How to Write Stunning Sentences: 100 Simple Exercises from Beloved Authors to Improve Your Sentence Writing Style

by Nina Schuyler

Literary Nonfiction. Writing. Composition. You've got a great story, but do you have great sentences? Stylish sentences have their own powerful energy that mesmerizes and even rearranges a reader's world. Think of this book as a private lesson with Nina Schuyler--award-winning author and professor of creative writing at the University of San Francisco--featuring guest appearances by the masters, including James Baldwin, Grace Paley, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Toni Morrison. They've arrived to show you the mechanics of their magic. With 25 essays and over 100 writing prompts, HOW TO WRITE STUNNING SENTENCES is the best way to expand your writing style.

"Nina Schuyler's HOW TO WRITE STUNNING SENTENCES is like a Kama Sutra for it describes the positions and passions of her artful love, and through sharp analyses and generous prompts suggests how you too, writer, may become such an artful lover...Read it and the pleasure will be yours."--Aaron Shurin

"With its elegantly curated examples of stunning prose, HOW TO WRITE STUNNING SENTENCES offers luminous insight into the elements of language as they relate intimately to content. Reading this book can transform your awareness and your practice, line by line and page by page, with glorious results."--Elizabeth Rosner

"Passionately intense and exquisitely precise, Nina Schuyler's brilliant readings of gorgeously disparate sentences by a wide spectrum of innovative writers illuminate the subversive pleasures of suspension and subordination, the joys of complexity and extravagance, and the potent, piercing delights of language distilled to spare perfection."--Melanie Rae Thon

"In this wonderful book, Nina Schuyler not only explores how syntax and diction can embody the meaning of a sentence but also how they can enrich subtext and capture the sensibility of a character. The pleasure of looking so closely at the power and intricacy of sentences is present on every page and richly evident in the plentiful writing exercises that Schuyler provides. Each chapter has the potency of a daily meditation from which any writer would benefit."--Catherine Brady

"Nina Schuyler is an alchemist of style, with a brilliant eye for the secret inner workings of language. This book is a treasure trove for anyone wishing to harness the power of rhythm and syntax, meaning and music, in their own sentences or in the ones they read. This book is a fantastic contribution to the literature of craft."--Carolina de Robertis

"There are books to read and then there are books to own, and Nina Schuyler's wonderful volume is of the latter category. As a writer, it offers nifty inspiration at a moment's notice. As a teacher, it offers clear proof that the blood, sweat, and tears behind beautiful writing is worth it. Even if I didn't write or teach, HOW TO WRITE STUNNING SENTENCES would still be a graceful reminder that our ability to communicate deep emotions through the art of writing is one of the best things about being human."--Tom Molanphy, Academy of Art University

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Crafts

160 pages, Paperback

Published October 16, 2018

About the author

Nina Schuyler's short story collection, IN THIS RAVISHING WORLD, won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, the W.S. Porter Prize, the Prism Prize for Climate Literature, and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award.

She's the author of AFTERWORD, winner of the Foreword INDIE Book of the Year Award for Literary and Science Fiction; the PenCraft Seasonal Book Award for Literary-Science Fiction; and a Top 100 Notable Book Unshelved Competition; THE TRANSLATOR, which was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and the winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Award, General Fiction; THE PAINTING, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Her nonfiction books HOW TO WRITE STUNNING SENTENCES AND STUNNING SENTENCES: A CREATIVE WRITING JOURNAL are bestsellers.

Reviews

[Théo d'Or]

How I write :

"The sun was shining. "

How Proust would write :

"The sun, which had risen majestically over the horizon, casting a golden hue over the sleepy village, was shining with a brilliance that reminded me of the summers spent at my grandmother's house, where the scent of blooming flowers mingled with the aroma of freshly baked bread. "

Almost similar.

[Renae Lucas-Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Nina Schuyler’s novel “The Translator” and I was really impressed by her writing style so I was very keen to read this book. I’m also a novelist so I knew this book was going to benefit me in a lot of different ways. It didn’t take me long to read each section and I thoroughly enjoyed every page because Schuyler’s suggestions, examples and tips are written with so much passion and dedication and all the excerpts from her favourite books throughout this guide were really fine examples and so inspiring. Schuyler offers lots of little gems of information, she suggested some great reference books for me to do further reading, and I was amazed by how many techniques were included in every part of this guide which Schuyler has obviously collected on her own over the years and collated into this one guide so writers like myself can benefit immensely.

If you’re looking for a book that offers modern techniques on writing style, syntax and creating fantastic sentences then this is the perfect guide for you. Schuyler is well aware that you need to write books as “a perfect antidote to the truncated emails, tweets, and other missives” that distract so many people from reading books these days and with her help you’ll really discover how to write stunning sentences, make your books more enjoyable to read, and ensure readers keep coming back to you as one of their favourite authors.

So, why do I think this book is such an important reference book for writers everywhere? I learned how to create more precision in my characters that will keep my readers hooked, I discovered how hard and soft stresses can be used to create certainty or doubt and uncertainty. Schuyler also showed me how to build suspense and curiosity using repetition, subordinate conjunctions, subordinated clauses and prepositional phrases (but don’t be put off by these grammatical terms because everything is explained very simply with some terrific examples).

Humour is very often something authors find difficult to write, inserting humour into stories is a real skill and something I definitely wanted to improve upon. Schuyler showed me how I can use even small grammatical techniques, like plosive sounds (t,d,k,g,p,b), to make text seem funnier. She also suggested different authors for me to read who are experts at injecting humour into their writing, such as Saul Bellow.

I really enjoyed finding out how I could create rhythm, how to slow my sentences down so the reader absorbs the text, how to pepper my stories with particular words or include verbal tics to define the narrator even more and make my characters seem even more real to the reader. I also learned a lot about how hyperbole, personification, similes, imagery and sentences that distort reality can give the writer the tools they need to write fantasy novels and stories related to magical realism.

Finally, I also wanted to mention how much I enjoyed reading about the games Schuyler plays with her five-year-old son, giving him the line “Once upon a time” and a handful of words so they can create stories together, and how Schuyler noticed her teenage son is an expert in the art of selection and omission when she talks with him about his day.

Overall, this is a fantastic guide to writing stunning sentences and every author should read this book if they want their books to be more successful. There’s so much an author can learn from Schuyler’s many suggestions and I hope she keeps writing more works of fiction and guides like this in the future.

[Kirtida Gautam · Rating 5 out of 5]

If English is not your first language, but the third language that you started learning when you were in grade six. Until then, you didn't even know how to write ABC. When that's your background, and you come from a country like India, where the colonial mindset of thinking of English as a superior language has calcified in the skeleton structure of the country's mental makeup, you struggle with the anxiety-- Is my Prose Okay?

That was my state of mind till I picked Nina Schuyler's book, How To Write Stunning Sentences. Working on the exercises given in this book, today, first time in my writing career, I don't fear the language but relish the nuts-and-bolts of craft work that goes into perfecting the prose at the sentence level.

Nina doesn't lionize writing English prose as the most difficult endeavor of writing life. Rather she presents a step-by-step process a writer can follow and reach their destination where they create the prose with style, eloquence, confidence, and most importantly, freedom in the choices they make.

I can't recommend it enough. This book is a game-changer.

[Nan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books on craft I've read in a long time. True, Schuyler is a sentence geek, diagramming everything to the last period and question mark, filling my head with "right branching" and "left branching" sentences, synedoche and metony, metaphor and personification. But the authors, the sentences, the prompts she picks are all spot on. She has expanded my vocabulary, my reading list, my writing.

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is like a meditation full of stunning sentences.

[Spring · Rating 5 out of 5]

MFA text - the art of the sentence
Great writing prompts!

[Renae Lucas-Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Nina Schuyler’s novel “The Translator” and I was really impressed by her writing style so I was very keen to read this book. I’m also a novelist so I knew this book was going to benefit me in a lot of different ways. It didn’t take me long to read each section and I thoroughly enjoyed every page because Schuyler’s suggestions, examples and tips are written with so much passion and dedication and all the excerpts from her favourite books throughout this guide were really fine examples and so inspiring. Schuyler offers lots of little gems of information, she suggested some great reference books for me to do further reading, and I was amazed by how many techniques were included in every part of this guide which Schuyler has obviously collected on her own over the years and collated into this one guide so writers like myself can benefit immensely.

If you’re looking for a book that offers modern techniques on writing style, syntax and creating fantastic sentences then this is the perfect guide for you. Schuyler is well aware that you need to write books as “a perfect antidote to the truncated emails, tweets, and other missives” that distract so many people from reading books these days and with her help you’ll really discover how to write stunning sentences, make your books more enjoyable to read, and ensure readers keep coming back to you as one of their favourite authors.

So, why do I think this book is such an important reference book for writers everywhere? I learned how to create more precision in my characters that will keep my readers hooked, I discovered how hard and soft stresses can be used to create certainty or doubt and uncertainty. Schuyler also showed me how to build suspense and curiosity using repetition, subordinate conjunctions, subordinated clauses and prepositional phrases (but don’t be put off by these grammatical terms because everything is explained very simply with some terrific examples).

Humour is very often something authors find difficult to write, inserting humour into stories is a real skill and something I definitely wanted to improve upon. Schuyler showed me how I can use even small grammatical techniques, like plosive sounds (t,d,k,g,p,b), to make text seem funnier. She also suggested different authors for me to read who are experts at injecting humour into their writing, such as Saul Bellow.

I really enjoyed finding out how I could create rhythm, how to slow my sentences down so the reader absorbs the text, how to pepper my stories with particular words or include verbal tics to define the narrator even more and make my characters seem even more real to the reader. I also learned a lot about how hyperbole, personification, similes, imagery and sentences that distort reality can give the writer the tools they need to write fantasy novels and stories related to magical realism.

Finally, I also wanted to mention how much I enjoyed reading about the games Schuyler plays with her five-year-old son, giving him the line “Once upon a time” and a handful of words so they can create stories together, and how Schuyler noticed her teenage son is an expert in the art of selection and omission when she talks with him about his day.

Overall, this is a fantastic guide to writing stunning sentences and every author should read this book if they want their books to be more successful. There’s so much an author can learn from Schuyler’s many suggestions and I hope she keeps writing more works of fiction and guides like this in the future.

[Al Kratz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the format of this, taking one theme and author per chapter and breaking down their sentence level approach on the theme. Great pair with Landon’s book on sentences which goes deeper into mechanics, this book is better for brevity and quick dives into it subjects and allows it to cover a few more concepts than Landon’s focus on length and cumulative sentences. This book supports the idea there is even more to the art of the sentence that can be situational rather than just mechanical.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding, masters-level training in an easy, short, exercise format. Love the book and the author.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not finish but might go back. I liked the writing exercises but hated the examples and texts the author pulled from.

I used this book as a daily writing exercise and would recommend.