Today I was reminded how important it is to vary the rhythm of sentences and even more importantly the sentence openings. I’ve been working on a book of short stories and there are ten authors contributing. It’s been a wild project and a whole lot of fun. Happily the authors are a pretty sane bunch of people and fantastic writers to start with, but as any good writer knows an editor helps you make it shine.
I was doing a second round of edits on one of the shorts and I ran across the rhythm problem. It’s an easy trap to fall into. You’re so busy trying to get the concept across that you do lots of short bursts. Each sentence ends up starting with “the” or “she” or something similar. After too many of those in a row it can get tiring to read, the cadence is stilted and rough.
Because I like to help authors improve their own work instead of pointing out every little problem I went to one of my absolute favorite resources. Purdue OWL. Within seconds I found a great reference sheet of very easy to understand rules and suggestions and I’d like to turn you over to the masters there for Strategies in Variation. Enjoy!
