Crafting Artful Sentences

Sentences are more than just getting from one end of a string of words to the other end.  They are conveyors of rhythm and pacing and emphasis.  In other words, they are an artful expression of language much like other art forms such as music and painting and dance.  The challenge for all writers is to craft sentences that convey their message in the most effective way. This requires both skill and art.  The art of sentence crafting grows with time and experience, but there are some basic techniques writers of any level can use to create more artful sentences.

• Maximize flow:  You want your prose to flow seamlessly so that readers can read it without effort.  This requires sentences that do not bump into each other awkwardly, but rather lead into each other clearly and logically.  Look for words that can connect the thoughts of one sentence to the thoughts of the sentence that follows it.  These are key words that connect the flow of thoughts so that readers made the logical connections you want them to make. Typically, key words reflect your main ideas or themes.  Also, look for leader words that help you lead readers into the next sentence.  They may be introductory words such as "therefore," "nevertheless," "consequently," etc.  They may be phrases such as "the next item," "as a result," "for the time being," etc.  Your goal is to make your progression of thought as easy for readers to follow as possible.

• Emphasize key ideas:  You want readers to notice and understand your key message.  Sentence crafting can help you bring emphasis to those key ideas.  Long sentences invite readers to enter into a longer engagement with your idea, to pause and consider it further. They also help smooth out your prose so it doesn't sound choppy and stilted.  Short sentences bring immediate attention to key ideas.  Several short sentences in a row can draw attention to an idea much like a pounding hammer or a staccato rhythm in music. A mixture of short and long sentences can add rhythm and pacing to your writing so that it rolls off the ear much like a well-composed piece of music.  Your goal is to vary sentence length for maximum effect and use it to help readers pay attention to your key ideas.

• Maintain reader interest:  You want readers to keep reading, to pay attention to your ideas, to engage with your thoughts, and to enjoy the process.  You can do this by writing sentences that are creative, unique and strong.  Stay away from passive language.  Use strong verbs.  Use unique adjectives, not trite cliches.  Say directly what you mean without unnecessary or filler words.  And most importantly, try to say things in the most interesting way you can. Look at your word choice.  Consider how you've put words together in a sentence.  Continually ask yourself if there is a better, more interesting way to say it.  Keep at this until you have sentences that excite you when you read them.  If they excite you, they will most likely excite readers.  Your goal is to craft sentences that readers want to read, that pique their interest, that make them sit up and pay attention.                                                                                             

Crafting artful sentences that create flow, emphasis and interest in your writing involves dissecting your prose to find the best way to fully impact readers.  It means being willing to question every word choice, word order, and sentence length.  It means writing and rewriting to fine-tune your sentences for maximum effectiveness.  Most of all, it means writing in such a way that your prose becomes a craft and a work of art that you will enjoy creating and your readers will immensely enjoy reading.

Editing With Purpose

Writers often face the dilemma of knowing when to stop editing their work. Too much editing can leave a work overwrought and awkward, whereas the right amount of editing can leave a work polished and effective.  Writers tend to be perfectionists and that tendency can often lead to over-editing. Finding the right touch is a matter of determining when you have reached the point of diminishing returns.  That means recognizing when your editing efforts are no longer contributing to the quality or effectiveness of your work and, in fact, may be making your writing worse. Conversely, writers also face the dilemma of knowing if they've done enough editing.  Too little editing can leave a work hollow and trite, lacking both the depth and style needed to be polished and effective. Writers tend to get involved with language to the point of being overly fond of turns of phrase or stylistic maneuvers, which can lead to a reluctance to edit them out if they aren't working in the piece. The challenge is being able to let go, even when it's language you really like   Here are some questions to ask yourself to determine when your editing is too little or too much:

• Why are you editing?  It's important to first understand your purpose for editing your work. Beyond the obvious point of improving your writing, what exactly are you trying to improve? Try to be as specific as you can.  For example, instead of editing because you feel your story or essay or poem is too boring, determine what is boring about it.  You might decide, for example, that your story has a plot that lacks suspense or dialogue that sounds stiff.  You might decide that your essay doesn't present its main points in a logical order or has a conclusion that doesn't sum things up.  You might decide that your poem has too many cliches or lacks smooth transitions between stanzas.  Now you have specific targets to work on that will make your editing efforts more focused.

• How has the editing improved your writing?  After an editing session, it is important to take a step back and understand how the editing has increased the effectiveness of your writing.  Be as specific as you can.  For example, do you now have a story that presents a conflict for your characters and a climax when that conflict is resolved?  Do you have an essay that presents your main points in an order that allows them to build on each other and strengthen your thesis?  Do you use the conclusion of your essay effectively to sum up those main points and hammer home your thesis?  Does your poem have fresh imagery rather than cliches and do the stanzas roll off the tongue in a way that makes them flow together into a cohesive unit?  If you can find specific, concrete ways your editing has improved your work, then you know your editing efforts have been effective.

• How do you feel about your editing?  After any significant amount of editing on a piece of writing, it's time to do a gut check and ask yourself how you feel about your editing efforts. For example, are you coming to editing sessions with energy or dread?  Do you feel positive that you can continue to make improvements in your work or do you feel like you've hit a wall? This gut check will let you know if you need to stop for awhile to get some distance from the writing or if you can constructively continue.  Sometimes it is critical to just stop working on a piece in order to get the psychological distance from it that is needed to look at it with fresh eyes.  Pay attention to the emotional side of editing and let your instincts guide you so you can make the editing process as positive as possible.

• Are your editing changes meaningful?  Eventually, you will need to determine if your editing work is done.  This is best answered by looking at the types of changes you are engaged in. For example, are you making substantial changes in wording and sentence structure, paragraph order and construction, or are you just tinkering with punctuation and minor word switches?  If your editing is substantial and materially changes the content and/or structure of your work, it is still meaningful to continue editing.  If, however, you're at the point where you're just tinkering and not making any substantial changes, it is time to stop.  Endless tinkering won't improve your work.  It will just drive you crazy.  At some point, you have to determine that you have made the work as good as you can make it and let it go.

Editing is the hardest part of a writer's work.  It is the most time-consuming and the most frustrating. But it can also be the most rewarding if done effectively.  Launching into revision work with a clear sense of purpose and an ability to judge its outcome will make the editing process much more effective and one of the aspects of writing you will look forward to.  Editing with purpose will also make the writing process more enjoyable for you and the results more enjoyable for your readers.

Just Write

Often writers get blocked before they ever begin a writing project because they feel they need to know their entire story or essay or article or poem before they start writing.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Writing is, more than anything, a process of discovery for the writer.  Seldom do writers know everything about their project before they start writing because the writing takes on a life of its own and unfolds in sometimes surprising ways.  That's what makes writing a journey.  Most writing projects start with just a nugget of an idea and then grow over time into a fully developed composition.  So start with that nugget that is rolling around in your head and just write it down.  Let it take you to the next thought and the next, and before you know it, you're on your way to a finished piece.  Don't judge that early idea that you start with.  Give it a chance to prove its worth.  You can discard it later if it doesn't work out, but the value of that early idea is it gets your pen moving on paper or your fingers moving on a keyboard.  It's the spark that starts the fire - fragile but critical - and you don't want to snuff it out before it even has a chance to grow into a flame.  Here are some ways to get your writing started, even without a fully formed idea to work with:

Write down your main idea

Start with your main idea, the nugget rolling around in your head, and write it down.  It may be as simple as a vague idea for a story, such as:  a blind teacher faces extraordinary challenges in the classroom.  You don't yet know what those challenges may be because you haven't fully developed this idea yet, but you know it's the core idea you want to work with.  It's important to just get that idea down.  It's vague, but it's an anchor idea that will help you flesh out the rest of your story and it also helps you focus on what's most important to you in writing this story - the challenges of blindness.

Write a purpose statement

Now that you have your main idea to work with, you can further focus it by thinking about your purpose in writing about this idea.  For instance, with the above example, is your purpose to enlighten readers about the challenges of blindness, of teaching, or both?  Having a clear idea about your purpose, in other words, why you are interested in this idea, will help you decide what types of details you will need to fully develop your idea in the most effective way.  A purpose statement is usually a single sentence that articulates what you intend to do with your main idea.  It could read like this:  My purpose in writing this story is to illuminate the challenges a blind person faces in the workforce, especially in a challenging setting like the classroom.  You now have the basic foundation for moving forward with developing the details you will need to present the story.

Write an idea list

Based on the main idea and purpose statement you've developed, begin jotting down story ideas, how you think the story might unfold.  The list is a flexible document and will be changed many times. This early list is just a preliminary layout for possible scenarios for your story.  It could include ideas such as:  unruly students challenging the blind teacher, the teacher's struggle with visual technology that is so pervasive in the modern classroom, possible non-acceptance of the blind teacher by the other sighted teachers in the school, general ignorance of the condition of blindness within the school system, etc.  At this point, you're just brainstorming and jotting down ideas.  You can evaluate their worthiness later.  The value of the list is it gives you some possible starting points for beginning your writing process.  Take one of the ideas from your list - perhaps the idea of general ignorance of the condition of blindness within the school system - and begin your story there.  It may not be where your story begins in your final draft, but for now, it is a place to begin writing.  Take this one idea and write an outline for how you will develop it, which is the final step in getting your writing started.

Write an outline

You now have a specific idea to focus on to begin writing your story.  Since you want to start with the idea of general ignorance of the condition of blindness within the school system, jot down a preliminary outline to reflect how you think this part of your story may unfold.  For instance, you may start with the teacher's application to the school and the interviewers' reaction to his blindness, then segue into how, once hired, he faces further reactions from his fellow teachers, and finally, how his students react to him in the classroom.  Under each of these three main areas, you can list sub-ideas about the details you will develop to present all three reactions in your story.  You now have a solid basis and a plan for beginning your story.  Don't worry about whether the outline is the right one or if it will work out well.  Just use it as your spark to begin writing.

If you are faced with a writing project that seems daunting and you are feeling blocked before you even get started, try some of these techniques to get your writing going.  Remember that it is most important that you just begin writing rather than having everything all figured out.  These simple techniques will help you overcome that initial blocking and get you writing without unnecessary delay.  Yes, it's important that your writing projects be well-developed and well-written, but first you have to "just write."

Change It Up

Nothing kills the effectiveness of writing more than the use of cliches such as: stone cold, free as a bird, stiff as a board, etc.  We use these cliches all the time in our speech.  They're convenient, easily accessible in our brains, and they say exactly what we mean in an expedient way.  But they shouldn't be present in our writing.  Readers want writers to engage their senses in new and unique ways, so naturally, they aren't challenged or excited by cliches. They expect writers to make connections for them between things or ideas they may not have considered before.  They don't want to read that something is as cold as a stone, as free as a bird, or as stiff as a board. They want new sensory connections and imagery from your writing.  Your job as a writer, then, is to create those new connections through your artful use of language.  This requires research in the form of word searches and asking your mind to work in new ways through the use of writing exercises.

Word searches involve the extensive use of reference materials such as a thesaurus, dictionary, word guide and other resources that help you find new words to express old ideas.  This is an intensive search for just the right word or words to describe or express an idea or thing in a way that will delight and surprise readers.

Writing exercises train you to think in new ways so that you can write in new ways.  For example, you can challenge yourself to write a description of a weather element such as rain without using any visual details.  Your challenge is to describe it using only the sensations of taste, touch, smell and sound.  Another exercise challenge example is to describe the color red using only the sensation of touch.  You can create endless writing exercise challenges for yourself that will help you get away from cliched thinking and develop new ways of describing things for readers.

A good test for cliched writing is when a descriptive passage comes too easily.  It's most likely because you've lapsed into cliches that are stored up in your brain and roll out unnoticed in the rush of writing. Writing description is not easy.  It takes work and extensive tinkering to get your words to come out just the right way.  It's a slow process and doesn't just roll out.  So, on re-reading, look carefully at your descriptors and determine if you can express them in a more unique way, ideally a surprising way, that will engage your readers and allow them to create new connections, new imagery, and a new appreciation for everyday things and ideas.  Change up your writing and you will have the power to change your readers.

Show, Don't Tell

One of the most frequently dispensed pieces of writing advice is the admonition to "show, don't tell."  This seems like such a simple homily, yet it's one of the most difficult to explain and harder yet to execute.  Readers want to feel like they are part of the story you're telling.  They want to experience it by being asked to create part of it.  This means that writers don't spell everything out so there is nothing left to the readers' imaginations.  Readers want to create their own responses and their own visualizations from the tidbits you feed them.  In this way, they are co-creators of the story because they are able to create their own interpretations of the writing.  Your job as a writer is to give readers just enough detail, just enough hints and prompts that readers can come to their own conclusions about the characters and story lines you're presenting.  This creates active readers who become involved in and invested in your story rather than passive readers who just read and observe whatever images are being fed to them.  Active readers will stick with a story and be excited about it.  Bored readers may abandon the story altogether.  The key is investment.  We tend not to stay with things we're not invested in.  So help your readers be invested in your story.  Give them details, but not all the details.  Leave some things for your readers to guess or wonder about.  Leave gaps for the readers to fill in themselves.  Create suspense and interest by painting faint outlines of imagery so that readers can fill in the picture with their own colors and forms and sensations.  In other words, make your readers work.  Ask them to be active participants in your story.  Coax and invite them to fill in the details and figure things out for themselves.  If you are able to do that, you are mastering "show, don't tell," and you are creating engaged and grateful readers who will come back to your writing again and again.

Finishing Your Writing

Writing can often end but not feel finished.  It's important that writing comes to a conclusion that feels complete to the reader.  That means not ending a piece so abruptly that the reader feels like there should be something more, that not all the necessary information was provided or questions answered.  Your writing should not leave readers feeling like something is lacking in the piece.  Notice that the word "feeling" is being used to describe readers' reactions.  That's because an ending that is truly finished will evoke a sense of satisfaction in readers, a sense of accomplishment in having completed the reading process, and a sense of confidence that the subject or story was treated thoroughly.  Endings are more a feeling than a thought.  Readers will feel satisfied with the way your writing ends or they won't.  To help achieve that satisfaction, make sure your endings serve as a glue to pull all the elements of your writing together into a coherent whole.  Your ending sentences and paragraphs should reflect back on the rest of the piece in some kind of thoughtful way.  They can add new insight to what has already been said, add a new perspective not already given, inspire readers to see things differently, or deliver the most important nugget of meaning you really want readers to take away from the piece.  You want your ending words to provide a natural cascade downward, much like a musical piece de-crescendoing.  Your ending should bring your readers to a natural, comfortable conclusion and hopefully an "aha" moment as they reach the end and understand your meaning in its entirety.  Your readers should feel that there is nothing left to say, that you've said it well, left nothing hanging, and are giving them a fully wrapped package they can take with them to glean what they can from the gift of your words.  You should ask yourself at the end of a writing project what you are really trying to say with your essay, story, article or poem, and then make that message your ending.  Some writers hammer that message home with short, staccato, declarative sentences and others tease it out in long, luxurious prose that feels like being led home to the message.  Whatever your style, make sure your writing has a finished feel to it so that you can have the maximum impact on your readers and leave them with an impression they won't forget.

Writing With Intention

Writing students often confuse subject matter with purpose.  If asked the purpose of a piece of writing, they most often will respond by stating what the piece is about.  Subject matter is certainly important, but purpose is essential to good writing.  Writers need to have a clear purpose in mind, not just a clear subject.  It is not enough, for example, to say you are going to write an essay about climate change.  You must also be able to articulate what you intend to do with your subject - in other words, what your purpose is.  Are you writing about climate change to merely inform your readers or do you want to go further and inspire your readers to take the subject more seriously and perhaps change their behavior or engage in political action to further the cause?  Being clear on your purpose for writing about your subject is critical to being able to write about it effectively.  A useful tool in helping you clarify and articulate your purpose is a pre-writing technique called writing a purpose statement.  Generally, this involves a one sentence statement that accomplishes two things.  It clearly identifies your subject and indicates what you intend to do with that subject (i.e., inform, persuade, argue, entertain, etc.).  If you have trouble writing a purpose statement or if you can't write it in a single sentence, it is a sign that you might not yet be quite as focused as you need to be on your idea.  Having a clear sense of your purpose prior to writing, whether it is fiction, nonfiction or poetry, will help you achieve that purpose by selectively choosing the most effective language and the most effective techniques.  Without a clear sense of purpose, your writing will lack the tightness of focus and appropriate style needed to have maximum impact on readers.  Think of your writing as an intentional action with specific consequences.  When you are clear what your intentions are, you will be more able to control the consequences of your finished product and your readers will appreciate the results.

Passionate Writing

If there is one piece of writing advice that applies to all writers, novice to professional, it is to write about subjects you care about.  Caring means being deeply passionate about something, not just interested in it.  It means having a message that you must express to feel complete.  It means having a message that won't leave you alone, that won't rest, until you have expressed it.  Writing about things that interest you is important too, but anyone can do that.  The writer who can translate passion onto the page is the one who captures readers, speaks intimately with them, and gives them something they will always remember.  If you don't care deeply about your material, you're just reporting information, and writing is so much more than that.  Effective writing also inspires, agitates, consoles, and enlightens readers.  Your writing will be more effective for readers if you care about your material, but it will also be more enjoyable for you to write.  Whether you are a student, a journalist, a poet, a novelist or a copywriter, care deeply about your subject matter every time you write.  If you're in a situation where the subject is dictated to you, find a way to become passionate about it.  Find an angle that uniquely resonates with you so you can write with the enthusiasm and investment that every piece of writing deserves.  Otherwise, writing is just an exercise in tedium and it does nothing to enhance the experience of your readers nor the experience of you as a writer.  Be creative when you approach every piece of writing until you can find a way to tap into that wellspring of inspiration within you that allows you to write with passion.  This is how you will speak to readers in a way that matters and this is how you will grow within yourself and within your writing career. Write with passion and watch your talents grow!

Sketching Your Writing

Completing a fully formed piece of writing requires several steps.  The first is to sketch your idea from beginning to finish.  This gives you a rough outline or skeleton of what your piece will encompass.  By doing this, you're defining the scope of your story, poem or essay, and outlining its borders, beyond which you won't venture.  You're defining your focus and placing limits on your idea.  For example, you may decide your story needs to be contained within a certain time period and not go outside of that time frame.  Or you may decide your poem needs to be limited to a single image or theme and not deviate beyond that singularity of focus.  Your essay may be restricted to a single premise or thesis and not stray outside of those parameters.  To understand the breadth of your idea, you need to first sketch it out by knowing your whole story, essay or poem before you begin writing it.  This early process is far from refined and is always open to change.  Your goal is not to be perfect, but to be clear.  So your sketch may be clumsily worded and awkward, but that doesn't matter.  You just want to get your ideas down, all of your ideas, so you can begin to see the whole picture forming in your mind.  Then you can go back and start filling in the details and do the hard composing and refining work that is necessary to achieve a polished piece.  Much like an artist would first make a sketch on the canvas before applying paint in order to produce a better painting, a writer can make good use of a preliminary sketch before applying creativity and talent in order to produce better writing.  The sketching can be thought of as a guide or plan to help you stay on track, focus your writing, and supply the kinds of layering and details needed to fully flesh out your idea.  Rather than jumping into a blank writing canvas with only a vague notion of what you expect to accomplish, try taking the time to sketch out your ideas first, get a feel for what you're about to embark on, and create a reference point you can rely on consistently as you begin the hard work of composing.  It may not be the most glamorous writing task you will perform, but it is well worth your time.  At the very least, it will make your writing process easier and more likely to be completed.

Puzzling Your Writing

Writing projects, whether fiction or nonfiction, are much like putting together a puzzle.  The challenge, and the frustration, of writing any successful piece - a story, an essay, a poem - is figuring out how to best fit the pieces together to create a cohesive whole.  You want your finished piece to be a complete picture, one that makes sense, and one that has all the elements that appeal to readers - flow, detail, color, nuance, and emotional impact.  All of these elements are achieved through carefully crafted prose.  Whether you are working a puzzle or writing a story, you know when you've placed a piece in the wrong spot.  It just doesn't fit.  It feels like an interruption rather than a part of the flow.  In writing, you'll know when this happens because you'll stumble over it when you read it back.  It won't roll off your tongue and it will feel out of place.  If it feels out of place to you, you can be guaranteed it will feel out of place to your readers.  Along with flow, puzzling out your writing also means finding the most strategic place to fit pieces so they have the greatest impact.  It means shuffling your writing around, adding, deleting, rearranging, rewording, until you have the right combination that makes your story or essay or poem work as a whole. Sometimes a part of your writing may not need to be deleted if it feels wrong.  
It may just need to be placed somewhere else.  A descriptive passage, for instance, may feel intrusive in one place in a story because it's too disruptive to the action; but, in another place, it may feel just right because it provides needed detail during a natural pause in the story.  So, when editing your writing, treat these bumps as possible arrangement problems rather than necessary deletions.  If a part of your writing won't fit naturally no matter where you place it, that's a clear sign it needs to be deleted from the piece.  But if you take your time, working at your writing like a puzzle, fitting and re-fitting pieces into strategic places that enhance your writing rather than detract from it, you will end up with a well-written, cohesive story, essay or poem that appears to readers as a complete whole rather than a collection of pieces.  You will make the lines between your pieces disappear and the final product will be seamless writing that readers will easily and thankfully glide through.

It's What You Don't Say

Writers are explainers and describers.  It's what we're built to do.  Words are our tools and with those tools we are adept at clarifying things, ideas and impressions through explaining and describing.  But too much verbiage can get in the way of our effectiveness as writers.  Over-explaining and over-describing can leave our writing flat, tedious and uninteresting.  When readers get involved in a story, they want to be fed tidbits, tantalizing pieces of information that they can use to put the story together.  It's similar to the challenge of a jigsaw puzzle.  Readers don't want to be fed everything.  One of the great joys of reading is figuring things out for yourself.  A writer robs you of that joy by telling you everything because it leaves nothing to your imagination.  The same is true in creative nonfiction.  Readers want to be able to create pictures in their own minds as they read.  They want to piece together the whole from the pieces you have given them.  Unless you're writing assembly instructions or some other kind of detailed instruction in which minutiae needs to be abundant and explanation plentiful, you should be a minimalist in your writing.  Provide the critical details and description to create the overall impression you're trying to achieve, but then step back and let your readers fill in the gaps.  The hint of something can be very powerful in a reader's mind.  You don't have to provide a full-blown account of everything for your writing to be effective.  It is reasonable to say that, in editing your early drafts, you can count on eliminating your details and descriptors by at least fifty percent, sometimes more.  Recognizing that you can have more power as a writer by what you don't say than by what you do say can lead you to leaner, tighter, more memorable prose

Leashing Your Research

Most writing takes some kind of research.  Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writers have to know enough about their subject matter to be able to write clearly and effectively about it.  But research can be an untamed animal that can take you on a wild ride and ultimately get in the way of your writing. Leashing your research into a disciplined journey that you keep close to your purpose is the best way to make research a helper and not a hindrance. Researching any subject can be very absorbing and time-consuming; and as a writer, you can become so engrossed in your research that you forget to write. The research becomes the goal, not the writing.  You don't want to let this happen if you are committed to getting a project written.  Research is necessary, fascinating and fun, but don't let it consume too much of your time and energy.  Instead, let your research infuse your writing with tidbits of fact and detail much like you would season a food dish.  But don't let your research overwhelm you to the point where you feel pressured to get every bit of it into the mix.  This is a recipe for writer's block.  You can't possibly fit all of your research into your piece.  It would be overwhelming and your writing would suffer because it would begin to read like a fact list rather than prose.  Instead, look for those bits that will enhance your writing, not take it over.  The majority of your writing should still be your story, your style, your nuances, your voice. The research and fact-checking is just there to make your writing better, more accurate, more realistic, more meaningful.  It should not hijack your writing.  So keep your research on a leash.  Make it useful, but not overwhelming, stay close to your purpose, don't let it lead you off into irrelevant tangents, and let it be the effective tool it can be to make you a better writer.  

Pausing the Muse

It's been nearly four years since this blog was written in and it's time to return to it again.  Sometimes, with writers, there is need to pause the muse. Sometimes life gets in the way, and when it does, the inspiration for writing can weaken and even disappear for awhile.  Because creativity follows the rhythms of life, it needs to be allowed to ebb and flow.  It cannot be forced or pounded into submission, and sometimes the pausing can make the muse stronger.  So it is with renewed strength, tempered by a long pause, that I return to writing with new ideas, new aspirations, and new enthusiasm.  I do hope this blog is helpful to some people at least some of the time.  Over the years, as a writer and teacher of writing, I've picked up a few notions that have been valuable to my writing life and may be valuable to others.  So this blog is the dialogue about those notions and I look forward to the continued conversation.