Sentence Structure II

This is the second chapter about sentence structure. Probably the most important set of tips and advice about prose you will ever encounter. So let’s not waste more time on an introduction and dive right into another crucial tip.

Remove sensing verbs

If “vary your sentence length” was the mother of all writing advice, then this is surely the eldest daughter. (Not sure how well that metaphor works, but we’re going with it.)

Whenever you tell a story, you’re telling it through the eyes of the narrator. Unless you have an omniscient narrator—who is objective and stands outside the narrative—this point of view will come from a main character within the story.

This means two things.

• How they tell the story might not be entirely true. This reveals their character even more. Use that!
• They can only tell things that they experience. This means any sensing verb (such as “see” or “hear”) is a waste of space.

You’re telling the story! The only reason you can mention the birds, is because you see them! There’s no reason for characters to add sensing verbs.

The only reason you mention rustling leaves, is because you hear them! No need to explain how hearing works with every sentence.

The idea remains the same with all these examples.

Remove sensing verbs to make sentences shorter and simpler. Also do it to increase immersion and really get into the skin of the character narrating the story.

Keep related words together

Certain sayings, verbs or clauses consist of multiple words. As your head is formulating a sentence, it might be tempted to push these words apart.

This is not recommended. Keep related parts of the sentence together. Proximity is a great tool to help the reader understand what parts of the text relate to each other. (Similarly, move things further apart to make sure the reader knows they’re unrelated.)

When does this mistake generally happen?

• Infinitive: a construction of “to + verb”, where the two elements are separated.
• Split verb: a construction where the verb requires a preposition.
• Object: if the verb is done to someone, we call them the object. Put them as close to subject + verb as you can.
• Pronouns + Antecedents: a pronoun references something from earlier. Put the thing it references as close before it as possible. This also prevents confusion about what the pronoun references.

The first version of the sentence can be a very colorful way for a character to speak. But for clarity, it’s awful.

Another reason why you don’t want to end sentences with prepositions. (As explained in the previous chapter.)

The first version might seem fun (again). But do this for a whole book, and it just becomes a mess that’s near impossible to sift through. Prefer clarity and branching to the right.

Control your lists

A good way to make your prose more efficient is to present information as a list (within one sentence). It prevents having to repeat subject or verb, or use pronouns to refer to previous sentences.

The meaning of a sentence, however, changes based on how many elements you mention.

One

Giving only one piece of information is obviously the most powerful and focused. That one statement surely reaches the reader.

Two

Giving two pieces of information automatically creates a comparison or contrast. The reader will automatically equate them or compare them.

Three

Giving three pieces of information feels the most complete and full. Three is a crowd. There’s a reason many speeches talk in triplets. It feels satisfying to us.

Similarly, a common narrative structure is to have an event happen three times in your plot. First time, the hero fails, but learns nothing. Second time, they fail, but finally change their ways. Third time, they succeed.

Four

If your sentence has four pieces of information … you want to rethink it. Any time I encounter such a sentence in a book—one that lists off a bunch of related things—my eyes glaze over and none of it sticks.

If you do go for this, consider some punctuation to help yourself out. Turn the list into something more structured.

Phrases that grow on verbs

People tend to hide their true statement in a sea of words. Especially people who are reserved or afraid to commit to something. In prose, this merely doubles the word count, while removing clarity.

This is best exemplified through phrases that “grow on verbs”.

Trying = Doing

“Trying” to do something … just means doing something. When you use “try”, you usually signal that they might fail. More efficient prose is to simply do something, then show that it failed the next sentence.

Sometimes, there’s a verb that means “trying to do X”. One verb is better than two verbs (and shorter), so use it.

Other examples

Other examples are constructions with seems to, tends to, should have to, might want to, …

The idea is simply to check if your sentence has multiple verbs, some of which don’t really mean anything. In most cases, you can just rewrite to leave them out, and the prose becomes stronger.

Nouns containing Verbs

Most languages have a way to turn verbs into nouns. To judge has the noun judgment. To observe has the noun observation.

A sentence becomes shorter and simpler if you use the verb instead of the noun, if possible.

Extra spice

In my view, crystal clear and simple prose is the starting point. That’s the base level you want to set.

Because if you do, you are free to tweak the prose throughout your novel to be slightly more fancy or advanced. You know that 95% of it is super clear and simple. This gives you the freedom to mess this up here and there.

Try a different sentence structure. Try some new words or phrasings. See if you can add more rhythm or flow to a text by describing things in a different way that might be “less efficient”.

A unique writing style is one of the benefits authors can have. It’s something unique to books, something that can make your prose stand out. So even though these tips are great guidelines for at least 80% of your prose, you should experiment with adding your own flair and breaking these rules.

How would you add this extra spice?

• Using Tropes (next chapter) or figurative language. Things such as metaphors, puns, anticlimax, etcetera.
• Changing your overall perspective. Any event, any part of your world, can be narrated in infinitely many ways. As a writer, you choose your focus and your angle into the story. Picking a unique angle (say, narrating a story from the perspective of a building) automatically leads to a unique writing style.
• Go for the thing that is interesting. If it’s interesting to you, it will be interesting to others who like your style or way of storytelling. So lean into that.
• Go for the thing that is odd. A million writers have written about the night being dark and the wind feeling like a hurricane bla bla. Find the odd description. Find what’s extraordinary about this event, this character, this paragraph you’re writing. Lean into that with utmost sincerity. Write about the night feeling lighter than the day or an actual hurricane your main character barely feels.

Conclusion

That concludes the two chapters on sentence structure. Applying these techniques will surely save you hundreds of thousands of words. For free! And the prose only becomes clearer and nicer to read.

In the end, the lesson I’ve learned about all art is this: Clarity trumps all.

If your audience has no clue what they’re even reading, your story could be amazing and they’d never know. If your audience doesn’t understand how cool your first chapter is, they’ll put the book away and never move past it.

When in doubt, read back what you wrote and ask yourself what the point of this paragraph is. If the text itself doesn’t clearly prove the reason for its existence, you either have muddy prose, or prose that can be cut from the story entirely.