Helping my dd find her writing style

[Kfamily]

I've had a question about writing that has been confusing me so I thought I would ask here and see what others think. You ladies/gentlemen always help me clear up my thoughts.

 

I've always read that a good writer uses concise sentences as part of their style. My dd is presenting a problem with this idea since she actually prefers to write longer sentences. She loves and greatly admires the writing of the medieval and renaissance time period. She feels strongly (and you know how stubborn an 8th grade girl can be...:001_smile:) that better writers do not write "short, boring sentences". She spends hours of her free time writing and reading. She loves to write character studies, pages of her own retellings of Shakespeare and is even trying to teach herself Anglo-saxon by translating sentences and passages. She was up this morning writing a passage and had worked hard on choosing the right words to convey her fiction description of a young girl. I liked her choice of words. I often do, so this makes this even more confusing for me.

 

How do I help her embrace the styles of writing she admires, but yet teach her to write in an academic style (that might better please a college professor)? I'm so new at this level of writing so this has caused me some concern.

 

Thanks for any advice!

[tearose]

Sentences can be longer while still being concise. You just want to make sure that the sentences aren't long due to unnecessary words. Here are two links that I've given to students:

 

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/635/01/ (Paramedic Method: A Lesson in Writing Concisely)

 

http://uwp.duke.edu/uploads/assets/clarity%20and%20conciseness.pdf (Clarity and Conciseness)

 

If her writing is persuasive and can be easily followed by the reader, I wouldn't consider longer sentences a problem. If there's too much filler, that's a problem.

[Kfamily]

Thank you! I really like these.:001_smile: