Writing with Sherlock Holmes (1) - Developing More Complex Sentences

Many of us want to improve the quality of our writing, or our children's writing.  I'm often asked as an English tutor to help.  But how do you do this?

Previous series have looked at improving writing with Emily Dickinson,  improving creative writing and improving writing in an exam.  Today's post is about a fun approach I use that appeals to children to help them improve their writing by learning from the creator of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Here's the opening to one of my favourite short stories about Sherlock Holmes, called 'The Red-Headed League':

"I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a very stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair."

It's a sophisticated opening sentence, a multiple complex sentence, and students may need help with some of the vocabulary.

But in my experience they enjoy the challenge of writing a similarly structured sentence:

"I went to see my friend, ... , one day in ... , and found him in conversation with ... , a ...    ".

Developing reading is one of the best ways to improve writing, which Writing with Sherlock Holmes facilitates.  Students also need independent practice, with helpful feedback so they can see where they have made a mistake and put it right.

I offer Writing with Sherlock Holmes as part of my tutoring to help students with their writing, and offer a free 30 minute introductory session with no obligation.

I have also written an ebook to help students, called The Five Sentence Types Workbook, available on Amazon, which explains in more detail what a multiple complex sentence is, and makes learning sentence structures fun by involving students in helping to create a developing story.