We’re taking a bit of a break from story and characters this week. Now, let’s focus on one of the single toughest writing topics: sentences. We all know what they are and how they work, so here we go!
Is it necessary?
Yup, we’re starting with the hardest one. How do you know whether or not your sentence is important? For the most part, it’s a guess. But if you add too many frivolous sentences and paragraphs, you might just lose your reader’s attention. A good way to trim the fat is to look at each sentence in a paragraph and ask yourself, “If I got rid of this sentence, would this paragraph’s meaning or structure change?” If it doesn’t, axe it mercilessly. But even if the sentence does change the paragraph in a meaningful way, you might still have a chance to rearrange the content of your sentence and disperse it within other sentences. If you can’t figure out an obvious way to do that, most likely, your sentence is okay as-is!
Simple is better
Indubitably, thusforth it must needs be remarked that the construction upon which thine prose lieth doth affect its readability to the congregation of elocutionists who gather to glean its connotations.
Yeah, so if you find yourself sounding like a mid-1700s European essayist, stop it. You won’t sound smart, you’ll just sound desperate for respect. Your thesaurus will not make you a good writer. Clarity trumps complexity. Choose words your audience won’t have to look up to understand. Not only will that help your writing reach a broader audience, it will feel measurably more intelligent.
Avoid echoing headwords
Okay, so I wrote about this one in a previous post, so I won’t stay on it for too long. If you lead every sentence or paragraph with the same word, you’re just going to sound redundant and dull—it has a mind-numbing effect that, while subtle, feels awful to read. “I” is the culprit for most writers. Writing in first-person has its advantages, but “I” gets abused far too often. Find ways to switch it up. That’s it!
Mix up the lengths
In a similar vein, I tend to see a lot of authors who use the exact same sentence length for everything. Some skew to the longer side, others lean toward the good ole five-word sentence that defines so many early reader books. Neither feels fun to read. Combine sentences, split clauses apart—throw in a one-word sentence here and there. Try and do the same with paragraphs, too! Variety can turn a slog into a masterpiece. You just have to be aware of every choice you make while you write.
Use simple, interesting verbs
Was, was, was. The dog was brown. He was a strong man. Living in such a hellhole was annoying. Blah, blah, blah. I’d like to propose that we ban the word “was.” And let’s add the word “is” and all other forms of “to be” while we’re at it. Just scrap ’em all, I say.
Alright, we can keep them, but only if you lot promise to use better verbs in your sentences. Honestly, in most circumstances, you can do better than “to be” verbs. There’s no flavor to them, they just exist for a blip of time, then fade away from your reader’s mind. Spend a little time refining your verbs when you edit.
As a side note, avoid gerunds in general. If your verb ends with “-ing,” you might have room to reinforce your prose with more solid verbs–you can usually just remove the suffix and rearrange the sentence a little to simplify it. Now, gerunds have their place, so don’t fuss about them too much. Just make a note of them and experiment a little!
Err on the side of too much
Balance is hard. Whenever I edit a novel, I either see too much detail or too little. Creative writing classes often teach us that being “in the scene” makes a huge difference—and it does. Trouble is, how much can you stand to live “in the scene?” How far in can you go? Dickensian writers often create these long, sprawling paragraphs of absurd length that describe every crack on every street, every leaf on every tree. It’s obtuse. But it’s easy to fix.
Now, most of the authors I edit lean to the other extreme. I see hundreds of sentences like “John walked into the room.” Cool. All I can picture is a great, white void. As an editor, it sometimes frustrates me to see one or two single-line “paragraphs” interspersed with oceans of dialogue that goes on for pages. Often, I’ll look at myself and ask “Am I editing a novel or a screenplay?” If you have too much detail, you can just cut some. But if you have too little? Well, now you have to add some. And adding takes a lot longer than cutting. This is why I’m such a proponent of vomit drafts—you just write as much as you can about everything without thinking much about it, and spend the rest of your writing process cutting all the crap you put in during your first draft. It saves so much time!
Well, anywho, that’s about all I’ve got for y’all this week! If you’re in the mood for some more tips though, why not check out the rest of my blog?
