I am so with you on the need to mix it up with regard to sentence length - actually, I'm a big fan of mixing it up with regard to pretty much every aspect of writing, like for example, varying whether dialogue tags are at the front, middle, or end of sentences, implied through action, or missing entirely.
HECK YES. Also not starting too many sentences in close proximity with a participial or a prepositional phrase, or having too many "X, but Y" structures ("hmmm, can I make this one 'Although X, Y' instead?"), etc. I drive myself up the wall sometimes with that hyper-awareness.
I'm super curious to see what you have to say about it!
Pacing per se isn't something I talk about much more in this series; as you'll see with today's new post, the rest of it is more about controlling the reader's focus and attention. Lots of writing advice talks about pacing on the macro scale of the whole story and where key beats fall, but on the micro scale of something like paragraph length, I think I've hit all I really have to say. Anything else more or less gets demonstrated in what I write. :-)
no subject
HECK YES. Also not starting too many sentences in close proximity with a participial or a prepositional phrase, or having too many "X, but Y" structures ("hmmm, can I make this one 'Although X, Y' instead?"), etc. I drive myself up the wall sometimes with that hyper-awareness.
I'm super curious to see what you have to say about it!
Pacing per se isn't something I talk about much more in this series; as you'll see with today's new post, the rest of it is more about controlling the reader's focus and attention. Lots of writing advice talks about pacing on the macro scale of the whole story and where key beats fall, but on the micro scale of something like paragraph length, I think I've hit all I really have to say. Anything else more or less gets demonstrated in what I write. :-)