First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life.

by Joe Moran

Twenty Sentences on Sentences Listen, read and write for the sentences, because the sentence must be got right or nothing will be right. A sentence is not about self-expression but about editing your thoughts into a partly feigned fluency, building a ladder of words up to a better self. Train your ears, for how a sentence sounds in the head is also what it says to the heart. The bones of a sentence are just a noun and a verb, so put the right nouns and verbs in the right slots and the other words fall into place around them. Good prose is not a windowpane: a sentence reads best when the writer has tasted and relished the words, not tried to make them invisible. Your sentences should mimic the naturalness of speech, so long as you remember that speech is not really natural and that writing is not really like speech. Short words are best, for their clarity and chewy vowels, but the odd long word in a sentence draws just the right amount of attention to itself. Verbal economy in a sentence is a virtue but an overprized one: words are precious but they need to be spent. Learn to love the full stop, and think of it as the goal towards which your words adamantly move – because a good sentence, like a good life, needs a good death. If you keep the phrases short, and leave the longest phrase until last, the reader can cut a long sentence up into pieces in her head and swallow them whole. Your sentences should sound slightly more naive than you are, for good writing is done with a ...