaking to meHe lit
A cigarette
He made circles
With the smoke
He put the ash
Into the ashtray
Without speaking to me
Without looking at meHe stood up
He put on
His hat on his head
He put on
His raincoat
Because it was raining
And he left
Into the rain
Without a word
Without a lookAnd I covered
My face with my hands
And I cried.
Takeaways from the Writing Style in “Breakfast”
Strategic sentence structures. In this poem, each sentence is structured to:
- state one simple idea/action,
- create the space for the next idea, and
- minimize grammatical features.
The intended effects are felt from the first sentence on. On reading/hearing “He poured the coffee into the cup”, the audience gets a clear and simple picture and is ready for the next idea—which can be anything.
The author repeats this technique, building a path of images and actions, until the audience is left with nowhere to go but the sadness of the narrator. This sentence-structuring strategy is the basis of sayedit.com’s approach to writing.
Use of voices, tenses, and paragraphs to achieve 1-3. “Breakfast” achieves 1-3 by:
- using the active voice and the simple past exclusively, and
- excluding non-essential grammatical features such as adverbs and the verb to be (only a few adjectives are used).
The author then uses a specific grammatical feature both to signal the end of paragraphs, and to make specific details stand out. In this case, Prévert chooses adverbial phrases beginning with “Without” to single out the person in the room the man would not interact with. This contrast works because the adverbial phrases stand against a background of grammatically featureless sentences.
Application in Academic Writing
To make your ideas easy to organize. My advice is:
When writing your first draft, use the sentence-structuring methods 1-3 to list your ideas.
Listing your ideas this way lets you see how they naturally connect with each other. It also produces paragraphs that are grammatically featureless do they can be later organized to generate a thesis using selected features.
To help develop your writing style. Focus on using methods 1-3 as the foundation of your writing. By writing down ideas in a form that is easy to understand, you (and your co-authors) will have an easier time shaping your narrative using grammatical features and style elements. Over time, you will naturally develop your own set of preferences, i.e., your own writing style.
Example of this method can be found in previous posts showcasing the active voice, present tense, and paragraph structures. Future posts will discuss specific grammatical features in detail.
Conclusions
A common mistake by all writers: trying to sound important by making every sentence sound important—that’s like printing every sentence in italics. Instead, use the sentence-structuring approach described by 1-3; not only will you find your ideas easy to organize, but you will also develop your own style without even thinking about it.
Works Consulted
Writing Style. (n. d.). In Wikipedia, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Writing_style&oldid=987953953
Crews, F. C. (1977). The Random House handbook. New York : Random House.
Strunk, W., & White, E. B. (Elwyn B. (2000). The elements of style. New York : Longman.