amERICan psycho's picture
amERICan psycho from Minneapolis, MN is reading My Work is not yet Done, by Thomas Ligotti January 26, 2013 - 5:01pm

Just wondering if anyone has any advice, articles or whatever on keeping sentence structure interesting. It feels like I recycle the same few varients over and over again. I know it's not a terribly interesting discussion, but thanks!

JEFFREY GRANT BARR's picture
JEFFREY GRANT BARR from Central OR is reading Nothing but fucking Shakespeare, for the rest of my life January 26, 2013 - 5:22pm

Varying sentence structures: I'm in favor of it. I know fuck all about how to do it though. My advice is to use as many colons and semicolons as possible; they make you look cool, especially to the comma-tards.

Charles's picture
Charles from Portland is reading Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones January 26, 2013 - 5:39pm

 

The whole idea is that all your sentences shouldn't be long as fuck, and all of them shouldn't be... well, sentence fragments. SOME people will claim there is some structural changes you could do (Palahniuk has some cool thoughts on the 'buried thesis sentence') but it's mainly to make sure you aren't talking down to the reader, or talking like a total fucking idiot the whole time

jyh's picture
jyh from VA is reading whatever he feels like January 26, 2013 - 6:18pm

Same few variants? How many are there?

  1. Single-word / fragmentary
  2. Regular
  3. Run-on / cumulative syntax
Bradley Sands's picture
Bradley Sands from Boston is reading Greil Marcus's The History of Rock 'N' Roll in Ten Songs January 26, 2013 - 8:08pm

Slow down. Pay more attention to your sentence structure and change it up. Make sure most of your sentences don't start with the same word. I don't know what else to tell you since the solution to this is self-explanatory. Maybe read more.

Michael.Eric.Snyder's picture
Michael.Eric.Snyder January 26, 2013 - 10:28pm

I had been wanting to read your latest story, and your discussion here prompted me to do just that. I have to say, I didn't actually *think* about sentence structure at all while reading. And I think that's a very good thing. That tells me that you're probably varying it enough. Right?

This is also a subject that interests me -- because I often ask myself the question -- you can read a great writer, like Munro (who's just been on my mind lately), who completely stays out of the way of her narrative. You never know she's there.

Then there are the writers who seem to revel in narrative (and linguisic) gymnastics. Kind of in-your-face, right?

Neither of them is "right" or "wrong," but I wonder if they make conscious decisions to approach the narrative in the way they do, or if they just stuck with what came naturally to begin with?

This is personally interesting to me because when I let the reigns loose I tend toward longer sentences. Not very successfully, most of the time. My hope is that if I continue trying to write fiction, those setences improve! If someone said to me some day that I wrote like an accessible Pynchon (oxymoron alert!), then well I probably wouldn't be able to answer because immediately I would have died and gone to Heaven, having achieved all there is to achieve on the mortal plane.

Carly Berg's picture
Carly Berg from USA is reading Story Prompts That Work by Carly Berg is now available at Amazon January 27, 2013 - 6:54pm

Just wondering if anyone has any advice, articles or whatever on keeping sentence structure interesting. It feels like I recycle the same few varients over and over again. I know it's not a terribly interesting discussion, but thanks!

My opinion: First, I love this thing:

http://www.autocrit.com/wizardformpage.php

Among other neat-o checks on  your writing, it provides a count, in order, of how many words are in each sentence. You can see at a glance if you have a bunch of long,  unwieldy sentences or a string of them that are all about the same length. You can buy a subscription or use it free if you put in a smaller number of words at once (300, maybe, not sure).

- Personally, from noticing sentences that read clunky and unwieldy to me (in critiquing and editing a literary journal) I've found that they tend to clunkify at about 20 words. If you have a bunch of semi-colons, commas, parentheses, ellipses, etcetera within, chances are the sentence is way longer, harder to follow, and annoying than it needs to be. It is simple to chop it in half or chop out a lesser phrase or two.

- Sentences that are all about the same length, imo, give writing a monotonous tone. The writing just seems kinda amateurish or meh even though the reader can't pinpoint why. It seems to me they are most often longish rather than shortish. Drop in a short one now and then.

- Sentence length communicates in another way. Long, lazy sentences, the unsuspecting MC relaxes. Short, rapid-fire staccato ones- he's on the run, maybe, or should be.

- Comma and period are the workhorses of prose, imo. Most often, a bunch of semi-colons, ellipses, colons, parentheses gives the story an amateurish feel. I'm not sure exactly why but in my experience, it just does. Those marks call more attention to themselves somehow, are less invisible than comma and period, and take the reader out of the story a tiny bit each time. Also, as mentioned above, they are a sign of long, convoluted, hard-to-follow sentences for no good reason.

- Try not to have sentences of the same "type" side by side, or at least be aware and don't do it too often. This includes the sentence with lots of commas. The sentence with one or more "ands" in it. The sentence that begins with the same word, whether "I," "it," "he," "there." The long sentence. The sentence that begins with a prepositional phrase.  The sentence with two or three modifiers in it. Etc. I think it's another thing that just gives a story that overall amateurish feeling without the reader knowing exactly why.

- My best tip- If at all possible, find someone who will read every single thing you write to you out loud while you listen, give their input, and stop and make corrections with you as you go. There is just no substitute for it. The ear picks up what the eye misses. Another person picks up what we miss. We fill in a lot with what is in our minds and we don't realize it. Critiques on a board are great, but imo, that interactive, out loud thing is even better.

That's all I can think of right now. Hope it helps. :)

Arwen Undomiel's picture
Arwen Undomiel from Sydney, Australia January 27, 2013 - 12:21am

I'd say read more books with varying sentence structures and try to figure how those writers do it. But then, I'm not an expert. That's just what I've done, and it's helped me.

Michael.Eric.Snyder's picture
Michael.Eric.Snyder January 27, 2013 - 12:50am

Carly, thanks for the autocrit link! Very cool.

R.Moon's picture
R.Moon from The City of Champions is reading The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion; Story Structure Architect by Victoria Lynn Schimdt PH.D; Creating Characters by the editors of Writer's Digest January 27, 2013 - 3:38am

Rhythm. If you have no sense of rhythm, learn to play the drums or listen to a lot of hip-hop. Buy a digital recorder and record yourself reading your work. Much like poetry, there's a cadence to fiction, though not as pronounced. Too many short, choppy sentences and the rhythm is like a machine gun. Too many long, drawn out sentences and the rhythm feels over compensated. Punctuation can be your friend. A well placed pause works like a metered pause in music. As for word choice, Bradley pretty much summed that up.

Liana's picture
Liana from Romania and Texas is reading Naked Lunch January 27, 2013 - 1:05pm

@Moon, that's what I love about Blood Meridian! It has rhythm - it's like reading a long poem or something (or even like a song). First book where I actually thought the author worked on that rhythm on purpose. 

R.Moon's picture
R.Moon from The City of Champions is reading The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion; Story Structure Architect by Victoria Lynn Schimdt PH.D; Creating Characters by the editors of Writer's Digest January 27, 2013 - 2:10pm

I've yet to read it, but I will check it out. I always have a rhythm in my head. Probably because I'm a drummer. 

Covewriter's picture
Covewriter from Nashville, Tennessee is reading & Sons January 27, 2013 - 5:23pm

I have no idea if this is the right thing to do,  but i find myself doing short quick sentences when I want to relay information and move on quickly, and longer sentences when I want the reader to slow down and stay a bit longer.

Renfield's picture
Renfield from Hell is reading 20th Century Ghosts January 27, 2013 - 5:37pm

I'm not sure what kind of books people are reading to where they can't even deal with long sentences. Varying the length of sentences is cool, depending on the effect you're going for. Just know what you want to do with all of them.

I'd say a) read through a book on grammar every once in a while. Just because you learned the shit down pat in high school doesn't mean it isn't useful to review it. Actually knowing how to correctly wield those tricky sentence structures is also helpful if you want to change up your narrative voice but need some ideas as to how. b) Read a bunch of literary books. The kind written by college professors, the kind that win awards and prizes you've never heard of before. Read the Oprah book club. Read an array of vastly different voices. Read a Cormac McCarthy book right before reading a Stephen King book. The more you read various structures of sentences and the more you understand how to execute them, the more confidence you'll have about taking the kinda sentences you like and developing a style out of them. Even the most utilitarian writers don't change up sentences to appease the readers, they write the most effective sentences. This goes for critiquing too; changing the structure of a sentence has to fit with the writer's style, not the reader's preference.

Make sure all the important parts of a sentence are in the right place, make sure the verbs and modifiers modify the correct word and the meaning can't be easily confused. Know how to work a participial phrase. Know how to write multi-clause sentences without turning them into run-on sentences. Understand your narrator's voice enough to trust where you put run-ons and fragments and other jacked up structures. Know when a full stop is going to achieve what you want, or if a parenthetical clause is what you want. Know how to make an em-dash when you want to use an em-dash, or if you'd rather have commas there. Know if you want to put a conjunction or a comma or a comma then a conjunction. Make sure, if you do that "burying the I" sentence structure, that you're not putting the emphasis on the wrong part of the action.

Gordon Highland's picture
Gordon Highland from Kansas City is reading Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore January 28, 2013 - 1:32pm

The most effective method is to change up your subject/verb/object order. I'm also a big fan of dash vs. comma usage, per Ren's post above, to really impose your will on the reader's rhythm and emphases.

Jack Campbell Jr.'s picture
Jack Campbell Jr. from Lawrence, KS is reading American Rust by Phillipp Meyer January 28, 2013 - 3:23pm

John Gardner talks about rythym in The Art of Fiction. He is a big proponent of shaking up your sentence lengths and the rythym of your sentences. It's sort of like a jazz solo.

Kristin Harding's picture
Kristin Harding from Portland, OR is reading The Turn of the Screw February 2, 2013 - 11:34am

I never had much formal training in grammar, so I've always struggled with this.  There's How to Write a Sentence, by Stanley Fish.  More useful rhetorically, but it did help me start to see sentences. 

Also, one thing that helps me is to read something by someone else just before i sit down to write.  I find that I do a little mimicry by nature, and if I pay attention to it I can pick up some tricks.  Joan Didion's a favorite, but I've also tried Fitzgerald, James, Salinger, Kazuo Ishiguro...

Renfield's picture
Renfield from Hell is reading 20th Century Ghosts February 2, 2013 - 1:21pm

I just started on Roy Peter Clark's THE GLAMOUR OF GRAMMAR. Basically it's a grammar guide specifically designed for fiction writers. Very much pertinent to this conversation.

Dane Zeller's picture
Dane Zeller from Kansas City, Missouri, USA February 4, 2013 - 7:44pm

I am aware of the need for the variation in sentence length, but I think we should concentrate more on the purposes of the punctuation tools. For example, the use of the comma allows for more complicated and richer expressions. The quick period gives a finality to a statement, and a greater speed to the story. I'm still trying to figure this out, but your story is going to need these characteristics. When the need arises, use these marks. Likely, the rhythm will follow.

Carly Berg's picture
Carly Berg from USA is reading Story Prompts That Work by Carly Berg is now available at Amazon February 4, 2013 - 8:37pm

I "hear" sentences a lot better than I can see them, so I usually have my husband read my stories to me and then it stands out to the ear as good or not.

To clarify, in my statement about long, unwieldy sentences earlier, of course I did not mean that I thought people "could not read" any long sentences. But it is not the reader's job to decipher cluttered, unwieldy messes that come about from a lack of writer awareness.

 

ReneeAPickup's picture
Class Facilitator
ReneeAPickup from Southern California is reading Wanderers by Chuck Wendig December 29, 2013 - 12:23pm

I like everything I'm reading here, but what really busted me out of my repetitive sentence structure was having a really good critique partner who showed me exactly WHAT I was doing and gave a couple of examples of how I could change it. Different writing "crutches" will end up influencing your sentence structure, too.

For example, one may write something like this:

He did this. He did that. He went here.

But if you combine two, you have to sort out how to make the sentence flow and you get a sentence that doesn't read "He did this and that" (though you could, but that would defeat the purpose to a point, haha) but something like: While he was doing this, another thing happened, and so he did that.

Writing generic examples is hard... but hopefully that made sense. My overall point is to find another writer who is willing to spend some time learning your strengths and weaknesses.

 

L.W. Flouisa's picture
L.W. Flouisa from Tennessee is reading More Murakami December 29, 2013 - 2:06pm

My own tip. Read it out loud to yourself, first forwards. Then back wards. Beyond simply having varied sentence structure, it's most important (in my opinion) for sentences to flow naturally off the tongue. If you can read it quickly, then your read it quickly. And of course, if you stumble when you speak you might want to consider taking another look at it.

Alan H Jordan's picture
Alan H Jordan from Reno, Nevada is reading Devotion by Dani Shaprio nd Now I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings December 29, 2013 - 7:45pm

                                                                          Variety

Sliding down a hill

Is different from placing each foot in front of the other, pushing ski poles into the ice, and hoping that if you keep it up long enough you'll reach the top.

Flop onto that sled! Give it a push. Keep your eyes open.

Oh no! Tree alter at 11:00.

Thowing my weight.  Again.

Whew.

Almost had to roll off.

One more time?

Yes.

What was it that Bald Eagle told me? Ahh, yes: "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."

What was it that Alan Jordan said in Short Stuff for the Spirit?

I remember:

Crunch, crunch, crunch, chrunch

Crunch, crunch, crunch, chrunch

I do go.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, chrunch

Crunch, crunch, crunch, chrunch

Through the snow.

Alan H Jordan's picture
Alan H Jordan from Reno, Nevada is reading Devotion by Dani Shaprio nd Now I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings December 29, 2013 - 7:49pm

Here's a hint on figuring out if you have rhythm in your writing.

If you have a Kindle Fire HD, try sending your work as a personal document.  Then, have the device read it to you through text to speech.  They have a very sophisticated algorithm, and if you write well enough you'll actually be able to hear differences between the voices of the characters you're writing.

Don't believe this?  Try downloading the trial versions of 1Q84 and The Lincoln Lawyer and listening to the text-to-speech performances.  (Not professional narration.)

Thuggish's picture
Thuggish from Vegas is reading Day of the Jackal January 2, 2014 - 11:23am

Wow, Carly nailed it and then some, very helpdul.

Like Gordon, I am also the fan of the dash- when appropriate.  

To add to Carly's second to last tip, I don't like reused words (except words like "the" of course) unless absolutely necessary.  If you say something that stands out enough like "the monitor," once is fine.  But multiple sentences with "the monitor" "the monitor" "the monitor" in each one gets redundant.  Same thing with names- pronouns can be confusing, so you have to watch it, but don't repeat the same person's name over and over unless necessary.  Talk about repetitive.  

Everyone else also saying good things- this is a great thread.

 

L.W. Flouisa's picture
L.W. Flouisa from Tennessee is reading More Murakami January 16, 2014 - 12:30pm

Now to refer back to sentence structure. I usually use cinquains, etherees, epitaphs, haiku, and tanka to adjust how I used the words. I may have to change that though, some might find it a bit aggrivating I guess.

Linda's picture
Linda from Sweden is reading Fearful Symmetries January 16, 2014 - 1:40pm

I recently discovered the "convert text to audio" function in Word. It lets you pick a robot voice to read your text, and you can play the file in iTunes or whatever. I like doing this because the robot is a sucker for punctuation, and it will repeat my words back to me in a most objective fashion, whereas if I read it aloud I will invariably be influenced by having written, rewritten and read it a hundred times already. It may not be as good as having a real person read it to you, but it's an alternative. Fair warning though, it does not handle dialogue very well.

Gordon Highland's picture
Gordon Highland from Kansas City is reading Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore January 16, 2014 - 1:56pm

Yeah, mine sounds absolutely nothing like Scarlett Johansson. More like Siri dude. Alex or whateverthehell his name is.

Linda's picture
Linda from Sweden is reading Fearful Symmetries January 16, 2014 - 2:47pm

@Gordon. I find the robot weirdly comforting, but suspect any story would be sexier if Scarlett read it. Does that mean she's your ideal 'voice'?

Gordon Highland's picture
Gordon Highland from Kansas City is reading Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore January 16, 2014 - 3:23pm

Haha. She's my ideal something, all right…. I've spent time thinking about ideal readers, and certainly character voices, but ideal reader's voice? Hmm, for the ladies it might be Jessica Lange. Dudes, I dunno, maybe Robert Downey, Jr.?

Thuggish's picture
Thuggish from Vegas is reading Day of the Jackal January 16, 2014 - 3:37pm

Ooo, ideal reader's voice, there's a new thread right there...

James Earl Jones, Patrick Stewart, come to mind, maybe Clooney if I didn't know it was him.

I'd say Morgan Freeman, but it's overdone.

Linda's picture
Linda from Sweden is reading Fearful Symmetries January 19, 2014 - 4:15am

@Gordon,I just saw Her and understand where the Scarlett thing is coming from. Damn good film, too.

@thuggish, Freeman might be ok for a short, but imagine the time it would take him to read a novel.

I can't really think of an ideal lady right now, but of the gents I'd say Lee Pace or Ian McShane, depending on the tone of the story.

 

ErroneousKnight's picture
ErroneousKnight from Northern California is reading Kingkiller Chronicles, Codex Alera January 29, 2014 - 12:49pm

I've got some unorthodox advice, but maybe it'll help you.  This advice is based on the premise that you're overthinking it.  Sentence structure isn't about finding a variation that feels natural even though it's secretly a pattern.  It's about finding a genuinely natural cadence.  The best way to achieve this natural cadence is to write the way you would deliver the material out loud.  As readers, we gloss over the fact that the narrator of any story is still a person telling that story.  We may not know who the narrator is, or really know anything about him/her directly, but the narrator is still a distinct voice.  Usually that's your voice, unless you've intentionally crafted a narrator character.  If you want your sentences to feel natural, give some thought to who the narrator is, and write like that person (probably you) would talk.  Most people read for pleasure by orating the text in their heads, so it works out better if you don't complicate the process with sentence rules or patterned structures.

TKnite's picture
TKnite from the US is reading Poison Dance by Livia Blackburne January 29, 2014 - 2:58pm

I usually write in first person, and my trick for sentence structure variation is to follow my protagonist's thoughts and then "translate" them into more organized narration. I avoid the steam of consciousness style -- because I find it hard to read -- and go for something simpler and easier to understand, but at the same time, I retain the variation present in a person's thoughts. So I try to capture the uninentional variety involved in a person's thoughts and combine it with intentional narrative simplicity in order to get something that sounds "natural" but isn't "too natural."

(Not that I'm saying stream of consciousness can't be done well. It can. It's just not my favorite thing in the world.)

If you're going for a third person narrator, you can do the same thing, but instead of following your protagonist's thoughts, consider the thoughts and motivations and feelings and what not of the person telling the story (whether it's you or someone else) and try to capture those. It all boils down to getting inside the head of the person behind the story -- the variation should naturally follow. It shouldn't be something that you have to deliberately engineer, sentence by sentence. That's way too much work, and if you do it that way, it'll probably read like it's overworked.