Fish and sentences

Let’s look at a few pages from Stanley Fish’s How to Write a Sentence.

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Outrunning the Critic

From The 3AM Epiphany by Brian Kiteley, this exercise is called “Outrunning the Critic.” I’ve summarized it here:

  • Write one hundred short sentences about a character in a piece of your fiction.
  • Don’t lift your fingers from your keyboard for all one hundred sentences (then go back and revise tomorrow).
  • The sentences should not connect, nor need they follow one another logically.
  • Be careful not to use the name of your character or a pronoun to start each sentence; the key to this exercise is to relax and let your mind find new material and detail.
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Global revision

This is an example of global revision as the result of adding material.

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Characterization and global revision

From Brian Kiteley’s excellent book The 3A.M. Epiphany, you’ll find this exercise useful.

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Reflecting on your writing

Contrast the research you did while working on the last two essay assignments. How did differences in the assignments change the way you worked on each of them? Which was more difficult? Why? Which of the classroom activities gave you the greatest understanding of the assignment? Was the textbook more or less useful in understanding the assignment than our discussions in class? Why?

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Examples of prose poems

From Great American Prose Poems, an anthology edited by David Lehman, here are some samples.

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Example villanelles and sonnets

See this PDF for interesting examples of villanelles. Here are some sonnets.

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