The Lively Art Of Writing By Lucile Vaughan Payne

“This book has one purpose: to help you improve your writing style,” Lucile Vaughan Payne wrote in the introduction to her book. Upon reading that statement, I gave a flippant, haughty snort and flipped the page, expecting an uninteresting book void of any enlightenment. As I began reading, however, the low expectations I had for this book vanished. Not only does The Lively Art of Writing explain the intricacies behind excellent writing, but it also showed magical ways of attaining actually good style. Instead of enumerating the components of style clinically like any other instructional book I’ve read so far, this book detailed the elements that contribute to style in the English language. The author emphasizes three major essentialities in the last few chapters—the significance of varied syntax, aesthetics of parallel structure, and precision of academic vocabulary—throughout her book, along with a few other components that characterize fantastic style that flows just like speech.

Of course, applying some of these skills—such as the periodic and strung-along sentences—can be a challenge because they deviate from my usual writing style. Even a picture-frame paragraph differs drastically from the overly familiar solemn vapors of stuffy academic words that I adore. Despite the troubles of writing in an entirely different style, I began to transform parts of my essays little by little, starting from the awkward diction and wordy details and boring sentence structures. That little checklist Mrs. Chinn provided never failed to remind me to incorporate a few stylistic expressions here and there in my essays. Solely from perusing this lovely book, the process of essay writing became less of a drudgery, bumbling in trying to convey ideas clearly, and became almost like art, an expression of creativity through concise, specific