How to Add Style and Grace to your Essay
You have been given an assignment to write an essay for a class. Perhaps you have given yourself the assignment (if you have a penchant for writing), and are looking for some hints. Whatever the case, this guide can help you with an informative look at writing and its use for conveying information, as well as emotions.
If your teacher or instructor has given you specific guidelines for the essay then you will obviously be restricted to these if you want to please him or her. You may choose to eschew these instructions though and sacrifice your grade, but of course these are your decisions. My personal feeling is that it is destructive when an English teacher or instructor requires certain things (such as a five paragraph requirement) when the essay is supposed to be an exercise in creative thought, however sometimes these limits are imposed with good intent. If your teacher gives you very loose guidelines, leaving decisions about structure and style totally to you, then let your imagination and personal voice shine through. In a formal essay you may have to write about certain subjects and ideas, but your style can still permeate the layer of required information. Allow your writing to transform the seemingly mundane information that is required of your essay into a luminous and shining monument to literary achievement. In every essay strive for continuous improvement. I privately tutor a student and whenever we meet for a class, and I have given him an essay assignment, I require that his successive essays become better each time. My promise is that my classes will be better, and his essays should be better also. Keep this ethic in mind when you write. Attempting to write with a lucid, flowing, vibrant style when one could easily get by with writing cliches is what can improve your writing quickly and effectively. The best way to get better at writing is by writing. Combine reading with writing, and your skill will improve and begin to flourish.
I have been very general, perhaps drowning your thoughts in a giant vat of generality, and I apologize for what may seem like verbosity. The question you should still be asking is what can I actually do in my writing to improve it? The answer comes from many sources. Practice all of these in your next writing, as well as the writing after that, and you will begin to notice improvements. If your goal is a better grade, then also practice these techniques--your teacher will notice also.
Writing with a better style
Figurative language- This literary term refers to such devices as similes, metaphors, and personification. Some writers such as Wordsworth considered personification a mechanical use of language and not appropriate, but unless your reader is a devotee of the Romantic Era poet, feel free to use such methods to enhance the message of your writing. How do these literary artifices enhance your writing? They can easily transform a long, and possibly didactic piece of writing into a piece much more interesting and powerful to the mind of the reader. If you have ever had the enthralling experience of reading Homer's works (in the excellent translations of individuals such as Fagles), then you have encountered numerous and plentiful amounts of similes and metaphors. It is these devices that allow Homer to dramatize long passages about war and Odysseus' journeys without his passages becoming repetitive and unreadable. If you are asked to write a formal essay with a focus on information, as long as your reader will not mind some literary artifices used to enhance your style, then your writing too can become much more interesting and enjoyable.
Consider, as an example of this, the following sentence:
In Willa Cather's My Antonia, Jim Burden experiences his childhood on the prairie.
This sentence has a polished grammar and is free of mistakes; it would make an excellent sentence in a formal, constricted essay. However, if your goal is to impress, captivate, and interest your read in what you have to say, then you can state such an idea much better. Figurative language is the perfect way to make this sentence, and hence the rest of your writing, much more interesting. The following represents the sentence rewritten with an incorporation of stylistic elements that can enhance your writing:
In Cather's My Antonia, Jim Burden finds himself as a foreign entity deposited on the surface of the Nebraskan prairie.
The simile is only one part of the sentence that makes it stronger. The sentence is longer and has more variety. (This does not mean a sentence needs to be longer in order to be better, as we will later see.) The words used are more powerful and more specific. They are the sign of a much more mature and developed writer. One of the best things you can do to improve your writing is practice writing sentences such as you would normally write, more like the second sentence above. Adding more style and force to your writing not only makes your writing more enjoyable to read, but the point which you are attempting to convey will be interpreted by your reader's mind much more quickly and retained for a much longer time.
The metaphor. Another member of the "Big 3" in figurative language. This literary weapon can be very effective and poignant when used properly. Use, however, with caution. Metaphors can be overused, reworked, and restated exactly as they have been written before. Yet they can also be unique, new, lucid and amazing. Practice with metaphors is a necessary requisite to writing with a better style that includes metaphors. They can enhance and detract from a piece of writing--it is up the writer to make sure they make sense and that they serve to explain, not clutter one's subject. The process of extending one's metaphor can also be very effective for increasing the style in one's writing. Examples are provided below:
The basic metaphor:
Justin Shouse is a forceful machine of extreme precision, tearing through a myriad of defenders to reach the hoop. (This example describes a basketball player in a creative and unique way, instead of just stating that "Justin Shouse is a good basketball player.")
Extending one's metaphor:
As I learn, the trunk of my mind fattens with the growth of intellectual pulp that slowly pervades my brain. The aqueous nutriment of new information feeds my soul, enabling it to sprout new branches of thought and meaning. My dendritic boughs reach for the light of knowledge, striving in vain to receive more of its erudite power. Leaves of verdant ideas bloom and blow in the slow, caressing wind of new intellectual relationships and encounters. -JE, 2000
The above passage takes the idea of the growth of a human mind and transforms it into an interesting literary passage via the use of an extended metaphor. I could have continued on with this thought for an entire paper, increasing my use of the metaphor, extending it further. The central metaphor and idea frequently referred back to throughout is of course a tree and its growth in nature. The metaphor that I use here is not the most interesting or creative, but it should help you understand how the use of an extended metaphor can improve one's writing. Many of the words are underlined in order to help one see which words continue the metaphor. Some are more directly related than others.
This type of literary device takes practice, as well as the ability to create new images in one's mind. A large vocabulary also enables one's metaphors to improve, since the purpose is to present some piece of information, an idea or a theme, in a new way. Command of a greater range of words is a great resource for any writer. If you want to improve your vocabulary and therefore your writing, read voraciously!
Sentence variety- Another technique that can be just as effective as increasing your use of figurative language is increasing the diversity of one's sentences. Greater sentence diversity includes unique employment of syntax, altering sentence length, and writing sentences that flow into each other with easy transitions from one to another. Parallel sentences can be effective as a means to improving one's writing, however if one's entire essay is built on parallel sentences, such as the following, then one's writing becomes tedious and horribly boring to read.
The man went to the store. Then the man bought a gun. Then he went home to his wife. The man then killed his wife. The man then went to jail.
This example is horribly exaggerated (I hope!), however one should be able to understand the point that I am attempting to make. Employ parallel sentences and thoughts when they are appropriate and enhance your writing--do not let them dominate your piece such as above. They will quickly lull your reader into a trance and divert his mind from the meaning and importance of what you are saying.
To conclude this section on sentence variety, examine the original passage below and learn from the techniques employed:
Henry David Thoreau held a reverence for his conception of God. Yet Thoreau also found an entity worthy of sacred respect in something else in his world. During his time at Walden Pond in the 19th century he came to a greater understanding of himself, and a greater understanding of the new deity which the Transcendentalist movement was beginning to worship. His spirit became imbued with an understanding and appreciation of this new deity. He found transcendence in it. His soul rediscovered its immense power to inspire. He found all of this in one, pervading element of existence. Nature. JE
The technique of varying sentence length and weight (the amount of thought it requires to fully appreciate) is the purpose of including this passage here. The paragraph slowly builds up to the concluding sentence, consisting of a single word. This is allowable and effective because the beginning of the paragraph has described and explained all the writer wishes to convey about the concept, and the final sentence simply applies a name to the entity the writer has been describing.
Diction- I will treat of one more subject before closing this essay. Diction is the word choice that a writer employs when composing his thoughts either in written or spoken word. The way to improve your writing through diction is by choosing more expressive and poignant words to replace those you were considering inserting in your writing. Once again, the best way to improve this in your own writing is by knowing more words, which of course comes through reading. The following examples should explicate the point I am making about diction in your writing:
The bird flew over the snowy mountain.
Now the same thought, restated in a sentence (a style) with much better diction:
The bird majestically soared above the snow-covered peak.
Reading the sentences should prove the power of stronger, more invigorating sentences enhanced by better word choice.
Concluding Comments
To paraphrase a saying from a famous architect, let the form of your writing follow its function. If you are attempting to please and enlighten your reader, let your writing overflow with bursts of passionate imagery and crackling uses of stylistic devices. If your goal is to convey information in an interesting and novel way, then keep your primary focus on the information, once you have included the necessary material, revise what you have written, polishing your style and making your writing more interesting. No matter how serious or didactic your subject may seem, improving your style to make your writing more interesting to the reader will also improve the reception of your ideas in the reader's mind.
To borrow a metaphor from the medical field, if you consider your point and the information you are seeking to convey as the medicine, think of your style and the way you structure your essay as the syringe which will inject your thoughts into the reader. Style and diversity in your writing can cloak your writing in a guise that will make any reader enjoy the experience, never even realizing the instrument from which she received the message of your writing. Humans do not like shots, readers do not like blunt syringes. Remember this metaphor when you are writing, and be sure not to prick your audience.
All material Copyright 1998-2000, Justin Eichenlaub