Make short sentences your standard. They communicate effectively by giving information in bite-size chunks. Readers grasp “short” more easily than sentences crammed with multiple clauses and stretching from horizon to horizon. When a sentence becomes a panorama, you may be trying to say too much with it. Consider breaking it into two or three more manageable pieces.
That Being Said . . . (On Behalf of Long Sentences)
An endless procession of complex sentences, lumbering along one after the other like an elephant parade, will numb your reader’s minds. You need some monkeys scampering about. But the converse is also true: a steady flow of short sentences becomes monotonous. A well-crafted lengthy sentence is sometimes exactly what you need to create contrast.
Some of the best writers–Garrison Keillor comes to mind–are masters of the longer sentence that draws you in and pulls you along through the second clause, and the third, and the fourth and fifth phrases, and line after line after line, your attention never flagging but, rather, your interest growing to see where and how that sentence will end. And when you do at last reach the period, you don’t think, About time! You think, How did he do that?
The writer did it by knowing how to use sentence length as one of the tools in his writer’s tool kit.
The point is to mix things up. Variety is another word for interest.
The Same Holds True for Paragraphs
Monolithic blocks of prose exhaust the eyes and the mind when they plod across page after page. Open up your paragraphs and let them–and your readers–breathe.
Writing is more than words. It is visual communication. So why not adopt the mindset of an artist. Approach the page you’re writing on as if it were a canvas. How will you use space . . . and density . . . and texture?
How will the way your writing looks determine the way it reads?
See how my previous paragraph is just a single line? You can do that. A succinct one-sentence paragraph stands out, thus reinforcing its point.
Tinker with the length of your paragraphs to determine what will most effectively engage your reader. One paragraph might be ten or twelve sentences long. The next might be two.
Or maybe just a fragment.
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Writers don’t have as many tools at their disposal as speakers. One tool you do have–and it’s a powerful one–is the way you vary the length of your sentences and paragraphs. This tool can mimic how you’d pace yourself as a speaker, and it has the advantage of allowing your readers to stop and mull over what you’ve written before they move on.
So think about how you can tame your elephants and monkeys. Experiment. Be creative, even whimsical.
And–dare I say it?–have fun!