I've been writing for five years now, and in that time I've learned a lot. This book is to share advice, tips, and help about every aspect of creative writing. My main genres are fantasy, romance, sci-fi, and fanfiction, so if things don't line up i...
The flow of writing. Possibly one of the most important aspects of creative writing. What do I mean by the "flow"? It's how you string sentences together to create and easy-to-read, enjoyable experience for the reader. This also means controlling your comma usage (difficult, I know), splitting up sentences, and breaking traditional grammar rules regarding run-on sentences and sentence structure. It's a meticulous art of breaking the rules.
As an example, I will give you two short paragraphs, one uses a good flow, and one does not. Here's the first:
"Emma walked towards the door, her heart pounding. Slowly she raised her closed fist to knock. She could hear Jake coming to answer the door. It swung open to reveal his confused face, both of them wondering who should speak first."
To be fair, if you've spent any significant time at all reading you could probably tell that wasn't written all that well. Sure, it wasn't written by a fourth grader, but it was boring and blocky. Now, let's rewrite that paragraph to make it flow better.
"Emma's heart was pounding through her chest. She saw the door in front of her, old anxieties resurfacing to grab a hold of her as she slowly raised her fist to knock. She gave gentle taps on the door. One. Two. Three. From behind the door, Jake's footsteps could be heard walking towards the door unbeknownst to him who was waiting behind it. Slowly, carefully, he creaked the door open to face a girl he never thought he'd have to see again; her blonde hair pulled up in such a familiar ponytail, the freckles dotting her nose and cheeks, and those eyes that begged her to come back so many months ago. He had spent so long getting over her, and in mere moments all the time he had spent getting over her had been reversed."
Although not perfect, that paragraph showed a much better example of a good, beautifully written piece of a story. To help you get used to writing with a better flow, I will list the key points that help you spice up your writing to a place where it isn't as boring, and further explain them later.
-Vary sentence length
-Change up punctuation usage
-Take advantage of different names for a person
-Dive into the a characters thoughts and reactions to a story
-Show emotions, tell feelings
The first is to vary sentence length. It is maybe the most important part of this. Having a bunch of sentences with relatively the same length is one of the most boring things you can do. This often means breaking grammar rules, and having run on sentences and one word sentences, which also means that you can have fairly long sentences that often lack commas, use no commas, or a mix of both. Writing like this requires some precise placement of commas, hyphens, and semicolons, and with practice is one of the most important skills you can develop as a writer. You don't have to write things perfectly the first time, you can go back and edit a paragraph for hours until you're happy with the way it flows. Like you can acquire a musical ear, you can acquire an ear for the writer's flow. For example writing this guide is much different from writing a fanfiction, and I can't exactly break all the grammar rules like you can in creative writing, meaning I have to find ways to both keep the reader interested and follow traditional grammar.
This is a guide I have found extremely useful in helping me vary sentence length.
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