#sentence flow

[writing-ideas-inc]

Credit goes to @/ writershelpwriters on instagram (I'm sure I've seen this elsewhere though, and I suppose the real credit goes to Gary Provost)

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Hey there. I notice I have a massively bad writing habit. My sentences tend to start with the subject at the very beginning, meaning the POV character or a pronoun tends to start 90% percent of my sentences. (Ex. "He glanced outside. He had things to do today"). I want to break this bad habit, but can't find any info to help me! Think you guys can help?

Good news! You’re not alone! In fact, there are whole guides out there that teachers use to try to help their students kick this exact habit. (This one is very useful if you feel like you don’t have a great grip on the different ways a sentence CAN be structured, although it will also make you feel like you are taking a 9th grade standardized test.) It’s not as generative as a creative person like me prefers, but it does get me thinking very concretely about what makes a sentence, why I’m choosing the structures I’m choosing, and how I might change that).

Unfortunately, that is my first advice. Some people have a natural feel for sentence rhythm and don’t need to know all the technicalities in order to structure a gorgeous, varied paragraph, but the rest of us tend to benefit from sitting down and doing sentence diagrams.

After you’ve done that, my next big recommendation is this: set your paragraph aside. Stick it in your desk drawer, hide it under your pillow, give it to your cat, minimize the window, whatever you have to do to not be looking at it. Open up a new blank page. Write the paragraph again, from memory. Now that you have gotten the ideas down once, I’ll bet you anything that your sentences come out more natural and less stilted.

If that’s not working for you, you can try what they’ve done over at OWL at Purdue (a great resource for all kinds of technical writing help, by the way) and just write a single sentence in as many ways as possible. Try ten on the first sentence you practice with. See if you can work your way up to being able to spit out 15 or 20. Most of these are gonna be bad, as you can see by the examples on OWL. This exercise is not about writing good sentences necessarily, it’s about figuring out every single way you can possible say a thing so that you get familiar with the huge variety of options open to you. When you’ve done this a few times (and also given yourself a rest), see if the paragraph rewrite trick goes any better.

[oddsarenotinyourfavor]

dont ever let me critique any of your writing unless you want me to demolish it completely