Your Sentences arent short enough heres how to fix them

want you to take any famous writer and find the shortest sentence in their book and the Very longest sentence in their book and now go to piece of your writing and look for the very shortest sentence in your book and the Very longest sentence 99% of the time you will find that the established writer has both shorter sentences than you and longer sentences that's because they're really good at sentence variety and sentence variety is one of those things that every writer can get better at now we're not going to deal with long sentences today that's video for another time but today we are going to focus on short sentences like really really short sentences I'm going to give you seven tips on how to write short sentences that will have readers obsessing about your book one use contrast what's the perfect place for short sentence it's after very very very long sentence why because the contrast makes the short sentence seem even more shocking you probably know cormack McArthur because he wrote the road and No Country for Old Men and he is renowned for writing very long sentences but you know what he doesn't shy away from very short ones either and Blood Meridian there's one short sentence he repeats again and again and again it's very short it's three words they wrote on repeating it multiple times makes it feel like the journey is endless like they just kept on writing and writing and writing but the placement of where he puts this very short sentence is very telling the sentence before it is 89 words long then he said they wrote on and then the sentence after it is 78 words so use contrast to your advantage and have very long sentence before and maybe after very short sentence also it should be bucket list for you that you should try to write three-word sentence in your book it's good goal to have two make make catchphrase Kurt vonette has three-word phrase he uses again and again in slaughterhouse 5 so it goes you get this sense of resignation like what can you do and when vonette uses that phrase again and again against the backdrop of World War II and the carpet bombing of Dresden which was one of the most horrific events of that entire War it creates this crazy contrast between that sort of laxidasical attitude and the horrific events actually happening on the ground so ask you what three-word phrase captures the spirit of your Nom and what character could repeat it throughout number three end your book on short line George Orwell's 1984 is about man fighting totalitarian government named big brother he spends his entire life resisting authorities and trying not to submit but after loads of torture and social conditioning the novel ends with one of the most chilling lines of all time he loved big brother only four words could you imagine if this had been longer line just imagine if Orwell had written but it was all right everything was all right the struggle was finished because he had won the victory over himself since he loved Big Brother the wordiness would diminish the sadness when readers get blindsided by that sparse forward reply they want to cry so don't feel like you need long sentences to convey complex emotions sometimes you just need gut punch of very short sentence four make funnel shape so sometimes short sentence works really well as the climax to your paragraph Joan didan has this great essay about marriage specifically about the relationship between her husband and her family now this paragraph is made up of six sentences and every single sentence gets little bit shorter until finally we reach the climax of that last sentence which is the point of the whole paragraph marriage is the classic betrayal so the first sentence is 104 words then 57 words then 50 words then 12 words then 12 words and that last sentence is only five words long so the whole paragraph is shaped like funnel starting large and then funneling you down to that tiny powerful sentence five cluster short sentences together usually you don't want too many sentences of the exact same length in row because then it'll seem redundant but over and over again see authors put three very short sentences in row because it hits you like three quick punches here Roberto Balano uses four short sentences in row five words five words six words four words and what it does is it really forces the reader to slow down and actually look at these tiny details the sentences are very matter of fact and they're all concentrating on different colors of shoes clustering is wonderful technique to use when you want to slow down the pace of certain paragraph or when you really want to emphasize something and should also point out that the sentence before those short sentences and the sentence after are both longer number six open your novel it is so difficult to decide on the very first line of your book there's so much at stake there's so many possibilities out there but instead of trying to cram ton of information to that first line Why not start with very short sentence if you think about it ton of famous novels start with very short sentences call me ishm the old man was dreaming about the Lions Lolita light of my life fire of my loins all this happened more or less am an invisible man screaming comes across the sky all right bonus points if you can name the authors or the book titles of all those lines well maybe three and five should be pretty easy at least so there are at least three advantages to starting your book with very short line one it's difficult to misinterpret it's very clear to start with short line the reader is not going to be confused if you start with three or four-word sentence two the reader is immediately inside your world we immediately know there is an old man and he is dreaming about lions or with the last one about screaming across the sky we realize there's missile coming and number three short first line is easy to quote it's very memorable call me ishm and am an invisible man they're quoted so often Gabriel Garcia Marquez said that he used to spend months trying to get that very first sentence right but once he did everything flowed out from there seven short sentence allows you to change your writing approach David Foster Wallace has short story would not recommend you read it is probably the most horrific short story have ever read in my life it's about man accidentally spilling pot of boiling water on his baby and so the short story is everything the father does in the minute afterwards to try to save his baby's life and has some very long sentences as the father is picking the baby up and putting him in the sink and running cold water over him as the baby's screaming and crying and the long sentences are just filled with the sounds and sights and smells and the Frantic worry and energy of the father but after all of that David Foster Wallace switches to very very short sentence but it's not anything about the description of the event what's happening in the scene it's much more about an abstract idea or commentary upon the scene here's the line if you've never wept and want to have child kill me if you have children you know this is true and it's true in the big picture like yes children will break you but it's also true in this particular circumstance with this father and this child so you might adopt this strategy if you have short declarative sentence that comments on everything that's happened beforehand if you've enjoyed this video and want to learn more about sentences you might enjoy my course how to write splendid sentence the link is in the bio check it out in it you will learn things like the 231 rule the Leaning Standalone rule for sentences and how to break free of common sentence guidelines happy writing