a service of Simcomserv Australia

Agency for Literary Review offers unpublished authors and first-time writers the opportunity to have their work assessed for free.

Free Advice and Assistance for the Novice Writer

Agency for Literary Review

Sentences, Paragraphs and Chapters.

There are many good websites detailing idiomatic construction of sentences and paragraphs and many good books on the subject.  We are not in the business of teaching you to write, but we are in the business of giving you some advice on writing style.  However, there are probably just as many styles of structure as there are teachers and advice givers.  You must develop your own style and your own expression.  But here are a few tips that we feel are important.

Short and sweet.  Wordy, flowery sentences that ramble on like a narrow meadow lane have their place.  Unless they are going somewhere though, they are simply distractions, and often boring ones.

Try to remember that your reader is trying to follow the path you are marking out.  If you do not carefully construct a clear path aided with arrows or road signs and detour markings, they are apt to get lost.  If they get lost then that was your fault.  And if you lead them down the garden path too often, they will not bother offering to take your tour.  Keep your sentences flowing but coherent.  Use a short sentence for dramatic effect.  Too many short sentences make your reader bob along in syncopation.  Too few, and he falls asleep.  Paint a picture with a flowery sentence, by all means, but do so only when your reader has time to stop and enjoy the view.  Each sentence is a stage direction to your reader.  It follows that each direction must be explicit and non-confusing.  If, when you are reading one of your own  paragraphs back, you find that you lifted your head or mentally eased in your chair, then your reader has done the same.  He has lost concentration and you are apt to lose your reader.

Long and flowery.  The purpose of a long and flowery sentence is to draw your reader into an enchantment of your devising, to paint a picture of scene or of morality.  It is one long, expressed thought that does not stand well on its own or can be described in short brush strokes of utterance. That does not mean they should ramble.  Every sentence you write should be part of the story.  It should make the story less if left out, if omitted.  But if it doesn't enhance the story, then what were you thinking of?  While it's true that authors get paid, generally, by the word and that you can see to what effect some authors have used this, it is not an enhancement of your story, it is a detraction.  So, why would you want to do that?  Use sentences that take your reader along at an easy pace.  Picture yourself sitting in a horse-drawn carriage.  If the horse is simply walking then you are left to the full effect of the elements and with no sense of getting to your destination.  If the horse is at full gallop, the carriage is moving recklessly and you are too frightened to do little else but hold on for dear life.  You may well get there in one piece but you won't have enjoyed the ride.  Keep the horse at a smart trot.  Keep your sentences moving at that pace and your reader will love the ride.

Put down.  If you want to upset an adult somebody, talk to him like he was a twelve year-old.  If you want someone to walk away in disgust and thinking you are an idiot, then keep using words that neither of you really understand.  It may well be that you are fully acquainted with some obscure word that you have just dropped into a sentence, but who are you trying to impress?  If it is a serious work then just maybe your readers will be able to follow along.  But if you can say it another way that guarantees they will understand what you just wrote, then why don't you do it?  Tell a story.  It doesn't matter if it is a scientific journal or a monologue on some character or event of history, you still need to tell a story.  All of the reference material and footnotes and other documentation should follow the story.  If someone wants to know something specific, they will keep reading until they get to that part.  Everybody else just wants to know what you are talking about.  So, make sure you tell them.  Impress them later with all of your documented research.

If you are trying to get them to read your novel or other work of fiction, then tell the story in their language.  Most people know and use about five-thousand words.  Try and write your story by only using those words.

Be honest.  All of us carry prejudices.  All of us are biased in one way or another.  A sure-fire way of getting someone to dump your story in the bin is to perpetuate (or initiate) a lie.  Refrain from stereotype and myth and from using a story as a medium to tell and foster untruths.  People, your customers who are prepared to spend money to read your stories, don't want to be brain-washed by you.  If you are full of prejudice and of narrow mind (to either extreme) then be fair to your characters in the story and to your readers.  If you describe a situation within your story, then you had best research it well before you write about it.  Otherwise your publisher is going to receive a lot of irate letters.  That is often a good thing in terms of promoting a book but if what you wrote is demonstrably wrong or fallacious, then your writing career may be of short duration except to those who share your bigotry.

Remember, bigotry is the usual cause for book banning and burning.  Don't perpetuate bigotry by your own works.

Paragraphs.  Writing style has changed over the years.  Several years back, a paragraph had to consist of at least five or six sentences.  Any attempt to do otherwise usually resulted in abuse from the teacher of English literature.  A paragraph, by definition, is the compilation of sentences expressing one thought.   It is a distinct passage of text dealing with one element or point of the subject matter.  This now includes dialogue.  Each character in your story is distinct.  Therefore, it follows that what that character says is distinct.  Every line of dialogue represents a new paragraph.

Sometimes a paragraph gets out of hand.  A whole page of type is a bit daunting, even if the elements of the paragraph, the sentences, are crisp and exhilarating.  Take a look at a paragraph and see if it can be broken somewhere without losing the ball of thought.  Each paragraph should be looked at as a separate scene.  You should be able to portray it as an element of a stage setting or screen play.  However, never forget that a paragraph is a distinct passage of text.  Never let the one paragraph drift off into the next.  It should be served up like a separate course of a multi-course dinner.  Take a look at this:

They stood together almost shoulder to shoulder as they leant on the railing of the deck overlooking the stern paddle.  The river turned east at this point and the ball of the setting sun was low on the horizon directly in their line of sight.  It painted the few remaining clouds in a spectrum of vermillion and the pewter river water was splashed with salmon reds in the turbulence of the steamer's wake.  The smoke of their cigars gathered briefly about their heads before being caught in the stream of air washing past them to vanish, leaving only the tell-tale aroma before it too was swept downriver with the smoke. They would be in Bannock County by noon of the next day and neither man was particularly eager to undertake the onerous task they knew to be awaiting them less than a day's ride from the riverside town of Harrietville.  They watched the sun until it slipped below the horizon giving them no further excuse to prolong the day, obliging each to contemplate the morrow. 

"It would be a kindly gesture if you gentlemen would join me for breakfast.  A woman on her own is often mistaken for someone of loose character and I would not allow for any such mistake.  It would be bad for business".

"I can't speak for Thomas, Ma'am, but that is not a mistake I am likely ever to make".

The tables of the dining saloon had been converted from the gaming tables of the previous night's poker sessions by the expediency of cladding them in white linen and the laying out of china and cutlery.  It was not silver service, for the passenger manifest admitted to few people who could be trusted with silver place-settings.

The reader has just been misled.  He was standing at the aft railing with two other men, smoking cigars and watching the sun go down and he is now suddenly a confusing somewhere else.  The first paragraph concluded well enough, but the next paragraph, in this case a woman speaking, does not set the stage.  If the reader had literally been standing at the aft railing, he would have turned around to see who had spoken.  Your job is to take him from the aft railing and introduce him to the new scene.  That could have been easily accomplished by adding the words, it was the following morning and, to the front of the last paragraph and by moving that paragraph to take second place.  The author should then have gone on and set the scene, like who was at the table, and what they were wearing, and what the two men were now wearing.  The way it is now, the reader may eventually figure out he is still on a boat but he doesn't know who anybody is.  The only clue he has to work with is that one of the men is named, Thomas.  And if this man were described earlier then he might deduce the other man is his partner of the night before.  But you are the author.  Why do you want to make the reader do all the work?  Why should he have to figure out what you are trying to tell him?

Remember, each paragraph is a distinct passage of text.  Make it so.  Every paragraph should be able to stand on its own.  Each should follow the other in progression as the story unfolds.

Chapters.  These are the main divisions of a book.  The first half of the book is the beginning and the last half of the book is the ending.  These two halves perhaps should be divided further to tell each story that leads from one half of the book to the other half of the book.  That is pretty simple.  Tell your story and when it is finished, start a new chapter, a new story.  Each of these progresses the same way the paragraphs do.  Nothing hard here.  Where do the skills come into it?  Glad you asked.

Reading rewards.  Have you ever read a book you 'just couldn't put down'?  The reason for that is reading rewards.  Let me use an analogy.  Suppose you step up to a vending machine and insert the exact amount of change and make your selection.  There is the sound of your choice object dropping into the vending tray, followed by the sound of a coin falling into the change dispenser.  You are entitled to take the object of your choice, but do you check the coin dispenser?  This isn't a test of your ethics, it's an analogy.  Almost everyone would check the coin dispenser.  So you do and you find a coin.  I won't ask what you do with the coin, maybe turn it in to someone or donate it to charity or stick it in your own pocket.  Just before you step away from the vending machine, you hear the unmistakable sound of a coin falling into a coin dispenser once more.  Would you check it again?  I think the answer is obvious.  And you would likely keep checking it for as long as the sound of a coin dropping into the dispenser continued.  You are being rewarded.  The ethics don't enter into it for the purposes of the analogy.  A good weaver of stories offers you rewards in exactly the same way.

A good storyteller will reward you with pleasure   It is a good feeling to wend your way through a well crafted tale.  You will find richness in each sentence, intrigue in each paragraph, delight with each page.  You will find it difficult to stop reading until you have reached a definite moment of conclusion, such as the end of a chapter.  But it is here, as you are about to put the book away, that you hear the sound of a coin tumbling into the change dispenser if the storyteller is a master of his craft.  His closing line should entice you to begin the next chapter.  You need to complete the segment of story that is the chapter and at the same time create the intrigue, create the web of ensnarement that obliges the reader to stay with you, to read on.

It was done and it was done for the good.  I had triumphed, so I felt, for that which had been most foully committed upon my family had been rendered null by me.  No court of law no gathering of angels could assess me of wrongdoing in that, till now, I had been the victim.  It cannot murder be to rid the land of scourge nor scour the stains of evil from castle chamber and priory wall.  I was now avenged and the good name of my family restored to honour.  And I was sore tired for I had not slept more than a few minutes in these past three days of righteous battle.  I lay upon my bed in my chamber to sleep the sleep of just cause and to await the morrow for prescribed atonement.  For the first time in weeks, I felt safe in the arms of Morpheus and I slept.  While Grayson slept his sleep of justice done, a familiar and frightening blue shadow flitted past the casement and the sounds of something being dragged were muffled against the night air and damp soil.

Whether the above chapter-ending causes you to peruse the next few lines is moot.  However, it illustrates the tactic used, the ploy that is a hook.  It can be one line as in this example or it can be a whole paragraph or more.  It is your job to make the reader continue reading.  To keep him captivated, spellbound.  If you can do this, then you can sell books.  You can convince publishers to take a chance on you.