Kurt Vonnegut's Essay 'How To Write With Style'
Kurt Vonnegut author of slaughterhouse five, in the 1985 essay “How to Write with Style,” makes observations and recommendations for infusing personality into your work. It begins by defining "elements of style" as the unique personal qualities that you show to the reader. Vonnegut then goes on to make an argument on why we should improve our writing style. To which he says it's out of sign of respect for the reader. Basically not putting effort into your writing will make the reader will think that you care little of them. Vonnegut suggests the most powerful recommendation for improving style is picking the right subject matter. If it's something that you're passionate for your personality will show. Thus be careful to pick something …show more content…
In the essay, Directions: Write, Read, Rewrite. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 as Needed, Susan Sontag emphasizes that reading can be used as motivation for writing. Granted she has talked to people that don't feel the same. That the act of reading and the writing must be separate, that it's best to do one or the other. Sontag believes this view is brought about by either fear of influencing one's unique voice or simply lack of time. Sontag rejects this, seeing reading instead as an enjoyable pursuit that has the pragmatic side effect of encouragement for creating her own content (Sontag). Kurt Vonnegut reports that if we don't endeavor to make good work that "they will stop reading you." Basically, Vonnegut is warning that we suffer from not putting effort into our writing. In addition emphasizing that, for the reader, reading is hard work. Generally he makes this claim to support his argument for simplicity and a pursuit of coherence. Simply that the reader has to understand our point, which might be difficult, thus we should make it as easy as possible for them
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