Writing a story (or even a work of non-fiction) involves a lot of moving parts—imagination, rational thought, language skills, literary sense, style, et al. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, though—sometimes you get so caught up in trying to capture voice or describe action that you forget to pay attention to some of the most basic, dumbest things that can make your writing suck.
Writing a story, for example, is as much about the placement of words on the page as it is the ideas that those words convey. This is one reason writer’s have experimented with the form of their sentences as much as they’ve experimented with the content.
Writing a story is therefore more than just a mental act. It’s a physical one, with a physical record that can affect how your reader interprets or reacts to a story. For example: Stacked paragraphs.
Writing a Story
Look at the first three paragraphs of this little essay; they all being with the same three words. This is a bit of an extreme example of Stacked Paragraphs; for me it usually manifests in a more subtle way—like starting every paragraph with He. “He looked. He stood up. He sighed.” That sort of thing. Very often I’ll pause in the middle of writing a story and realize I’ve started the last six paragraphs with the word He, forming a stack that jumps out at you once you see it on the page or screen.
This can be bad because it becomes a drone in the reader’s mind, a repeated rhythm and beat that—unless it’s on purpose for a specific reason—makes your writing seem dull. When the reader subconsciously anticipates how every paragraph begins, they start getting lazy about reading your work—and then they get bored.
Stacked paragraphs is a minor thing you can fix easily enough in revision—but to do so you first have to be aware of it. Keep your eyes open.
And when fixing it, resist the urge to drop all kinds of bizarre new ways saying He did something. Getting rid of stacked paragraphs with awkward constructions or oddball word replacements might liven up your writing, but it leads you into a whole new minefield.
And whatever you do, don’t think about all the dumb mechanics mistakes you’re making that you haven’t noticed yet. Believe me, that way lies madness.