Excerpts From Lit­er­a­ture is designed to be a tool for writ­ers to study how oth­ers have writ­ten well and for lit­er­a­ture lovers to bask in the glow of great writing.

Why Does EFL Exist?

More often than not, writ­ing resources are made for the aca­d­e­mic or the ado­les­cent. A quick search online will show an end­less series of sug­ges­tions for topic sen­tences, con­clud­ing para­graphs, and five-part essay struc­tures. Essen­tial tech­niques for the high schooler, no doubt. While lit­er­ary crit­i­cism has shaken every tree of prose in the for­est to uncover, pin-down, and label all the bugs which may fall–a great ser­vice to the tax­on­omy of our language–what great writ­ers learned their craft from the peer-reviewed jour­nals of the university?

Not with­stand­ing poetry books for poets, there are few prose books for prose writ­ers. What I wanted was a resource that clar­i­fied, like a map, the ter­rain that writ­ers must often adven­ture on to fin­ish any mean­ing­ful work. Stick­ing with writ­ing is hard enough as it is: it’s lonely, under­paid, and exhaust­ing at times. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a resource that gave you some reas­sur­ances along the way? That could answer ques­tions like, how did Tol­stoy describe party scenes; Hem­ing­way nar­rate a quiet walk through a city; Woolf pen a newly-introduced char­ac­ter who’s crit­i­cal to the plot, and so on? Yes it would be.

EFL’s mis­sion is to become such a resource. It will doc­u­ment obsta­cles that story tellers, essay­ists, reporters, nov­el­ists, and authors in gen­eral must over­come. When you read through these posts, you’ll find ways that oth­ers before you have solved a puz­zle you were dig­ging at. You’ll see great words by famous authors and by nobod­ies alike. You won’t see expla­na­tions or analy­sis for any posts, except the early ones pub­lished at the ini­tial launch of this site. Instead, the post title will show the sit­u­a­tion that the author faced, from what work the sit­u­a­tion was found in, and the name of the author. The post will only have the pas­sage and the citation.

Use this resource as you would a ref­er­ence work. Just as doctor’s turn to med­ical dic­tio­nar­ies when they meet an unfa­mil­iar set of symp­toms in order to obtain prece­dents on diag­no­sis, prog­no­sis, and cures, writ­ers may turn to this work of quotes for the same help.

Vol­un­teer

Please con­tact me if you have any desire to help this resource mature and grow. There is always more to be done by those who are try­ing to do it.

EFL espe­cially has a need for more con­trib­u­tors, edi­tors, and promoters.

When you sup­port EFL, you help cre­ate a resource that may play a crit­i­cal role in advanc­ing a work of lit­er­ary art that you or some­one you know will love. Help­ing EFL is a way of giv­ing back for the good that authors and their books have given to you. The effort you put into improv­ing EFL sus­tains an appre­ci­a­tion for words that our ad-driven age erodes with bad copy writ­ing and enter­tain­ment sat­u­ra­tion. Say yes to lit­er­a­ture by con­tact­ing EFL to find out how you can get involved today.

Thank you for read­ing. I hope TKQ helps you.