Hi everyone. I wanted to talk with you about something I’ve slowly been learning and getting better at, I think, as I write more books, and that’s sentence structure. When I go back and look at my very first books, all of which you can no longer find online.  Because . . . wow . . . they were terrible! One of the things that was especially horrible was the sentence structure I used. After writing non-stop for the last five years, I’ve learned a lot about sentence structure. It has helped my writing significantly, and I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned.

First off, we’re going to start with this example:

He went to the store. He bought a box of Cheerios. He opened the box. He ate the Cheerios.  He went home.

Pronoun – Verb – Noun

There are a lot of problems with these sentences; they all have the same structure. In addition, they have the two problems below:

Echoing: he

Echoing is when you use the same word multiple times, close together. All of us use the words the, a, as, is . . . these are construction words and are invisible to the reader, but things like he is not invisible and will distract the reader if it’s been used too frequently.

Alliteration: bought a box

Very similar sounding words, not good to put together. Choose a different word for one of them.

 

So how do we fix these sentences?

He went to the store. He purchased a box of Cheerios. He opened the box. He ate the Cheerios. He went home.

We combine sentences:

He went to the store and purchased a box of Cheerios. He opened the box. He ate the Cheerios. He went home.

Still repetitive sentences. Maybe combine the last to sentences?

He went to the store and purchased a box of Cheerios. He opened the box on the way home. He ate the cheerios.

Combine more:

He went to the store and purchased a box of Cheerios. He opened the box and ate them on the way home.

Still similar sentence structures.

Character – Verb – Do something

Here is a technique you can use to change the sentence structure and keep your store more interesting to read. Instead of doing Character – Verb – Do something, START WITH THE VERB!

He went to the store and purchased a box of Cheerios. Opening the box, he ate them on the way home.

It’s important to break up the sentence structure, to keep the process of reading more interesting for your reader. If your sentences seem repetitive, or you’re echoing (repeating words, like he), or their lengths are all the same, that will distract the reader, causing them to disconnect from your adventure. You want to keep the reader engaged and keep them feeling as if they are in the adventure with your character. As a result, you MUST eliminate anything that might distract them, and sentence structure is an easy thing to fix.

Let’s look at the next paragraph, below and find all the errors:

Roland looked at the bridge. There was a huge group of scavengers on it. All of them wanted to destroy Roland. Roland picked up his war-hammer. It was made of polished steel. It was heavy in his grip. Roland felt awkward with it in his hands. Roland stepped forward. He was scared. Sweat poured down his face. Roland brought the war-hammer down onto the wooden bridge. The wooden bridge broke.  The pieces fell into the ravine. The scavengers on the bridge fell with the wooden planks. The scavengers shouted in fear. The scavengers disappeared into the mist.

If I sent this paragraph to my editor, he’d probably shoot me, then bring me back to life, and make me rewrite it! There are a ton of problems here.

Echoing: Roland is repeated too many times. We need another name for him. If you watched my video on echoing and character names (link) you’d know I always pick characters names so I can call them multiple things. You probably don’t know it yet, because I haven’t finished this book yet, but Roland is a giant from the Granite clan. So I’m going to replace some of the Roland’s with Giant or He.

Echoing: bridge . . . that word is used too many times

Echoing: war-hammer, maybe we can eliminate one

Echoing: scavengers, need to think about how we can fix that.

Echoing: fell – we could use a better verb choice for one or both of these.

Sentence structure: Lots of short sentences, one after each other. This might be OK if it were a scene with very high tension and excitement. Short sentences in that kind of scene can amplify the tension and make the reader think it’s happening faster. But here, in this paragraph, it feels clunky and distracting . . . it needs to change.

Alliteration: bridge broke . . . All alliterations are not necessarily bad, but in this case, we could make a better choice for the word broke.

Sensory input: I’m going to throw this in here, even though it’s not really part of this lesson about sentences, but I’m going to mention it a lot! Sensory information draws your reader into your story and makes it feel as if your reader is actually in the adventure with the character. This is critical, and you should ALWAYS look for places to add sensory input. Like everything, even chocolate, too much can be a bad thing, so you could over do it and add too much sensory input. But with young writers, I find you can always add more with the five senses!

OK, let’s rewrite it, trying to eliminate the problems listed above. We’re going to combine sentences. We’re going to start with verbs to change things up. We’re going to look for different word choices, and we’re use sensory input to draw the reader into the paragraph.

Roland looked at the bridge. There was a huge group of scavengers on it. All of them wanted to destroy Roland. Roland picked up his war-hammer. It was made of polished steel. It was heavy in his grip. Roland felt awkward with it in his hands. Roland stepped forward. He was scared. Sweat poured down his face. Roland brought the war-hammer down onto the wooden bridge. The wooden bridge broke.  The pieces fell into the ravine. The scavengers on the bridge fell with the wooden planks. The scavengers shouted in fear. The scavengers disappeared into the mist.

Now becomes:

Roland glanced over his shoulder at the old, rickety bridge. A huge group of scavengers charged across the wooden structure, the stench of their unclean bodies proceeding their attack. It made the giant want to wretch.

Reaching down, Roland picked up his polished steel war-hammer, the heavy weapon uncomfortable in his small hands. He glared at the scavengers, trying to summon the last ounce of courage in his soul, but it seemed absent … he was terrified. The giant knew he couldn’t possibly fight that many. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead and managed to make it past his thick eyebrows, seeping into the corner of his eye, stinging. Reaching up, he wiped away the sweat, then hefted the metal weapon into the air with both hands. With all his strength, Roland brought the hammer down unto the bridge. The wood made a sickening crack as the massive weapon shattered the bridge, causing the planks to fall into the deep ravine. Scavengers screamed out in surprise and fear as the bridge beneath their feet plummeted down, the wooden structure, and the scavengers, disappearing from sight.

I feel like I used wooden structure too many times, and would need to think of another way to refer to the bridge, maybe give it a name, the Bridge of Krakus, maybe Krakus would be a famous giant? Doing that helps to eliminate the echoing of bridge or wooden structure.

Also, notice how I alternated between starting with a noun and starting with a verb. Also, in the first paragraph, I did something with sentence length. I had two long sentences and then a short sentence, It made the giant want to wretch. Sticking a short sentence after a couple of long sentences will draw attention to the short sentence. This has the effect of reinforcing the sensor input concerning the stench of the scavengers. I like to do this kind of thing in my writing. Sometimes, I’ll have a long sentence, long sentence, long sentence, then a short sentence: Gameknight was terrified. The long sentences are used to set up the short sentence, to amplify the fact that Gameknight was terrified.

I hope this is helpful. Look at your sentences and decide if you’re being repetitive with the structure and length, and if you are . . . change it. This takes practice, but if you don’t try it, then you’ll never figure it out.

Mark (Monkeypants_271)