How can I make my writing sound more eloquent, and less "elementary school level"? When I use sites that "grade" what level your writing is, I never score above a fifth grade level. My writing doesn't flow well, and I can't construct "beautiful" sentences. I feel like my writing style is too straightforward: "He did this. Then he did that. Then the other character did this." I love my ideas, but when I try to write them, the tone of my writing doesn't sound mature enough, and it's disappointing.
You’re not alone anon, I think that’s a very common problem that a lot of writers encounter. I think a huge part of it is practicing and being bad at writing sentences and paragraphs that flow for a really long time until you slowly figure it out.
I used to have a problem with extremely choppy writing, and I think I’ve grown out of that (more or less, I’m by no means great or perfect yet), so here are some things that helped me out!
First things first, when you say that you use sites that ‘grade’ what level your writing is, I think you’re referring to a readability level.
Readability level doesn’t mean that your writing is at a fifth grade level and that a sixth grader can writer better than you; it means that a fifth grader can understand your writing with ease. There’s a lot of factors that go into this like sentence structure, complexity of words, how legible the writing is, etc.
The point is: An elementary-level readability score does not mean that you are bad at writing, or that your writing ability is below what it should be for your age. It’s to help identify the accessibility of writing to certain age groups. It’s a really great resource for teachers especially, or if you’re aiming to write for a younger audience.
Don’t worry about your readability level!
I know it’s super tempting to grade yourself, but I really don’t think it’s something you need to worry about. I think (based on limited information, don’t take my word as gospel, you know yourself more than I do) you should be more focused on practicing getting your words out on a page and figuring out how to fit them together — finding out what your writing’s readability level is, is not something that is going to help you.
How to make your writing flow better
Vary your sentence length
So based on what you told me in your ask, it sounds like this is what your writing might look like right now.
John saw Emily. He walked up to her. He looked at her nervously. “I have something to tell you,” he said.
Emily looked at him. “What’s up?” She asked. She sounded worried.
John didn’t know what to say. He shrugged. Then he turned around. “Never mind,” he said.
So let’s take a look at the sentence structure. All of those sentences are extremely simple, straightforward, and short. They also have a similar structure where ‘Person did action’. They also all start with the words John, Emily, he, or she.
Here’s what this same passage would look like with varied sentence structure.
John saw Emily, and walked up to her. Looking at her nervously, he said “I have something to tell you.”
“What’s up?” She asked, sounding worried.
John didn’t know what to say. He shrugged. “Never mind,” he said as he turned around.
I didn’t really add or take away too many things. For the most part, I just switched some words around, made some sentences longer, combined some things, and can you see how much better that flows? The sentences have different amounts of words, some are long, some are short and this variability really helps with the flow of writing.
Here’s another famous example of this.
The variance of sentence length is the first thing I look at when I feel like my writing is too choppy. Are there too many similar length sentences put together? How can I change that up? Just by changing up the amount of words in a sentence, the difference is night and day.
If you have a very uniform, consistent number of words in every sentence, it sounds really monotonous, like a boring textbook or a teacher lecturing you on a subject you’re not interested in. By changing the number of words in a sentence, it makes it sound more interesting. It’s like a conversation. It’s easier to read.
Changing your sentence structure
The way your writing reads can completely change just by adjusting your sentence structure. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about grammar to tell you the specifics like clauses and whatnot, (I think these have something to do with dependent and independent clauses) but I can give you some examples of how to do this!
Despite having a huge fear of heights, Amanda climbed up the tower.Amanda climbed up the tower, despite having a huge fear of heights
Max agreed to get chocolate cake because Jane wanted it, even though he wanted red velvet cake.Even though he wanted red velvet cake, Max agreed to get chocolate cake because Jane wanted it.
I just flipped the two parts of the sentences around, and they sound completely different even though they say the same thing. Messing with how your sentences are formed, switching around parts can help vary your sentence structure to help with the flow.
Playing with Show and Tell
I don’t know if this applies to other people or you, but for me personally, I always find that when I do too much telling and not enough showing in my writing, it’s always choppy. It might just be a me thing, I don’t know. But I can fix the flow of my writing if I do more showing, and maybe this would be helpful to you too.
Let’s look at this example again.
John saw Emily. He walked up to her. He looked at her nervously. “I have something to tell you,” he said.
Emily looked at him. “What’s up?” She asked. She sounded worried.
John didn’t know what to say. He shrugged. Then he turned around. “Never mind,” he said.
There’s very little description here, it’s all tell and no show. I’m telling you what John is doing, but I’m not describing anything. If I were to add more description to this…
John saw Emily out of the corner of his eye. His heart was pounding as he walked up to her. “I have something to tell you,” he said hoarsely.
“What’s up?” Emily asked. Her eyebrows furrowed together in concern.
Words failed John as the lump in his throat made itself known. Instead of speaking, he shrugged as he spun around on his heel. “Never mind.”
I personally find that adding more description helps with how choppy a paragraph might seem because it gives me more words to work with. Now that I have more words and more description, if I find that it’s still a bit too choppy I have more leeway to make changes without having to add more words.
My policy in writing first drafts is this: It’s always better to have too much rather than too little. It’s easier to cut things out rather than figuring out what to add.
Alternatively, maybe you’re showing too much and describing too many things that you don’t need to. Maybe you need to add some shorter ‘tell’-esque sentences to help bring variety to your writing.
Play around with what you’re writing, not just how! If you find that all you’re describing are actions, maybe describe some emotions. Maybe instead of just description of the scenery, you can add some things about what your characters are thinking/noticing.
I think my advice post on static vs dynamic description might be helpful to you in terms of making descriptions flow more! By mixing up static and dynamic descriptions, you can create more of that varied sentence structures and length that make your writing flow more naturally and make it easier to read.
That’s all of the advice I have for now. Thanks for asking! Good luck on your writing and don’t give up! Even if your writing isn’t where you want it right now, you’re constantly improving and maybe this time next year you’ll have a different opinion of your writing!
