Writing 1102: Sentence Structure

Happy Wednesday, writer friends, and a belated Happy New Year, too! Marching right along with our 1000 level seminar posts, today we’re going to talk about sentence structure.

The most entertaining books aren’t just the ones that tell interesting stories – but ones that tell those stories well, using language that is easy to understand, and which evokes emotion. Diction (word choice) plays a big role, but before you can dazzle with words, you have to arrange them in a way that makes reading your story a seamless, unconscious experience. Parts of this post are going to sound incredibly obvious, but as a reader, clumsy or repetitive sentence structure is the one thing guaranteed to turn me off of a book; it’s also something I don’t see a lot of freelance editors addressing in the books they are hired to edit. So let’s take a closer look.

First, some basics:

Some Basics

We all know what a sentence is, but here’s a quick, simple breakdown of the types of sentences for a refresher:

Ø  Simple

Ø  Compound

Ø  Complex

Visually interesting writing contains a mixture of all three types of sentences. While complex and compound sentences are able to convey more information, simple sentences pack a solid punch and can serve to emphasize an author’s point, or convey something that doesn’t need a lot of dressing up.

Ex: Jamie walked home.

A compound sentence contains two complete thoughts bridged by a conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, yet, so).

Ex: He stopped at the corner bodega near his house and bought a bottle of orange juice.

Note in this example that stopped at the corner bodega and bought a bottle of orange juice can both serve as complete simple sentences with the addition of He at the front. Cover up and and everything before it with your hand, tack on He, and read the second half as a full sentence. This would not be true, however, of a complex sentence:

Complex Sentences

Each complex sentence contains both an independent clause and a dependent clause. The independent clause is the part of the sentence that can stand on its own, while the dependent clause is a fragment – it’s dependent on the independent clause in order to make sense.

Ex: It started to rain between the bodega and his apartment, cold, fat drops that slid down into his collar and made him shiver.

Independent clause: It started to rain between the bodega and his apartment

Dependent clause: cold, fat drops that slid down into his collar and made him shiver.

Phrases

Let’s be real: unless you’re an English teacher, or in English class, you probably aren’t ever going to have to talk about noun, verb, gerund, or participle phrases with anyone. And no, I’m not going to ask anyone to formally diagram a sentence. But I highlight it because I’ve seen an abundance of adverbial phrase usage in indie works. An adverbial phrase is a phrase, or group of words, that is used to modify the action of the sentence, just like a singular adverb modifies a singular verb.

Ex: Bypassing the stairs, he took the elevator.

In this sentence, Bypassing the stairs is the adverbial phrase. This is a perfectly fine phrase to use; but just like all perfectly fine sentence structures, it shouldn’t be repeated to death. Which brings us to:

Avoiding Redundancy

Have you ever been in a room with a piano, and someone who keeps tapping out the same two notes on said piano over and over? Over, and over, and over? It’s annoying, isn’t it? We love to listen to a song played on the piano, because it interests us. A song evokes emotion, nostalgia, and tickles our imaginations, precisely because a song is made up of a variety of notes, tempos, and flourishes. While those two notes start to drive us crazy and make us clench our teeth.

Repetitive sentence structure does the same thing to readers. Rather than focus on your characters or narrative, readers begin to drift away from the page, fixating on the structure rather than the story itself.

Here are some examples:

Simple Sentences: Jamie walked home. He stopped at the bodega. He bought orange juice. It started to rain. The rain was cold. He bypassed the stairs. He took the elevator.

Compound Sentences. Jamie stopped at the bodega on the way home and bought orange juice. It started to rain and the raindrops were cold. He bypassed the stairs and took the elevator.

Complex Sentences: Jamie walked home alone, arms wrapped tight around his middle. He stopped at the bodega on the way, buying orange juice with the last few bills in his wallet. It started to rain, fat, cold drops that slid down into his collar and made him shiver.

And Adverbial Phrase Overkill: Done at work, Jamie walked home. Stopping at the bodega, he bought orange juice with the last few bills in his wallet. Noticing that clouds veiled the moon, he started to walk faster. Wind blowing in his face, he shivered.

While none of these examples are technically incorrect, they aren’t pleasing to read. Prose writing should flow, shifting easily from one thought to the next, but the redundancy creates an unwanted sort of rhythm, one that shunts your attention right out of the story and into a headspace in which you’re fretting over the structure of the story.

Varying your sentence structure creates a more effective word flow:

Jamie walked home. He stopped at the bodega and bought orange juice. It started to rain, then, before he reached his building, fat, cold drops that slid down into his collar and made him shiver. His teeth were chattering by the time he pushed his way into the lobby, and he bypassed the stairs, going for the elevator instead.

Fragments

Every English textbook warns of the dangers of fragments, but every fiction writer uses fragments to make strong points and spice up his or her writing. I certainly use them. I think it’s important, as in all fields, to know and understand the rules so that you can break them bravely and purposefully. Just as with all parts of speech, don’t overuse fragments, but don’t shy away from them if they’re going to add something special to the language of your novel.

Making the Most of It

Every sentence of your work – whether simple, compound, complex, loaded with phrases, or simply fragments – should provide your readers with new information. They should deepen the readers’ understanding of the character, the plot, or the setting. And you know what? That’s a pretty tall order. Working on the basic mechanics of your writing isn’t exciting, but if a book were a house, it would be composed of bricks, and the sentences are those bricks. Before all the fancy window dressing, before the pretty rugs and knick-knacks, you have to have those bricks, and that solid foundation. Keep it varied, don’t be afraid to say it in simple terms, and you’ll be in great shape.

Homework

In a journal entry, write one-hundred words about absolutely anything – but only in simple sentences. Then rewrite the paragraph using as much of the same language as possible, but turning some of those sentences into compound or complex sentences. Rewrite it over as many times as you want – and actually rewrite, keeping the originals instead of erasing them. When you’re happy with your final revision, go back and read all the entries aloud, and hear the difference. How’s the flow? Too choppy? Too repetitive? Or just right.

Next week: Punctuation

(I’m going to talk about run-on sentences then, because those two topics are closely linked.)

*Jamie is from my Sons of Rome series, and graciously served as an example today.