Thursday, August 20, 2009

Musings on Writing

I'm in the process of reviewing the prose I wrote while on vacation with my in-laws at Cape May. Over the time I was away, I managed to produce about 3000 (unedited) words, and six story ideas. Probably the most productive story ideas are centered on a short story for a wizard anthology I'd like to enter.

While editing, my sentence structure reminded me of how I managed to skim through some Harry Potter while on vacation. It was instructive to see J.K. Rowling's writing style. I'm not meaning this in a bad way, but her sentence and paragraph structures are simple. Granted, she's writing young adult fantasy; but Mark said that Stephen King has a similar structure. I think in the hundred-so pages that I read I saw only one semicolon. I, on the other hand, probably abuse semicolons and dashes.

So does this make me a "stylist" ?

One of these days I should try an exercise and limit my sentences to fifteen to twenty words. And no semicolons or dashes. Thaumatrope, here I come!

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