Prose Style, Literary Theory, and Analysis
A table of contents, plus posts from others around Substack.
Prose Style, Literary Theory, and Analysis
This is Substack’s home for prose theory on a line level, where writers go to improve their prose, whatever we write. In addition, we get into broader literary theory and hold shared readings where we explore the style on a line level. Some essays are free. Some are for paid subscribers.
If you’re looking for my fiction you can check here for short fiction or here for serials.
Subscribe or upgrade…
Contents: The Prose Style Series, The Literary Theory Series, The Literary Analysis Series, A Selection of my Other Writing-Related Posts, and Posts from Others Around Substack
The Prose Style Series
Aping the Style of Classic Authors — FREE The style of Ernest Hemingway, including parataxis and cumulative sentences.
How Herman Melville Wrote Blood Meridian — FREE A look at the style of Cormac McCarthy through his literary influences; introduces polysyndeton.
To Hell with William Faulkner — FREE A general introduction to the study of prose style.
Learning from the Best of the Worst — FREE Countering bad writing and purple prose with examples from The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis.
A Philosophy of Style — FREE Exploring the reason for style through Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
A New Classic Resembles No Classic Which Came Before — PAID The history of twentieth century prose seen as a conflict between Twain / Hemingway and Melville / Faulkner, culminating in Cormac McCarthy.
Twilight by Famous Authors — FREE Exercises in rewriting a paragraph in the styles of classic writers.
Your Foundation for Style — FREE Introduces minimalism and maximalism.
The Devil Writes Fiction — FREE Modernism, postmodernism, and metamodernism.
A Word Like a Butterfly, Pinned — PAID Phonetics and asyndeton.
The Secret of Literary Style — FREE What makes a style literary or not and a suggested term for non-literary prose.
Prose Style: Specificity and Proto-Germanic Word Origins — PAID Self explanatory, this one.
Borrow, Steal, Invent: How a Personal Prose Style Can Become a Literary Movement — PAID Again, self explanatory, but in the footnotes I cover mutually exclusive rules
Word Order and Reclaiming Passive Voice -- FREE A return to the concept of flow.
Undressing Figures of Speech — PAID a introduction to creating a turn of phrase.
Defining Style — PAID voice vs. style.
“Sentenced” to Life — PAID Cumulative and periodic sentences.
Simile and Cormac McCarthy Similes with You — FREE A rather different essay on similes and metaphors.
The Origin of Originality — PAID How to create something memorable when no one cares.
The Secret of Style: Part 2 — FREE Tying in with the Literary Analysis of All the Pretty Horses, I take a look at how Cormac McCarthy teaches us the secret to a successful prose style.
James Baldwin and the Long Sentence — FREE can you write a long sentence clean as a bone?
The First Pretty Horse Ain’t So Pretty — FREE from the literary analysis series, a critical examination of McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses’s first sentence.
The Shortcut to a Better Fiction Style — FREE a quick start with a summary of key topics and links to related essays
The Platypus Ain’t Got no Genre — FREE a guest article by
on style and genre
The Literary Theory Series
The Secret of Literary Style — FREE The same as number 11 above. It’s the foundation for the new series.
The Literary Theory Series: Prose Percussion, Winds, and Strings — PAID The segue between the original series and the new, using music theory as an inspiration for understanding prose.
Putting Zing into Your Long Action — FREE On the nature of beauty in prose and the role that dreaded -ing verbs can still play.
Show is Tell: Anais Nin describes Paris — FREE I share what others have to say about “show don’t tell” and then I give you my contrarian view, asserting we need to approach the terms differently.
Writing Truth Through the Lies of Fiction — FREE A much maligned and misunderstood piece of advice is one of the secrets to writing truly powerful fiction.
How to Lose a Reader in Ten Paragraphs — FREE On grounding a reader and sustaining interest.
Never Always Trust a Reader — PAID Trusting your reader, ambiguous endings, and giving readers the information they need.
Magical Realism and Fabulism — FREE What distinguishes these two genres from each other and from Urban Fantasy, and how to determine which you’re writing.
Burnt Tongue: The Autocrat of Action — FREE An examination of action through the dissection of “The King of Killers” by Emil Ottoman.
The Literary Analysis Series
A shared reading of All the Pretty Horses that focuses on McCarthy’s style.
Philip Meyer and Cormac McCarthy: The Son and All the Pretty Horses—FREE the first literary analysis essay compares the work of Philipp Meyer and Cormac McCarthy and chooses one for the first read along.
The Secret of Style: Part 2 —FREE from the prose style series, I take a look at how Cormac McCarthy teaches us the secret to a successful prose style.
The First Pretty Horse Ain’t So Pretty —FREE a critical examination of the book’s first sentence.
The 2nd Pretty Horse Rides an Alien Shore —FREE dig into the paragraph that imagines the Comanche and sets the motivation for John Grady’s trip.
A Selection of My Other Fiction-Related Posts
The Mystery of Readers on Substack — FREE Not about writing but rather the mysteries that surround writing on Substack.
Beauty, the Beast, and the Shining: a Study in Structure —FREE Beauty and the Beast is the platonic ideal of the 3-Act Structure.
The 3-Map World-Building System — a structure for designer more realistic fantasy world maps.
Writer’s Mission: Awesomeness — Visualizing the contract you have with your reader to assure the quality your readers expect.
Don’t know where to start? Try this.
Posts From Others Around Substack
From
, this pose encourages a return to forgotten punctuation, and I love the idea. I’ll be studying this post so I can apply its lessons to my current short story.
From
, this digs into what I refer to as minmalism and maximalism.Novelist and awesome person
wrote a response to my essay, “To Hell with William Faulkner.”
Author
, with her first book coming out with Simon & Schuster, has begun a series on the writer’s craft. I'm a paid subscriber. offers models to follow based on Salman Rushdie. writes CP Edits, and collects his articles much as I have done
Thank you 🙏
Thanks for the shout-out! 💗