Русский писатель Лев Николаевич Толстой(1828-1910) – автор известных произведений “Война и мир”, “Анна Каренина”, “Смерть Ивана Ильича”, и в наши дни продолжает считаться одним из лучших писателей мира.
Лев Толстой родился 9 сентября 1828 года в Тульской губернии (Россия) в семье, принадлежащей классу дворян. В годы своего юнкерства в армии у Толстого было немало свободного времени. В спокойные периоды он работал над автобиографической историей под названием «Детство». В ней он писал о своих самых любимых детских воспоминаниях. В 1852 году Толстой отправил рассказ в “Современник”, самый популярный журнал того времени. Рассказ был с радостью принят, и он стал первой публикацией Толстого. С этого времени критики ставили его в один ряд с уже известными писателями, среди которых присутствовали Иван Тургенев(с которым Толстой подружился), Иван Гончаров, Александр Островский и другие.
В 1860-х годах он написал свой первый большой роман – “Война и мир”. В 1873 году Толстой приступил к работе над второй из наиболее известных его книг, “Анна Каренина”. Он продолжал писать беллетристику на протяжении 1880-х и 1890-х годов. Одна из его самых успешных поздних работ – “Смерть Ивана Ильича”. Толстой умер 20 ноября 1910 г. в Астапово, Россия.
How should you write a sentence?
Well, most guides will start off with 10,000 ways NOT to write a sentence.
You know, the finger-wagging schoolmarm that lectures you about avoiding fragments and comma splices and run-ons.
Ugh. That’s so negative. I prefer to focus on all the beautiful ways that you CAN write a sentence (trust me, there’s a lot!)
What I’m going to show you in this post is a “Sentence Tree.” This is where you start with a single simple sentence, and spin it off into a few variations, and then a few more variations off of that, until you have a whole tree full of branching variations.
And every single one of these sentences is going to be about crocodiles, because it’s easier to see sentence variations when they’re all about the same topic. Plus, crocodiles are fun! Or at least dangerous, which is kind of fun.
And after you’re finished reading this, if you’d like to learn even more about sentences, check out my course, “How to Write a Splendid Sentence.”
And for our initial sentence, let’s start with something simple.
1. SVO Sentence
“That is not a crocodile.”
Now that one’s pretty easy. It’s a SVO sentence. Which means you’re writing “Subject, Verb, Object” in that order and that order alone.
Subject = That
Verb = Is
Object = Crocodile
If you’re just starting out writing sentences, that’s an excellent place to start. It’s clear! It’s direct! Now you know what a crocodile isn’t!
But most of the time, if you just write SVO sentences, they get very, very boring, and you will put all of your readers to sleep.
Once they’re asleep, you have two options: you can shout/wave your hands/blow an air-horn, or … you can write different sentences.
2. Preposition Opening
The next thing you should learn about how to write a sentence is to vary your sentence openings.
For instance, what about starting with a preposition? (Prepositions indicate direction, such as of, to, at, of, above, under…)
“In just a moment, he’d realize he should have obeyed the “no fishing” sign.”
Ah, what a lovely variation! If you slip a preposition sentence inside a paragraph full of SVO sentences, it will feel like a breath of fresh air.
Plus, it works like a mystery — the reader wants to know what’s going to happen in just a moment, and so they’re propelled to read to the end of the sentence, curious about what’s going to happen next.
In just a moment … What? Tell me already! I want to know!
3. Adverb Opening
Let’s look at another sentence variation opener. This time, we’ll use an adverb to launch this sentence.
“Carefully, he put the meat inside the crocodile’s mouth.”
That pause at the beginning of the sentence — a single word followed by a comma — is like the tension before a climax. We want to know exactly what he’s doing that requires such care, and so we keep reading.
Little tiny variations like this don’t seem to matter much, but they have a tremendous affect on the reader. It’s the difference between a reader getting bored and the reader thinking you’re a genius.
And in fact, there’s a whole bucketful of openings we can use on our sentences. If you carefully cycle through a bunch of them, it will go a long way toward not making your reader fall asleep.
And keeping your reader awake is a very good goal to shoot for.
So far, all three our sentences have been pretty short.
Many short sentences in a row get boring.
Your reader’s eyes will start to glaze.
You need to provide some variety.
You need to write a longer sentence. (See — you just got tired of all those short sentences!)
How about we tackle more of a medium-length sentence? And what’s more, we’ll continue to avoid that simplistic SVO order, and try out a different structure.
Before we get to that, watch a video of me talking about sentences. This is the first video in my course, “How to Write a Splendid Sentence,” and I’ll talk about WHY writing great sentences is so important, and how to improve.
4. Standalone/Leaning Sentence
Now we’re going to learn how to write a Standalone/Leaning sentence.
A leaning part of a sentence is one that can’t stand on its own (“While it’s not the best weather…”), while a standalone part of a sentence is one that can function all by itself (“We should still go skiing.”).
“When the zookeeper said she could have what she wanted, he didn’t expect she would bejewel herself.”
We start with the leaning part of the sentence — “When the zookeeper said she could have what she wanted…” (see how that’s not a finished thought?)
Then we end with the standalone part: “He didn’t expect she would bejewel herself.”
What’s great about a standalone/leaning sentence is that you can create a mystery. When you start with a leaning part of a sentence, grammatically the reader is eager to learn about the end of the sentence!
It’s like music when you’re playing an unresolved chord, and the listener is yearning for the resolving chord.
Still, I think we can do even better than that sentence.
.
My name is Olya. I’m 15 years old and I study at the 10th form of the secondary school. My parents often ask me what I want to be when I grow or which profession I fancy. My answer is always the same. I want to be a writer. They are not happy with my choice but that’s what I want to do in my future. My father is a lawyer and he wants me to be like him. He says I’ve got all necessary traits of character to become a good lawyer. My mother is a designer and she thinks that I’ve got good taste to become a designer too. But I have always wanted to be a writer. As far as I remember I started writing when I was only 8. I wrote my first short poem then. When I was 10, our class teacher set us a special homework for summertime. We had to keep a summer diary and write in it what happened every day. Not everybody in the class was happy with this assignment. However, I really liked it. My diary was full of interesting events and it was chosen to be the best in the class. It was the time when I understood that I want to be a writer. After that summer I wrote many other diaries about my school life, my family and friends, my travels and picnics. At the moment I write articles for our school newspaper. Sometimes teachers ask me to write a poem or a script for school performances and my schoolmates ask me to help them with essays. People say I have an interesting style of writing and I don’t want to lose it. That’s why I think that I should be a writer. After graduating from school I’m going to study at the philological faculty of the local university. I’m sure higher education will be useful for me. There are also a lot of engaging workshops for writers. I’d like to attend one of them someday.