Several Short Sentences About Writing
is an indispensable and distinctive book that will help anyone who wants to write, write better, or have a clearer understanding of what it means for them to be writing, from widely admired writer and teacher Verlyn Klinkenborg.
[bluebox]Know what each sentence says,
What it doesn’t say,
And what it implies.
Of these, the hardest is knowing what each sentence actually says.[/bluebox]
Make short sentences
At first, it will help to make short sentences,
Short enough to feel the variations in length.
Leave space between them for the things that words can’t really say.
Pay attention to rhythm, first and last
Imagine it this way:
One by one, each sentence takes the stage.
It says the very thing it comes into existence to say.
Then it leaves the stage.
It doesn’t help the next one up or the previous one down.
It doesn’t wave to its friends in the audience
Or pause to be acknowledged or applauded.
It doesn’t talk about what it’s saying.
It simply says its piece and leaves the stage.
The only link between you and the reader is the sentence you’re making
There’s no sign of your intention apart from the sentence themselves,
And every sentence has its own motives, its own commitments,
Quite apart from yours.
It adheres to a set of rules–grammar, syntax, the history and customs of the language, a world of echos and allusions and social cues–that pay no heed to your intentions,
If you don’t heed those rules.
Writing short sentences…
- Restores clarity, the directness of subject and verb.
- Forces you to discard the strong elements of long sentences, like relative pronouns and subordinate clauses, and the weak ones as well: Prepositional chains, passive constructions, and dependent phrases.
- Will help you write strong, balanced sentences of any length.
How to make short sentences?
To make short sentences, you need to remove every unnecessary word.
Your idea of necessary will change as you experience changes.
The fact that you’ve included a word in the sentence you’re making
Says nothing about its necessity.
See which words the sentence can live without,
No matter how inconspicuous they are.
Every word is optional until it proves to be essential,
Something you can only determine by removing words one by one
And seeing what’s lost or gained.
Listen for the sentence that’s revealed as you remove one word after another.
You’ll hear the improvement when you find it.
Without extraneous words of phrases or clauses, there will be room for implication.
Complement Several Short Sentences About Writing with The Little Red Writing Book. This book is about what you have to do to hear just the right words at just the right time to speak them in just the right rhythm.
