What do you want your writing to do?
What do you want your writing to do?
Sentences, short or long, are the building blocks of prose. Sentences do more than carry information, they shape your text to a particular purpose. Sentences are alive, they have strategies, pace, and rhythm.
Think about these three questions:
1. What do you want your writing to accomplish?
2. Which words would you like to use?
3. What order will you put them in?
Remember, to be better writers we need to write better sentences. Think of a sentence as something in motion, it’s alive, your sentences are carrying your ideas forward. How do you want the reader to react? What impact are you hoping to create on your readers?
Effective writing satisfies a reader’s need for information. Effective writing is determined by the writer’s intent and effort to convey a message or situation to the reader.
A simple sentence can create a complex reaction in a reader, while a complex sentence may have a simple impact.
To practice writing sentences, I suggest you take the opening sentence from a newspaper or magazine article and rewrite it. Try to make it shorter or longer and think of the impact you’d like to create.
Have fun!