The 7th Grade English Trick Many Writers Miss That Will Make Your Words Flow
I wish I could remember his name to give him credit, but my 7th grade English teacher drilled this into us.
The image of his slides on the overhead projector are burned into my mind as he would go through paragraph examples with his green pen making corrections.
Don’t use the same word at the beginning of consecutive sentences or paragraphs.
It sounds simple enough, but this is one of the things I see all the time when editing other writers’ work. (Or when reading most things on Medium…)
Example: I ran back as fast as I could to grab my coffee. I couldn’t believe I left it on the counter.
Better: I ran back as fast as I could to grab my coffee. It was still sitting on the counter… I couldn’t believe it.
The sentence essentially had two thoughts in it. I just swapped them so both sentences didn’t start with “I” and sound repetitive.
Another trick is to change words altogether, but keep the same idea.
Better #2: I ran back as fast as I could to grab my coffee from the counter. My brain clearly wasn’t working since I had yet to take a sip.
This is one of those things you’ll start to see more now that it’s been pointed out. Thankfully it’s super easy to clean up.
When you go back through your piece to edit, do a quick check to see if your sentences are varied.
Once you fix it, everything will flow much better.
Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog
