A Primer on Sentence Structure

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A Primer on Sentence Structure

This little primer offers a pretty barebones explanation of what a sentence is. But then it dives into some sentence-level issues that I see come up on a regular basis when I edit for other people. I’ll offer ways to find those problems in your own writing and ways to fix them.

Sentence structure is the order of the words and punctuation in a sentence. It’s how a sentence is put together. And it’s a concept that’s incredibly important for writers to understand and master, because structure drives the pacing, cadence, and even the meaning of our sentences.

And, coolest of all, when we make sentence structure better–our writing is improved dramatically. It makes sense, doesn’t it? We’re talking about the building blocks of storytelling.

Let’s start with the most simple, basic sentence. 

To be complete, a sentence has to have two elements: a subject and a verb. A person or an object has to do something. This is called an independent clause. 

These are all complete sentences:

• She ran.

• He ate.

• The chair sagged.

• John worried.

• Mary thought.

This is the most simple sentence possible. When children learn to read and write, this is where they start.

We can add an object to a simple sentence: She ran laps. He ate strawberries. 

There are four parts to a sentence

Subject, verb, object, and prepositional phrases. The first two make a full sentence. The first three make a full sentence. And all four make a full sentence.

Let me show you.

He ate. (Subject + verb.)

He ate strawberries. (Subject + verb + object)

He ate strawberries for breakfast. (Subject + verb + object + prepositional phrase.)

Walden University has a good, clear article about the different types of sentences here. I’m not going to recreate it. What I want to talk about in this post is sentence structure problems and improvements that are particularly useful to fiction writers.

Passive Voice

In the English language, a sentence comes in this order: Subject > Verb> Object. 

He (subject) ate (verb) strawberries (object.) 

If we change the order, the sentence garbles or the meaning changes.

Strawberries he ate.

He strawberries ate.

Ate he strawberries.

Quick aside.

Strawberries he ate is an interesting example. Notice that your brain wants to make strawberries the subject. Like the sentence isn’t a Yoda-like way of saying that he ate strawberries, but a statement on particular strawberries that isn’t a complete sentence.

There’s a sense of needing a little more.

The strawberries he ate were sweet. 

A passive sentence happens when the writer puts the object in the place where the subject belongs. 

It doesn’t stay the object then. It becomes the subject. And now the subject is something that is passively being acted on.

The strawberries (subject) were eaten (verb) by him.

That’s passive writing. When the subject is having something done to it or them. Sometimes the result feels very wrong, so it’s not a problem. For instance, we would never write something like: the laps were run by her.

But we might write something like: She was hit by a car. That sentence isn’t discordant to the inner ear. It sounds natural. But it’s passive. She is the subject and something is happening passively to her, perpetrated by the object. 

She (subject) was hit (verb) by a car (object).

In this case, ‘she’ is the subject and the car, the object, is doing something to her. To make that passive sentence active, we flip it. A car (subject) hit (verb) her (object).

Find and fix the passive voice in your writing.

Search for variations on the verb ‘to be.’ As in my example, where I used the word ‘was’, they are often present in passive voice. Of course we use the use the verb to be in active language, too. For instance: She was crossing to the store when a car hit her. 

So you can’t just willy nilly remove ‘to be’ entirely. (If you search your manuscript for variations of to be, though, I bet you’ll find a ton you could remove.)

If you’re not sure, try the zombie test. After the sentence’s verb, add by zombies.’ It will only make sense if your sentence is passive. In my sample, I have ‘by a car.’ But, if I’d just written ‘She was hit’ I’d have had a complete, passive sentence. You can tell, because “She was hit by zombies” sounds right.

We can’t do the same with the non-passive example. When we try, we get: A car hit her by zombies. See?

Fix passive voice by moving the actual subject to the front of the sentence.

Order of Operations.

When I’m editing, I often use the words ‘order of operations’ to explain why I’m flipping a sentence around.

In a nutshell, you generally want the things that happen in a sentence to be presented in the order they happened.

He hurt her so deeply, she cried herself to sleep.

In this very sad sentence, first he hurt her and then she cried herself to sleep.

She cried herself to sleep, he’d hurt her so deeply.

When it’s presented this way, though, we get the result (crying herself to sleep) before the antecedent (he hurt her deeply.) 

Of course, in fiction there would be context or sentences leading up to this one. So maybe you’d decide that the second way sounds better. But for the most part, the information presented should be in the right order. 

Remember, we read very, very linearly. One word at a time, from left to right. And we don’t know what will happen until we read it. There’s no prescience to reading. 

Another way that the order of operations in a sentence might veer off track is by starting a sentence with a gerund, or a verb ending in -ing. 

Catching herself on the handrail, Mary tripped.

Often writers do this to avoid starting so many sentences with a pronoun or a name. The problem, often, is that it puts things out of order. Mary would have tripped first, then caught herself. 

Sometimes, like in the example above, the result puts the cart before the horse. The order of operations is off.

You can write this sentence with a gerund and the correct order of operations, though, if you flip it. 

Tripping, Mary caught herself on the handrail. 

But that only is grammatically correct if Mary literally catches herself in the same instant that she trips. If she trips first, then catches herself, the gerund is wrong.

Mary tripped, then caught herself on the handrail. 

This sentence puts the things that happen in the correct order and doesn’t imply that Mary caught herself in the exact instant that she tripped.

The fact that this sentence is pretty bland and doesn’t quite capture the drama of tripping and nearly falling is a sign that it might be better to separate the idea into two sentences. That way there’s room for details that bring drama.

Mary’s foot caught the third step and her knee buckled. Her stomach went into free fall, but she managed to catch herself on the handrail before she went down.

You get the idea. 

Find and fix order of operations problems in your writing.

Skim for sentences that start with a result. Unfortunately, this isn’t a super quick and easy fix. But as you’re editing, look for sentences that start with the result of the action that’s to come. The vast majority of the time, if you flip the sentence structure, so that the result comes after the action, you’ll have a much stronger sentence.

Search for -ing verbs. You can search your entire document for gerunds or -ing verbs. There will be a lot. Likely 100s or even 1000s. And you can’t just get rid of them all. For this particular sentence-structure edit, look for sentences that start with gerunds. Often, this indicates that you’re starting with something that actually should come after the rest of the sentence.

Fix order of operations problems by putting the effect after the cause. 

Sentence Length

Sentences, of course, can be as short as two words and as long as a paragraph. I’ve seen sentences as long as a page. 

Take this sentence from Virginia Woolf’s book On Being Ill for example.

​​“Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s arm chair and confuse his ‘Rinse the mouth—rinse the mouth’ with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us—when we think of this and infinitely more, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.”

Very long and complex. And also, incredibly difficult to read. I’m not going to sit here and argue with Virginia Woolf. But, that sentence is a block wall of beautifully written text. To read it, I had to force myself not to skim. 

Sentence length should vary.

Honestly, you have to be Virginia Woolf to get away with a sentence like the one above. It really only works if you’re writing highly literary, stream-of-consciousness prose. So, let’s assume that we are writing regular sentences.

Some might cover a line or a couple of lines. That’s a long sentence.

Others might cover part of a line. That’s a medium-length sentence.

And still others might just be two or three words. You guessed it. That’s a short sentence.

Make sure that you are using some of all of them. 

If you have too many long sentences, then you get the wall-o-text effect and your reader starts to skim. Also, the information in the middle of the sentence loses impact.

She wanted nothing more than to be left alone–why couldn’t they all just leave her alone? But they wouldn’t and so she tuned them out, that worked for a while, but not all night. Eventually, their noise got to her and she had to get up and leave, even if it was extremely rude and her mother taught her better, she just couldn’t be there one more minute without losing her mind. 

If you have too many medium-length sentences, your writing ends up droning. The cadence of it becomes boring. 

She wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Why couldn’t they all just leave her alone. But they wouldn’t and so she tuned them out. That worked for a while, but not all night. Eventually, their noise got to her. She had to get up and leave. It was rude and she knew better. She just couldn’t be there. She’d lose her mind in one more minute.

If you have too many short sentences, your writing ends up choppy.

Leave me alone.  They wouldn’t do it. She tuned them out. For a while. But the noise. She had to go. It was rude. She knew better. But she had to. She’d lose her mind.

But, if we mix it up, so that there are long, medium, and short sentences in the paragraph, then we get something that’s interesting enough to keep the reader from skimming, doesn’t drone, and doesn’t read like a bullet list.

Leave me alone. But, they wouldn’t do it. So she tuned them out, which worked for a while, but not all night. Eventually their noise got to her. She had to get up to leave–it was rude and she knew better, but she just couldn’t be there one more minute. Not without losing her mind.

Long sentences often happen because, instead of a period or question mark, we use a comma, an em-dash, an ellipses, or a connector word. Look at that Viriginia Woolf sentence for an example. She could have used several periods, of course. Maybe a dozen, even. But she uses a lot of commas, a couple of em-dashes, and a few connector words instead.

Fix your sentence length.

There is no real easy way to find where you have too many short or medium-length sentences. It’s just a matter of skimming. There are, however, a couple of ways to suss out very long sentences.

Search your manuscript for connector words. Words like and, so, but, and yet are all words that you might use instead of end punctuation. If you search for them, you might find where you’ve written very long sentences.

Search your manuscript for em-dashes and ellipses. Again, these will help you to find where you’ve used connector punctuation instead of end punctuation.

Read your manuscript out loud. This is the best trick of all. Read your work out loud. You’ll be able to hear if your sentence cadence is too choppy or if it drones on. And you’ll know if you have too many long sentences in a row. In general, where you take a breath is often a good place to end a sentence.

Fix the problem with punctuation. Use periods, question marks, and commas to make sentences shorter or longer. And make sure that you have a good mix of sentence length throughout your manuscript.

Stacking Sentences

The last thing I’ll talk about today is the issue of having too many sentences in a row that use the same structure. 

That can look something like this:

Running late, he hurried out the door. Stopping for the mail first, he was surprised to see a letter from his brother. Putting down his suitcase, he opened it right away.

Oof. You can see why you wouldn’t want to stack sentences that start with a gerund, right? It’s just weird.

But what about regular subject>verb>object sentences? 

He hurried out the door. He was running late. He stopped for the mail first. He was surprised to see a letter from his brother. He put down his suitcase. He opened it right way.

Again. Oof. That reads like a laundry list. Or stage directions. Every sentence starts with the pronoun ‘he.’ It’s better than the gerunds, I think, but still not as good as it could be. 

To avoid the stacked-sentence effect, we have to vary the sentence structure.

He hurried out the door. God, he was running late. So why did he even bother with the mail? The letter from his brother took him by surprise. He dropped his suitcase and opened it right away.

• The first sentence is the same.

• I turned the second sentence into inner dialogue and gave him someone to talk to (God, in this case.) 

• I turned the third sentence into a question.

• I changed up the fourth sentence to put the order of operations right–first he sees the letter, then he’s surprised. 

• I combined the last two sentences, which varied the length and  got rid of another sentence starting with ‘he.’

I started to write the fourth sentence this way: The letter from his brother was a surprise. It sounded okay to my inner ear, but I realized that it’s passive. It has a to-be verb, which doesn’t make a sentence passive, but can be a clue.

And it didn’t pass the zombie test. The letter from his brother was a surprise by zombies. Not great writing, but it makes sense. The protagonist–he–was being surprised by his brother. Passively. 

What I wrote instead was: The letter from his brother took him by surprise.  

No to-be verb. And if we add ‘by zombies’ we get: The letter from his brother took him by surprise by zombies. And that clearly doesn’t make sense.

It still seemed passive to me, though. The man is being taken by surprise. Passively. 

Then I realized that it’s okay for the letter to be the subject of the revised sentence. And it actively took the man by surprise.

Find and fix stacked sentences.

I have a few ideas for finding this problem, but what you really need to do is skim through your manuscript with an eye toward how it looks on the page. Stacked sentences are often visually obvious. 

Search for pronouns. This will take a minute, of course. You’ll have 1000s of them. But look for where you have sentence after sentence that start with he, she, or I.

Search for -ing verbs. If you have more than one sentence in a row that starts with a gerund, that’s stacking and it will stand out to the reader.

Fix the problem by switching up the sentences. See how I fixed that paragraph of stacked sentences. Turn some into questions. Make the object the actual subject (not passive voice, but active with a different subject), Flip the order of operations.