My Writing Weakness

[Meekalei]

Well, out of all of the things I find troubling abut writing, I'd have to say that sentence structure is the thing I struggle with most.  It's like that one road block that's preventing much improvement in many of other aspects in my writing.  It's mainly beginning sentences in a variety of different ways.  Dialogue is fine, but outside of it, it's like I hit a brick wall.  I've only begun to see it, after analyzing my writing in comparison with other writers and since I hope to be a published author, this is something I will have to get passed.  So, is there any advice anyone can give me one that? 

[The Jade Knight]

What about sentence structure seems to be the difficulty?

[Meekalei]

Mainly varying the way I begin my sentences.  It's not like use the same beginning for every sentence, but I tend to fall back on the same method of starting my sentences when I can't think of other.  They work grammatically, but can be bland, and I notice that. 

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I would study some writing rhetoric. A book I used in school is Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams. It's not fiction-focused, but it does a great job getting across how to present information in paragraph form. If your paragraphs are structured with rhetoric in mind, then your sentences' structure will naturally get appropriate variation.

Sentences should vary in structure not just for the sake of variation but in order to get across the story you want to get across.

[Silk]

Practice makes better. Sounds trivial but it's true.

Try also to look for a wide variety of prose styles when you're reading; see what works for that author versus that one over there. (And what doesn't.)

Get someone to read an excerpt of your work and comment specifically on your sentence structure; see what you can glean from their comments. Read someone else's work and comment on their structure; I find you learn as much from giving that kind of feedback as getting it. (And hey, if you're interested, there's this critique group right around the corner. They're called Reading Excuses or something.)

More specfically... I dunno, maybe try taking a short block of your writing and going through and editing all the sentences so that no one sentence starts the same way. I don't know, I always have a tough time giving advice without seeing the actual writing, but it's really just a matter o f getting yourself used to doing it. And then you'll start seeing opportunities to do that in the rest of your writing.

Or maybe, that's just something you want to leave for second or third drafts and not worry about it in the first. Who cares when it gets fixed as long as it does,  right?

[Renoard]

My tip would be let yourself wander and don't hit delete.

Print it out or save it or both.  Come back to it later with a fresh mind and you may find that you can grab bits and reorganize or rewrite them and get something better than you first intended.

Freewriting is a great tool.  One should never have only one tool in the box but when you have a screw to tighten use a screwdriver not a hammer.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Having read NordlandDrake's freewriting, I must say it's not doing him any favors.

NordlandDrake, I think you may be served best right now by not trying to write like yourself but instead trying to write like one of your favorite authors. Get a short story in mind and write it down like they would write it. After each half page or so, look at it and ask yourself, "Is this how Favorite Writer would have written this half page?" If not, revise it until it is.

The problem with your writing right now is that it is an unreadable confusing mess. If you ever want your writing to be enjoyed by someone other than yourself, you have to, to a certain extent, conform to what is expected by people who are used to reading coherent texts. Once you get decent at mimicking the coherent writing of your favorite authors, you can add back in your own personal voice, but coherency is the first thing you need to master before you move on.

My wife says that if you're more comfortable listening to audiobooks than reading printed books, you may want to write that way as well: just dictate your stories into a recorder. I'm not sure that's a good idea because I think you may already be writing like that—you write down the voices you hear in your head and it already sounds good to you. But there may be some merit to the idea. Dictate a story in the style of a favorite audiobook of yours, and after two minutes play it back and if it doesn't match the style of the professional book, erase it and start over until it does.

Of course...I'm not saying you can easily make something as good as a professional series you enjoy. But you if you can identify what's missing in your own work, in direct comparison, and focus on those issues, you may be able to improve.