Vary Sentence Length When You Write

 

I've been taking a 5 day class on writing creative nonfiction that centers on writing 100 word stories. The premise intrigued me, so  I signed up. There is a video of 30-35 minutes each day and an assignment for the story. 

Yesterday, one of the points brought out was about varying the length of your sentences. I've mentioned this in a number of my blog posts. If all your sentences are very long, or if all are very short, it can make for boring reading. As we scan the paragraphs, we respond better when there is a variety of sentence lengths.

It's such a small thing in the overall picture of writing, but it's those little bits and pieces that create a good read. You have room to grow as a writer with them.

Short sentences add a punch and bring emphasis. They make you sit up and listen. Long ones can add rhthym. Using both kinds of sentences can add interest to your topic. 

If a writer uses one long sentence after another, the reader can get a bit bogged down. It feels like the prose is just going on and on and ... Use a plethora of short, choppy sentences, and the reader might feel a bit jerked around. What? Is that what you're thinking? These responses are mostly in our subconscious as we read, but beleive me, they do register with readers. 

As an experiment, go to your files and select a story or personal essay. Look at the first two paragraphs. Count the words in each sentence. Make a line chart like this:  6/12/18/2/6/9/10  You'll quickly see if you're heavy on one kind of sentence over another. 

Did you know that the maximum number of words recommended in a sentence is 25? A 25 word sentence is quite long, and if you add even more, your reader is going to be crossing their eyes if you use too many like that. What if you tend to write very lengthy sentences? What can you do to fix the problem? Look for unnecessary words that you can cut--ones like very, really, just. If the sentence is a compound one, with a conjunction joining the two parts (like and, but, or) eliminate the conjunction and make that mile long sentence into two shorter ones. Overly long sentences often try to make more than one point. Keep one thought in one sentence.

What if you wrote a paragraph with nothing but short choppy sentences? That could quickly become a bit irritating, too. That old cliche--Variety is the spice of life--can work with sentence length, too. You want to keep your prose from becoming monotonous. 

There are ever so many small things a writer must heed to turn out a fine piece of writing. Sentence length is only one.