My reading for the week has been a book on syntax, and it is delightful. You might think that a sentence that contains both “syntax” and “delightful” is somehow in error. Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style by Virginia Tufte is a rare exception. She examines different syntactic constructions to show how word order, sentence forms, etc. convey meaning. Poets already know this, but prose writers need to be reminded.

The book has a thousand examples from fiction and non-fiction that illustrate, among other things, how great writers break rules to wonderful effect. I’m soaking up the examples as I read in the hope that some will percolate through my brain to be useful later.

Pondering the examples drives me to think about examining sentences and paragraphs with a critical eye for what is the most important point to convey and using that to arrange the syntax accordingly. This isn’t an easy task, but it feels liberating nonetheless. Can I carry that into the short story revisions and then into the novel revision?