Rob Bell's Love Wins https://thewritepractice.comCan non-fiction writers borrow techniques from poets to set their writing apart?

Last night, I finished Rob Bell's explosive and polarizing book about heaven and hell, Love Wins. While I don't want to review or comment on a book that has been reviewed and commented on en extrema, I do want to make some observations as a writer.

First of all, the book itself is beautiful. Bell uses a sans serif font in all his books which makes it very distinct. “This will be a light, fun breezing through,” I thought as I looked at the title page, which has the feel of a snappy marketing piece rather than a tome of Christian theology.

What is most striking about Bell's prose is his freedom with line breaks. Here are a few “paragraphs”:

It is a brutally honest,

exuberantly liberating story,

and it is good news.

 

That kind of God is simply devastating.

Psychologically crushing.

We can't bear it.

No one can.

He treats prose more like poetry, putting line breaks wherever he wants. He also has a penchant for fragments. “Psychologically crushing,” is not a complete sentence.

Obviously.

He also likes to use line breaks to set off lists and repetitions. Such as:

It's a part,

a celebration,

an occasion without beginning and without end.

 

It goes on,

well into the night,

and into the next day,

and the next

and the next.

Without any finish in sight.

If you've ever listened to Bell speak, his writing actually mirrors his speaking closely. He likes to spit out long rapid sentences and then punctuate them with short phrases.

His style annoys some people. One reviewer on Amazon said the book was “a little ‘over written' in the dramatic, one-sentence paragraph style.” I remember one friend who was reading Bell's Sex God said, “We know what you're doing, Rob Bell. And stop it.”

I just laughed.  As potentially distracting as his style is, I credit him for taking risks and doing something unique in a genre (Christian self-help) that doesn't have much going for it except the thousands of people who “have” to read the books for religious reasons.

He's being creative

in a very

uncreative

field.

 

PRACTICE

Practice writing like Rob Bell. For fifteen minutes, write about your own personal “heaven,” punctuating your sentences with lots of line breaks and fragments.

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris, a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

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