Writing Examples

Hey writers,

Welcome back to Writing Examples. Last week, we showed you how Steinbeck creates emotion with tension and release. This week, take a look at how Edgar Allan Poe depicts a psychotic narrator.

Say It with Style

“True — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I tell you the whole story.”

–Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart"

A piece of writing will come alive when style and substance work together. But funky writing has gone out of style ever since Hemingway stepped onto the scene in the early 20th century and kickstarted the minimalist era.

Sentences and paragraphs have become simpler. More direct and to-the-point.

But Edgar Allen Poe’s writing shows how style can amplify substance. The tone is established with the first few words. From the outset, it doesn't just describe the feeling of madness. It shows it too, and it shows it with repetition, unusual grammar, fits and starts — and more fits and starts — as if the paragraph itself wants to induce a sense of vertigo in the reader.

All the punctuation makes it dizzying, and Poe repeats words like mad, very, gently, and nervous.

There are eight sentences — the longest one has 20 words; the shortest has one. There are four em dashes, three commas, an exclamation point, and two rhetorical questions about madness — and the cacophony of these symbols make the writing feel frantic and disjoined like the subject it describes.

A spell-checker would call red-alert on this paragraph. And that’s the point.

The minimalism of Hemingway is a tool, not the rule. To hell with spell-check’s recommendations. A paragraph about madness should feel mad.

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Thank you for reading Writing Examples. This week, see what you can say with your style (don't be afraid to get funky).

Happy writing,

The Write of Passage Team