Analysing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Style of Writing

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Analysing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Style of Writing

The detective genre is very popular among the public and there are

many books, films and television programs based on it that, according

to research, are more popular with women than with men. Sir Arthur

Conan Doyle, who was writing in the 1880’s, uses a variety of

techniques to produce suspense in his Sherlock Holmes stories, all of

which are vital for the creation of tension.

All of his stories are structured in a similar way: at the beginning

the reader is given a very detailed account of the crime, then Holmes

and Watson investigate the scene of the crime, and finally right at

the end of the story the solution is provided by Holmes and all

becomes clear: ‘It means that it is all over’. This structural

technique keeps the reader guessing for the majority of the story,

leaving the reader in suspense until all is revealed at the end. This

is good because the reader is (usually) given all of the clues and has

a chance to play the role of the detective to try and solve the crime,

usually without success, which makes it more interesting, and the

reader is kept in suspense for most of the story.

Arthur Conan Doyle uses language that seems relatively old to us but

was normal for him in the 1880’s, and this proves to be very effective

because the words and general language are strong and varied, with a

wide range of vocabulary used. The language is very formal yet easy to

understand, apart from some words that had a different meaning from

what they mean now, for example the word ‘singular’ is used

excessively in the stories and it means ‘extraordinary’, unlike today

when it means the opposite of ‘plural’. At times in the stories when

the tension is escalating into a climax Arthur Conan Doyle speeds up

the writing by using lots of and verbs in sequence, for example in

‘The Adventure Of The Speckled Band’ where it says that ‘Holmes sprang

from the bed, struck a match and lashed furiously with his cane at the

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