We all constantly complain about just how hard adulting is. Yes we have been lied to. Growing up turned out to not be as fun as we were promised in those fabulous films. However, what I’ve begun to notice recently has been the joys of adulthood. Those little moments where you might stop and think: “Yes! This is just like the movies!”. One of those moments for me, is doing things on my own more often, without feeling weird about it. Having been the type of teenager to barely ever do anything by myself due to feeling socially judged, it suddenly dawned on me just how swiftly this has changed as I transitioned into my early 20s. Maybe it is because I’m older and I’ve started to care less. Or maybe it’s because I’m getting better mentally. I can’t lie on this blog because my mission is to be completely transparent; I grew up with depression and anxiety. I grew up with it hindering me from living my best life. To not wanting to live my best life. It honestly fills me with so much anger to think about how much I’ve missed during my teens and in the beginning of my 20s. How many times did I cancel plans just to sit in my room all night binging food and Netflix as a method of self-punishment. How many times did I skip going to the library or to the gym because of my anxiety. And how many times did I not leave the house because I hated how I looked. But I’m no longer scared of watching a film alone at the cinema, in fact, I thrive in doing so. I’ve always been the type of person to treasure my independence and here I am, finally accepting it. Finally embracing it! This is not to say that I’m not scared at all. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I still fall into these patterns now, especially the last one lol. I still get anxious to walk up to the cinema on my own, or to sit in a café alone for hours, and don’t even get me started on taking myself out to dinner; I still haven’t managed to build up the courage to do that. But I’m working on it. I’ve figured that once you pass the threshold of simply doing it. Once you pass the threshold of ignoring the fear and just doing it. Said fear passes. It just melts away and relief comes to take its place. Pride swallows you instead and happiness follows. You relax into the moment and all is easy again. And it becomes easier each time you do it. Nowadays I consider myself so lucky that I get to lose myself in the crowds of the city. In the chaos that surrounds me. Oh how beautiful that chaos is! It is just like the movies. I now get to experience life on my own. I get to enjoy my own company for an entire evening without the thought of being a burden to the world. I’ve begun to accept the fact that I am here. I am alive and I have a right to take up space. I have the right to be seen and to enjoy the life that I was given. It may not have been my choice to be alive, but I might as well take it now. And the more I take care of myself, of my mental health, of my spirituality and of my body. The more I begin to enjoy being alive.
Thank you for reading this, if you’ve made it so far. Even I’m not sure what this is. I had an urge to write as I was leaving the cinema the other day. So I leaned on a wall and pretended I was texting as I filled up a note page on my phone. And decided to post it because, why not? I just felt the need to share this. To share with you all that life does get easier and everything passes. No matter how hard things get, you will still get moments of absolute splendour. I’m slowly working on accepting my life. It’s a process and I’ll keep you updated.
I feel like my writing is too choppy. Like I’m writing from one action to the next with nothing in between. I think it’s jumping around to much and isn’t really that smooth. It could just be a writer critiquing their own work too hard but I’m not sure. Any tips to avoid this or make it less choppy?
How to Write a Smooth, Rhythmic Narrative
A lot of people have trouble with their writing style, especially new writers who haven’t been practicing for long. The words come out choppy, the sentences jolt and stutter, and the words never seem to fit quite right.
Usually, this goes away with practice. It’s like how artists have a style that they settle into when they’ve experimented for long enough.
This post is to help anyone who may be having trouble with their writing style or perhaps don’t even have a writing style at all!
1. Vary the Number of Words and Syllables in Your Sentences
This is probably very surprising; technical things like this aren’t usually a part of writing, but there’s proof that it works!
I could go rambling on and on about this for several paragraphs, but I don’t think I could explain it better than Gary Provost.
Provost was an American author who published a ton of stuff on how to write (You should really check them out if you like my blog!), and his works had a huge impact on my writing style and the way I look at narrative.
Here’s an excerpt from one of his books:
See how simply changing the amount of words can make the sentences so much richer and more exciting to read?
It seems daunting the way that Provost explains it, but I’ll make it easier by telling you to think of it like this:
You know that voice in your head that reads everything aloud? You know how you can hear the words echoing in your brain like someone is reading them for you, even though you’re not actually hearing anything?
When you write very uniform sentences, it makes that voice in the reader’s head sound like it’s a boring teacher that’s droning on about some sort of abstract concept, but when you change it up, it becomes more like a conversation than a lecture.
Basically, write like it’s a conversation. People don’t talk like robots; write like how a person would talk. Imagine the rise and dip of their voice as they read the words aloud in your head.
If you’d like more examples, look back at all of the text I just wrote after the Provost excerpt. You’ll see that, even in a Tumblr post, I am using varying sentence structure to captivate my audience.
2. Placement Dependent Clauses and Independent Clauses
Even if you can’t grasp the concept of changing the number of words in your sentence, the way you place the clauses can change up the whole rhythm of your story and make the sentence structure more diverse and interesting.
If you don’t know what a dependent or independent clause is:
The order of these things within a complex sentence can give your story a diverse rhythm that the readers won’t find boring.
Here are some examples. Dependent Clauses are in bold.
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Although she was old, his grandmother wanted to do the laundry.
His grandmother wanted to do the laundry, although she was old.
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Despite not studying for the test, Jamie passed with flying colors.
Jamie passed with flying colors, despite not studying for the test.
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Even though Billy likes pie, Holly loves pudding.
Holly loves pudding, even though Billy likes pie.
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Since her mother died, Amy’s been upset.
Amy’s been upset, since her mother died.
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See how these sentences, despite having the same words just switched around, sound completely different?
There’s more complicated sentences to work with and better examples, but I’m having trouble coming up with them, so you’ll just have to learn on the fly.
These are all the things I can think of right now, so I hope this helped!
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.
