How do you write eloquently?

Basic recommendations include: Read more. Write more. Edit what you've written. Read books about writing. Utilize a style guide when necessary. (The most important of all these steps is, in fact, the writing part. Practice, practice, practice.)

The opening sentences are long - though that isn't necessarily a problem. Three of the first four use 'was' very early on. Dave mentions 'was' in one of his tips on writing - I think he says something along the lines of disliking seeing a number of was's in opening paras.
Was isn't wrong, but sometimes, particularly in consecutive sentences, you might consider different sentence constructions.

If you're not a member of a Writer's critique site, I suggest you take a look at a few. You can learn simply from reading critiques of the writing of others if you can't afford paid membership.
If you haven't already sign up to Dave's Writing Tips.

I have this same exact problem. My writing doesn't flow, and I try to make things super poetic. So many people have told me my prose was clunky and I never understood what that meant. I started paying attention to what other professionals were saying. I think Elmore Leonard has a rule that goes If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. I think you just have to contemplate on that for a bit. The other big thing I think might help you is to consider reading your stuff out loud. Chuck Palahniuk does this, and it helps your words flow. Many (most?) people when they read, they sound the words out in their head. They say it mentally. So if it flows well verbally, it will be easier to read. I think many people also praise Patrick Rothfuss for having this easy flow quality. If you want examples, look for books where people highly recommend the audiobook. While that's partly to do with the actor's voice and tone, it also has a lot to do with the words themselves. Best audio stuff for me, hands down, is John O'Donohue. He was an Irish poet and religious scholar (ex-priest maybe), and he voices all his own stuff. His accent makes it magical. You can find some of him on Youtube.

Eloquence (noun): "1 : discourse marked by force and persuasiveness; also : the art or power of using such discourse 2 : the quality of forceful or persuasive expressiveness (Webster's 11th).

By force is meant emphatic expression and emphasis amplitude progression. By persuasiveness, for prose purposes, is meant emotional emphasis that persuades readers to share dramatic personas' emotional experiences. The general method entails tension's emotive, suspenseful, and curiosity arousal features. Specific techniques involve poetic equipment, both rhetoric instances and extended figures, for example, metaphor and allegory figures. Specific tension techniques involve setup, relief delay that increases force, and partial or complete tension relief. The tension rhetoric figure is auxesis: emotional force increase progression.

The sample of the original post contains some force progression, some eloquence. The progression starts slow due to the remove of an outsider narrator looks in and summarizes and explains back story, absent a focal insider persona, and the whole wanders drama directionless thereafter. Plus, Marcus is alone by himself and only a small amount and quality interacts dramatically with his situation. He's stuck in a figurative bathtub, contemplates his navel, and little, if any, meaningful occasion for his artful, dramatic antagonal, causal, tensional interactions, ACT.

The excerpt largely summary and explanation tells Marcus' low-magnitude dramatic situation. A next rewrite might consider more so Marcus' ACT forces that propel him into proactive action. What does Marcus want that is enough of a problem to satisfy? This is antagonism: want-problem complication, a congruent set of want and problem in every-which-a-way force and motivation direction contention. Conflict is a polar opposite of stakes risked forces in contention, causation; acceptance and rejection, for example. Emotional commentary and stimuli and response actions are tone: emotional-moral message attitude of a whole. Instance emotional attitudes are per dramatic instance.

Eloquent prose wants antagonism's complication motivation forces, causation's stakes risked conflict forces, and tone's extended and instance forceful emotional attitudes. Some artful attitude instances within the excerpt.

The excerpt's diary-like nature, journal, log, etc., remains in the narrator's distant outsider perspective and is emotionally bland. Mixed and inconsistent narrative point of view, too, narrator foremost and bumpy transitions to momentary viewpoint persona Marcus intrusions and back to narrator focus, opposite of a best practice: invisible narrator, focal persona perspective foremost. Traditional prose, though, focused on narrators' perspectives and is anymore deprecated in favor of third-person, psychic access limited to one viewpoint persona's received reflections, close narrative distance; and first-person's likewise perspectives.

The excerpt offers a glimpse of a conflict, a writer's struggles for publication success: acceptance and rejection in contention. From conflict a complication might derive. Might Marcus think he wants to be left alone? Yet the appeals of a solicited submission and his emotional rejection of it due to writer's block dreaded cripples show he's thrilled and amenable? He wants though admits it to himself not, refuses the solicitation at first; he is as much or more his own problematic adversary as any other? Also, might acceptance and rejection in contention have higher stakes: likewise, Marcus' continued acceptance or ultimate rejection from Sanctuary due to his news reports? Glorious drama and eloquence if so, albeit realized soon or later.

If that's the intent, and as is, is the one complication-conflict that most presents from what's given, the rest is pump primer misdirection, diversion, and distraction back story, injudicious and untimely. Eloquent prose narrows and focuses force and persuasion content progression.

On the read more front - definitely read books by writers praised as such.

Also, read poetry. See how poets invoke strong images and emotions through careful word choice.

Eloquent writers, in my experience, write very tight, clean sentences in a way that makes the reader complete in their mind, images or ideas left unwritten by the writer.

To quote the late James Baldwin who said:

"You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal."

Simplicity is king.

I believe that quite a few people who give writing advice are just regurgitating information they've read in writing books to show how much they know about writing. Each writer develops his own individual style based on years of practice and copying the styles of writers they admire. Each writer has his own tale as to how he or she comes to the table and gets the story written. Personally, I can tell you how I write, I can even show you; I can't tell you what works for me because it hasn't worked yet as I'm still working to get published.

The best advice I've ever gotten: Read, Write, Study, Persist.

Write because you enjoy putting sentences and paragraphs together, because you enjoy creating characters, and because you feel a sense of achievement when sending out a ms and possibly receiving that rejection notice.

You want to write eloquently? So I'd have to ask what's your idea of writing eloquently? Who is your example? Faulkner, Balzac, Dickens, McCarthy, Hemingway (probably not), any of the 19th Century Russian Writers, James Joyce, John Steinbeck. Do you read great writers, or commercial crap?

Excerpts from one of my favorite writers:

The sharp and brittle crack and clatter of its weathered and ungreased wood and metal is slow and terrific: a series of dry sluggish reports carrying for a half mile across the hot still pinewiney silence of the August afternoon.

They moved rapidly on between the close walls of impenetrable cane-stalks which gave a sort of blondness to the twilight and possessed something of that oppression, that lack of room to breathe in, which the walls of his house had had. But this time, instead of fleeing it, he stopped and raised the jug and drew the cob stopper from the fierce duskreek of uncured alcohol and drank, gulping the liquid solid and cold as ice water, without either taste or heat until he lowered the jug and the air got in.

Excerpts from one of my favorite writers:

The sharp and brittle crack and clatter of its weathered and ungreased wood and metal is slow and terrific: a series of dry sluggish reports carrying for a half mile across the hot still pinewiney silence of the August afternoon.

They moved rapidly on between the close walls of impenetrable cane-stalks which gave a sort of blondness to the twilight and possessed something of that oppression, that lack of room to breathe in, which the walls of his house had had. But this time, instead of fleeing it, he stopped and raised the jug and drew the cob stopper from the fierce duskreek of uncured alcohol and drank, gulping the liquid solid and cold as ice water, without either taste or heat until he lowered the jug and the air got in.

Who wrote that? Have you ever read Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy? Or The Road?

Those excerpts are Faulkner. I’ve read Blood Meridian about 50 times. The Road about a dozen.

William Faulkner, Light in August, 1932, and "Pantaloon in Black," Go Down, Moses, 1942, seven interrelated short stories, both Random House.

Read all of Cormac McCarthy's novels. I favor No Country for Old Men, 2005.

I always carry a little bit of Faulkner around with me.

I always liked to hear about the old timers. Never missed a chance to do so.

Anybody want to post writing snippets as practice towards eloquence, or whatever you're going for.

So I'll ante up with this:

For I once saw with my own eyes,

Wind-scorched plains running flat to the edge of a wasted land where the shattered world melts against a vacant sky. The cities stand dark and silent as cinder ash, quietly grieving their crucified souls. And the nights each one more cold than the night before and each one passing away in the stillness the days and the years of it without cease.
On the horizon the silhouettes of men walking, their legs and torsos bare to the failing daylight and their bodies hard and thin like the hunting spears in their fists. Beards sprouted in young manhood now hang low in antiquity. And the gray whiskers blow roughly in the prairie wind which still carries rumors of spring—of memory and desire, of April storms coming over the plains—and their hair falls waistward in thick greasy locks like the dead roots of upturned trees. Behind them their women likewise tramp the thorny ground. At their breasts the tribe’s children cling. They are traveling south for the winter.

Anybody want to post writing snippets as practice towards eloquence, or whatever you're going for.

Keep in mind, anything posted here can't be used in WotF stories without potentially disqualifying you.

Well, a person can post old stuff or just write something new. It's supposed to be for practice. So give it a shot.

  Angry girl on fire, she fumed over the brim out of the O'Rickie's Tavern there to 10th and Live Oak Street.
    Crackholes.
    Wasn't that drunk.
  Next to Susie's Cakes and Sweet Dreams.
    Big fat dream sick lies.
  The poodlehead taxi driver parked at the curb said he didn't drive drunks. "No pukes in this cab." His cell phone played Flight of the Busybody Bumblebees.
    Mozart? Beethoven?
    Purple lips. Tangerine eye shadow.
    No, stupid, that's streetlight on his face.
  He raced the lousy soccer mom van off.
    Prick.
    Never puked my whole life.
  "Holmes Limousine? "Yeah, hello. How's your night going? Mine sucks. O'Rickie's bartender said I wasn't minding my business. They kicked me out before last call. Can you send me a taxi? There was one right here a second ago. He wouldn't take me home. The car number? Forty-two? I think it's a Chevy. You should fire him. He's not one of yours? I don't know. Twenty minutes? Crap. It's cold out. Hurry up, please."
    Twenty minutes means an hour.
    Or more. Hell.
    Your Volvo wagon's in the lot.
    Did I leave that peach cashmere on the backseat?
    You're not gonna drive.
    Yeah, go look.
    Why is the car colder than outside?
    Start it up. Some heat while I wait.
    I'm doing the right thing.
    That's better.
    Should sit in the backseat in case.
    Lock the doors.
    Here's the sweater.
  She'd dozed off. Something tapped on the glass.
    Someone.
    A cop.

Yours kind of reminds me of Joyce's Ulysses.

And I'll raise you the first paragraph of my next project:

Grissel Farr stood with his face pressed against the glass and his reflection pressed against his face. In the window played the image of coal smoke rising from a factory miles behind him. Past the factory—where hills like skinned buffalo stretched bare and woodless across the horizon—stood the town and the county jail and the sheriff. Stood the coal mines where hard labor did its time. Grissel gripped the door knob and pushed the mechanism once around. He felt the door go loose in its moorings. Then he saw the placard taped to the inside of the window. NO COONS ALLOWED. And he almost let the door slip closed and almost turned his boots around the way he’d come. But he was thirsty. Hell, the whole country was thirsty.

Your first -- "Ozmandias," Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dame Mary Shelley's spouse.

Your second -- "Hills Like White Elephants," Ernest Hemingway.

Well, a person can post old stuff or just write something new. It's supposed to be for practice. So give it a shot.

That's fair. I just didn't want a newbie making a mistake or something. Things like that have happened before. I'll take a crack at something later, maybe. (Babies make finding time to really write hard. )

Babies make everything harder.

I haven’t entered the contest in years. But maybe this year.

The sun, low-hung and slurred beneath a haze of grey clouds. It remits no heat, only a disc of dim light. A retinue of hooves kneads the barren dirtscape, those without brush boots chided raw from catsclaw and grimthorn and nettle. The riders, twelve in number, all bear the red mark of the Crimson. They sit tense in their saddles, harassed by the biting wind, clutching their reins in hands wrapped in goatskinned gloves that offer little solace from the cold. Creak of leather tack, muffled against the stronger groan of the wind.

A large swath of the Verges laid out before them in all directions, pitched under a thin film of snow like the settle of dust coughed out from a volcano. White plumes of breath escape from the nostrils of each beast, only to be violently carted off by the wind like field mice caught in swooping talons. They ride single file down a narrow break in the shelf leading down into the bed of a dead creek. The banks are not high enough to offer any solace from the wind. They try to seek refuge in fur and wool-lined hoods pulled tighter. Spurred boots filled with numb toes shift in the stirrups to urge more blood flow. Above them the one they call Ramp scrutinizes the horizon for anything that moves, which would elicit a response from the company by way of closer inspection. It is a half day's ride to Listhaven, but they'll make the Lost Road within a handful of hours, where there will be more activity to slake their thirst for villainy.

Ramp sweeps the far with his scope. He looks like he hates being on higher ground from the rest of them, catching most of the wind. His horse fidgets and he tries to keep the scope stayed.

"Anything?" Juke peers up at Ramp with hopeful, blinking eyes.

Grim smacks him on the arm. "Ain't nobody out here, stupid. It's too damned cold. It's what I been saying this whole time."

"We're out here," Juke replies, then chucks his gaze back to the scout.

"That's cause we're all a bunch of dumbshits. This is like trying to hunt a deer during a thunderstorm. The deer hide. Right now all the smart people is inside next to a fire keeping their toes from falling off."

"If you didn't want to be out here then why'd you come?"

Grim brushes at the icicles in his beard with his glove. "What else was I supposed to do? I was told there would be money and fun. I ain't seen neither." He glances at Mister Thorn as he says this. Thorn isn't paying any attention.

He does get the attention of Blink, however. Thorn's deputy.

The others remain separate from the conversation. Sometimes two idiots arguing is the only excitement for hours.

Forgive me for chiming in a bit late here. I'm new to the forum.

My advice for writing eloquently is
* Read a lot, especially stuff written by writers you like. You have to marinate in the work of good authors if you want to write like them.
* In my case, it's easier to write eloquent dialog than description, especially when I've (finally) worked myself into my characters' heads. The same might be true for you.
* Don't be afraid to revise. My first drafts are almost never eloquent.
* Get feedback from writing groups, forums, wherever. Most any competent English speaker that reads fiction will be able to tell you what in your writing is not eloquent. This is something that easier to spot in others' writing than our own. I don't recommend letting others control your writing too much in terms of how to make prose flow well, but take constructive criticism about fluency to heart.
* Come back to your writing after letting it sit for days or weeks. Bad writing is easier to spot when you read it afresh.
* Varying sentence length tends to make for more eloquent prose.
* Be consistent about point of view, verb tense, etc.
* Verbs are the most important words in a sentence, especially when it comes to description. Indeed, they are the glory of the English language. I know of no language with such a variety of verbs, so many of which convey a great deal with precision. Learn them. Use them.
* Fewer words normally means more eloquent.

Also keep in mind that sometimes an effective writing style is not particularly eloquent. When I read Who Fears Death ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XFYIE2/re ... TF8&btkr=1) I was like "This woman uses a sentence like a blunt object." If it's clear by your style that you are dedicated to telling a story--and refuse to let eloquence get in the way of the story--a blunt style can be effective.

I have no idea what that means. I just write the first thing about the tale that comes into my head; where I am, who I am, what I am doing and why.
When I write dialogue I try to put as much emotion into the phrase as necessary.
I've been writing for fun for quite a while and decided to enter the WotF contests to find out what other authors thought of my pros. I had to take a look at what I had on paper and in my head and found reading aloud helped tremendously especially in the dialogue scenes.
Never worry about what people might think about your style, just cultivate it, work on it and read, read, read and read.
And the best of luck.

Anybody want to post writing snippets as practice towards eloquence, or whatever you're going for.

I really like this idea and would want to start it up again if anyone's interested. Of course, I like all exercises, as seen from the Wulf's exercises thread. (That's because they give good exercise that improves your writing in a specific area; it's much easier because you aren't under pressure to create a masterpiece; it gives you pressure to put some words on the screen; plus people will read it. Compelling, no? ) Just put a short piece here if you're interested. I finished my Q3 so I had a little time. Here's mine. (second try)

Running rivers of red stretched across the massive hills. Filthy and unforgiving, they glinted menacingly in the morning sun. The stench was something horrible, filling Shataw’s nose and mouth, threatening nausea; and yet he hardly noticed, just stared at the horrid river of death that flowed by.
A clap of thunder roared, venting its rage against the great injustices of the Forsore. Rain hammered down, mixing with those red rivers and mangled body parts; furiously it pattered and poured, coalescing and cleaning, slowly clearing away the reddish color and replacing it with a dullish pink.
And then it stopped. The trees quivered and were still. The battle cries of the Forsore were gone. Gone already moments ago. Gone because the slaughter was over. And gone until next time their fancy struck them, and their lustful natures overtook them.
And Shataw just stared. He felt he should weep, yet he had no tears left to shed. When Father had been killed he had wept, when Mother, he had wept. And when little Futuwa had been slaughtered he had wept.
But now he could weep no more. The red rivers were now only a dullish pink, the full heinous nature of the Forsore’s crimes swept away by the waters from above. Soon they would return to their natural color; and soon his own emotions would be dulled even further, uncaring whether anyone lived or died or was tortured; and the river would be again pristine, showing no sign of a holocaust.

Mark Forsyth's book - The Elements of Eloquence is entertainingly written as well as educational. Which reminds me, I had been following his lessons on English Verse - must get back to them.

At the moment when I'm telling a story I feel like my sentences are thick bricks I'm chucking against windows, smashing them to get my point across. They aren't beautiful. A brick is a brick, I find myself relying on the same repetitive sentence structures over and over again as I write.

I’ve never seen someone describe my problem so accurately before. I too suffer from the brick-sentence syndrome! All I could do is read it over, rewrite, read it over, rewrite, and hope they’ll get better eventually

My suggestions: Read Syn and Syntax, Cormac McCarthy, and Faulkner.

My two paragraphs:

John McCarthy stands awash in the finality of sunset, staring into tinted glass through which a muted sun glows out of the burnt horizon. The day’s final moments spilling forward against the window where his reflection hovers within the shaded pane. A self-portrait phantom-like in pallor and swathed in bandages. And in that burnished light he sees the ills of mankind displayed across the lower heavens. A sickness only he with his altered mind can perceive and only he with his resurrected heart can cure.

He turns away from the bronze dusklight, away from the slow death of another day, leaving behind him the vision of a city he no longer knows and a world beyond his knowing. Beyond his damaged mind. And within his injured brain his rewired synapses struggle to interpret the ethereal images given him through eyesight recently restored by surgery. By a surgical procedure wherein the surgeons were hesitant to promise any success without assistance by someone’s luck or by someone’s god.

At the moment when I'm telling a story I feel like my sentences are thick bricks I'm chucking against windows, smashing them to get my point across. They aren't beautiful. A brick is a brick, I find myself relying on the same repetitive sentence structures over and over again as I write.

Post an example so we can see the problem better.

Post an example so we can see the problem better.

This is a particularly bad case:

They walked through the town in the dim afternoon light. Grass filled the cracks in the asphalt and spilt into windows and doorways. Old vehicles sank deep between dark nettles, and a bicycle plaited itself into the ivy. On either side, houses stood in various states of decay, some roofs long collapsed beneath brambles and weeds. Through broken windows, pockets of rooms lay untouched: rectangular tables made from wood, flatscreen television sets, and moulding sofas, losing all colour under coats of dust.

There, everything blurred together in a pallet of abandonment. Road and not-road were purely technicalities; a footnote of well-actuallies.