Vary your Sentence/Paragraph Openers

Do you ever find that the majority of your sentences/paragraphs start with He/She, I, We, They etc?

If you are writing fiction, you will need to mix up the sentences a bit or risk your readers becoming bored.

On your first draft, don’t worry about it.

When you start to line edit, try to switch round the different elements of the sentence. Remeber:

• Each sentence should only contain one thought.
• The last section of each sentence should always be the thing you most want to emphasise.
• The last sentence of each paragraph should always be the main point of the whole paragraph.
• Never end with a pre-proposition, technically it is not wrong, but stylistically it just looks unprofessional – unless, of course, you are doing dialogue, where ending in a pre-proposition may add an element of realism.
• If a sentence does not work (feels clunky) switch the end to the start or the middle to the start and reword.
• Alternate names with he/she/we etc.
• Never use etc in fiction.

Hope this helps,

Nick