Being a writer is not easy, no matter how established you are. While the writing part is hard, polishing it up isn’t. By looking at what not to do with sentence structure, you can easily create prose that stands out and engages your readers. You may think that, while you are in full flow, your narrative is perfect but, when you read it back later, you will more than likely notice that things aren’t quite as smooth as they could be. Here’s how to get that flow back into your writing.

You Don’t Need to Describe Every Single Physical Movement

Too much description can seriously turn your readers off. Leave them a little bit of imagination without walking them in baby-steps through every single detail. Have a look at these examples.

Rather than writing something like:

“He grabbed hold of the gun in his left hand and, with his right hand he searched inside the cupboard.”

“She turned from the door, walked across the room and leaned on the kitchen counter to pick up a newspaper.”

Try something like:

“He grabbed the gun and searched the cupboard.”

“She crossed to the kitchen counter and picked up the newspaper.”

Don’t Provide a List of What’s in Every Location or Every Room

Descriptions are important but don’t overdo things. Write a location description as you see it in your mind and then go back and delete the bulk of it. Your reader doesn’t need to know every little detail, only the important ones that give them enough to bring their own imaginations alive.  Have a look at this example:

“He turned the light on to find a room with a worn-out mahogany desk beneath the window, a purple blanket in the corner, a body on the floor, and a green-leather chair beside a cold fireplace with burned out wood.”

Fabulous description but so much so that the fact there’s a body on the floor gets lost. Rewriting it would remove most of that description and focus on the action, maintaining a certain amount of tension:

“He turned on the light to find a crowded bedroom and the body of a woman on the floor near the fireplace.”

Your Readers Don’t Need To Know The Exact Height and weight of a Character

Unless it is vital to the story. Saying that a character is 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 200 pounds slows the story down, especially if it is about a new character. Try using inference instead:

“He was a heavy man, not tall but with enough muscle to make me think twice about getting into a confrontation.”

Dialog Tags Are Not Needed For Every Spoken Sentence

Tags like, “He said”, “she asked”, etc. are irritating when used with every sentence, especially where you have a long dialog. You can safely remove every fifth or the sixth instance to start with and then get rid of a few more. This keeps your dialog snappy and to the point.

Clean Up The Clutter

By the same token, don’t use too many exclamation marks, commas, semi-colons and so on. Read through your manuscript and remove those that really are not needed.

Focus your efforts on these and your writing will flow much smoother and more natural.