The introduction was, frankly, quite boring. My mind easily wandered off, and it wasn't until there were about 10 seconds left of the video that I realized I was watching something that I probably should have been paying some attention to.
Other than the introduction video though, I thought Style Academy made some pretty interesting points and helpful suggestions. I've, for a while now, thought of myself fairly good at sentence structure, with adding that "stuff", or interruptions, to lengthen and further detail it, but the idea of imitating someone else's style was never something I've considered before; to use the styles of accomplished writers as a guide to becoming more eloquent. It's also interesting to see the many ways sentences can be combined to have different effects, highlighting the idea that I can put a greater emphasis on certain things simply by the way I link sentences together. These are both great concepts that can really help us to strengthen and really develop the ways in which we write, aiding us in our efforts to sound more intelligent, proficient, and persuasive.
It's an age old adage that in order to become a better writer you need to read more. The reason behind this, at least partially, is that it exposes you to a wide array of stylistic voices from different authors. And believe it or not, that really influences your writing. Our styles develop over the course of our writing career. They change, shift, rework themselves, and we can trace that back to our exposure to other writers. It make sense, then, to practice imitation. It's just a bigger step to understanding the stylistic notions of a specific genre, or author, and applying what we like into our own repertoire of writing. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd that was a very long winded response!