In his book 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing, Gary Provost created this tour de force to demonstrate what happens when the writer experiments with sentences of different lengths.
This sentence has five words.
Here are five more words.
Five-word sentences are fine.
But several together become monotonous.
Listen to what is happening.
The writing is getting boring.
The sound of it drones.
It’s like a stuck record.
The ear demands some variety.
Now listen.
I vary the sentence length, and I create music.
Music.
The writing sings.
It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony.
I use short sentences.
And I use sentences of medium length.
And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals - sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
Writing Principles
- Begin sentences with subjects and verbs. Make meaning early. Place emphatic words in a sentence at the end.
- Build your work around a key question.
- The 2-3-1 tool of emphasis: the most emphatic words or images go at the end, the next most emphatic at the beginning, and the least emphative in the middle.
- The difference between a good adverb and a bad adverb? Compare “She smiled happily” and “She smiled sadly.” “Sadly” is good because it changes the meaning.
- The power of the written word is to make you hear, to make you feel, to make you see.
Paragraphing
The purpose of paragraphing is to give the reader a rest. Paragraphing is also a matter of the eye.
In the anti-math of writing, the number three is greater than four:
- Use one for power.
- Use two for comparison, contrast.
- Use three for completeness, wholeness, roundness.
- Use four or more to list, inventory, compile, and expand.
Dialogue
Human speech, captured as dialogue on the page, attracts the eyes of the reader and, if done well, advances the story.
Elmore Leonard: “Leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” But which part is that? “Thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.”
The Famous Five Ws and H
Who becomes Character. What becomes Action. Where becomes Setting. When becomes Chronology. Why becomes Cause or Motive. How becomes Process.