Here’s the mathematical beauty about writing. The same stupidly simple formula that applies to books as a whole also applies to chapters, paragraphs and even sentences.
Say what?
It’s true. Just as a chapter presents a single thesis or theme that contributes to the book’s larger story or argument, a paragraph presents a single thought that contributes to the chapter’s larger story or argument.
Ditto for sentences supporting a paragraph’s topic sentence—the most important sentence in the paragraph that tells you what the paragraph is about. Each sentence needs to express a single thought. Closely-related thoughts can be joined by dashes or semi-colons, while independent thoughts need to stand alone as independent sentences. Let’s look at the example below:
I love to write books and I would write every day if I had the time.
Two separate thoughts—the love of writing and the desire to write daily—have been inappropriately merged into a single sentence. In this case the ideas are indeed related, which means our structure is sound since one idea leads to the other. We just need to separate the two ideas with a period or, in this case, a semi-colon or dash.
Now let’s look at this example:
I love to write books and I wrote a book about my nephew.
Here the ideas squished into a single sentence clearly need to be separated by a period.
Let’s recap, okay?
Work from the big picture down to the little picture. After making sure that all your chapters are playing together nicely, check the paragraphs for continuity and flow. Only then do you want to drop down to the sentence level.
I hope this helps hone your critical eye once it’s time for book editing. As always, if you’re in creative mode keep that critical eye, along with your inner critic, locked away until you’ve completed a rough draft.
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.