Writing Exercise 1 -- Sentences

[Death Dark]

Want to try honing your skills, stretch your writing legs a bit?  Well, try your hands at a few writing exercises!


"In order to love writing, you have to love to write sentences."

Sentences are, by definition, the basis of fiction writing, or even nonfiction writing.  A story, after all, is a series of sentences (yes, those sentences contain words, but creating those gets you into problems).  A single sentence is enough to tell tales, unravel worlds, and yet the sentence forces it wielder to compress it all into a manageable size.

Today's Exercise:

Write 12 unrelated sentences.


My sentences (previously written):

1)  While most children were learning that the square peg doesn’t go in the round hole, I was learning that it did if you beat it enough.
2)  “Yes, yes – and you think this will solve your problems, hm?”
3)  The man burst out of hiding, burying his blade in its new grave.
4)  And now, with my goal in sight, I head to her – to my future.
5)  As flame cascaded down around them, the dark silhouette of a woman stood up from his foe’s side, the fire within her dwarfing the fire without.
6)  “Silly me; here I was taking you for a fool, but to call you a fool would speak too highly of you.”
7)  “Kill me now.”
8)  “You don’t belong here – what are you doing here?”
9)  Her ears rang as a sound liken unto firing cannon shook the ground.
10)  He leapt as the car reached him, driving a leg boldly through the windshield, directly into the driver’s chest.
11)  There she lay, in pain, in agony, knowing that there would be no one to wake her from this nightmare.
12)  “I don’t remember asking.”

[Omega]

I guess I'll see if I can't actually try to hone by writing skills instead of relying purely on experience. I'm really not that great of a writer in my opinion.

I've got a quick question first. Is the following sentence an actual sentence?

The dark silhouette of a woman stood up from his foe’s side, the fire within her dwarfing the fire without.

This is just a fraction of Death's 5th sentence. I occasionally write my sentences like that with a comma used as more of a slight pause to keep from constant choppy sentences. I know that generally relying on speech to write your sentences is a bad habit, which is why I'm asking if this sentence uses correct grammar. It seems reasonable when you say it, but I don't know what kind of grammar rule it would follow written down.

Here are my sentences, as random as I can make them. I'll take any sort of grammar corrects you have for me. I'm an engineer, not a writer, so this has been a skill that I've had to almost force myself to learn and to adapt to.

1: "A shallow grave is more than enough for you."
2: He gave a slight pause before selecting his final choice.
3: The air seemed as if it would burst from the atmosphere of excitement that exhaled itself from the crowd.
4: "There's always tomorrow," he said with an exasperated sigh.
5: Blood dripped from the nail that had pierced itself through the seat as it found its resting place in her hand.
6: A swift kick was all that was needed to burst open the rusty hinges of the mammoth-like door.
7: "Thats the man that found my wallet!"
8: Her laugh was brighter than the church bells at a wedding day.
9: There was one obstacle that seemed to constantly present itself in his path: the watchman.
10: "Just give me a moment to rest before we continue on through this, this 'labyrinth'."
11: Suddenly, he realized the mistake he had made: his homework was due 2 hours ago.
12: There seemed, however, to be a small light piercing its way through the darkness from a small crack in the box.

[Death Dark]

I guess I'll see if I can't actually try to hone by writing skills instead of relying purely on experience. I'm really not that great of a writer in my opinion.

I've got a quick question first. Is the following sentence an actual sentence?

The dark silhouette of a woman stood up from his foe’s side, the fire within her dwarfing the fire without.

This is just a fraction of Death's 5th sentence. I occasionally write my sentences like that with a comma used as more of a slight pause to keep from constant choppy sentences. I know that generally relying on speech to write your sentences is a bad habit, which is why I'm asking if this sentence uses correct grammar. It seems reasonable when you say it, but I don't know what kind of grammar rule it would follow written down.

The first part of the sentence is an independent clause, making it a complete sentence.  The second part is a dependent clause, which means it's okay to connect simply with a comma.

Here are my sentences, as random as I can make them. I'll take any sort of grammar corrects you have for me. I'm an engineer, not a writer, so this has been a skill that I've had to almost force myself to learn and to adapt to.

I'm a Computer Science and Math major.  Allegedly.

2: He gave a slight pause before selecting his final choice.

"selecting his final choice" is a very redundant statement.

3: The air seemed as if it would burst from the atmosphere of excitement that exhaled itself from the crowd.

This sentence... could use help.  The words you're building your metaphors from are already related in other fashions ("air," "atmosphere," and "exhale"), thus the metaphors ultimately fall flat.  You may try reorganizing the sentences and changing the word choice.

4: "There's always tomorrow," he said with an exasperated sigh.

The speech tag is kind of plain here.  "He sighed" would work fine, we understand from what he's saying that he's rather beat.

5: Blood dripped from the nail that had pierced itself through the seat as it found its resting place in her hand.

Too much is going on in this sentence, frankly.  You either need to break it up into smaller pieces (via reordering and punctuation) or make new sentences.

6: A swift kick was all that was needed to burst open the rusty hinges of the mammoth-like door.
8: Her laugh was brighter than the church bells at a wedding day.

These sentences are Ramen.  They have just enough flavor, and will get you what can be classified as a "meal."  However, you're lacking much.

"With a swift kick, the rusty hinges snapped, causing the colossal door to fall from its perch."

The second will get you by if you're writing a chick-flick type story, though I'd use "laughter" certainly over "laugh" there.

Lastly, saying a door is liken unto an extinct elephant is a confusing simile.

7: "Thats the man that found my wallet!"

You probably want an apostrophe.

9: There was one obstacle that seemed to constantly present itself in his path: the watchman.

Trading some "tell" for more "show" here would be an excellent improvement of this sentence.

10: "Just give me a moment to rest before we continue on through this, this 'labyrinth'."

I'd consider ellipses here.

11: Suddenly, he realized the mistake he had made: his homework was due 2 hours ago.

"He had made" would be a place where you WANT to use a contraction.

12: There seemed, however, to be a small light piercing its way through the darkness from a small crack in the box.

The "however" here could likely be used better if it opened the sentence and were changed to a short phrase to explain some of the situation, as the light seems to be a metaphor in addition to being an object.


Hopefully you understand I'm not just trying to beat you senselessly, but those are what I would do to those sentences.

[Omega]

You're fine. I'm doing this to improve my writing, not be praised or anything like that. I expect criticism, so anything less than that would defeat the purpose of me doing this exercise. I do have some questions about specifics you brought up.

2: He gave a slight pause before selecting his final choice.

"selecting his final choice" is a very redundant statement.

I guess you mean the words "selecting" and "choice" are the redundant words? So would "made his final selection" fix it? I'm slightly confused as to what exactly you mean.

3: The air seemed as if it would burst from the atmosphere of excitement that exhaled itself from the crowd.

This sentence... could use help.  The words you're building your metaphors from are already related in other fashions ("air," "atmosphere," and "exhale"), thus the metaphors ultimately fall flat.  You may try reorganizing the sentences and changing the word choice.

My metaphors have never been all that great. I had tried to revise this sentence since I wanted to keep the whole air theme in there, but I got to a point where I said "screw it" and just tried to force it to work. I generally have this problem when I write metaphors, so I'm not sure if it would be better if I made them extremely simple or just left it out altogether. Apparently making the whole sentence relate to the metaphor doesn't work for me.

4: "There's always tomorrow," he said with an exasperated sigh.

The speech tag is kind of plain here.  "He sighed" would work fine, we understand from what he's saying that he's rather beat.

I tend to be naturally redundant when I write. I like to think it helps clarify whats going on in my posts, but this is an unneeded repetition. I'll keep this in mind the next time I write dialogue.

5: Blood dripped from the nail that had pierced itself through the seat as it found its resting place in her hand.

Too much is going on in this sentence, frankly.  You either need to break it up into smaller pieces (via reordering and punctuation) or make new sentences.

...Then this was my attempt to NOT be repetitive. I also spent some time on this sentence, and again I just gave up and did what I could to finish it up. This was also a more impromptu sentence that I wrote, so I mostly just started writing and hoped it would end up somewhere that made sense.

6: A swift kick was all that was needed to burst open the rusty hinges of the mammoth-like door.
8: Her laugh was brighter than the church bells at a wedding day.

These sentences are Ramen.  They have just enough flavor, and will get you what can be classified as a "meal."  However, you're lacking much.

"With a swift kick, the rusty hinges snapped, causing the colossal door to fall from its perch."

The second will get you by if you're writing a chick-flick type story, though I'd use "laughter" certainly over "laugh" there.

Lastly, saying a door is liken unto an extinct elephant is a confusing simile.

I never intend to use my sentences as full meals. I don't really like writing for writing's sake, but I write to help convey something bigger as a whole rather than packing alot of information into each and every sentence. I guess thats part of the reason I'm doing this though.

I didn't want to use a word like "colossal" or "huge" to describe the door, which is why I went with "mammoth-like" instead. Should I avoid random similes like this, or just use something that's a better comparison? I really don't know what an actual fix for this would be, aside from not using "mammoth-like".

I wrote sentence 8 then didn't like it. That kind of description and feel really isn't all my style, nor is really describing women. I tried to force myself out of my own comfort zone to help expand my writing, but I guess its good to know that the only real issue you had was with "laugh".

7: "Thats the man that found my wallet!"

You probably want an apostrophe.

Indeed I do.

9: There was one obstacle that seemed to constantly present itself in his path: the watchman.

Trading some "tell" for more "show" here would be an excellent improvement of this sentence.

This is the kind of sentence I'd end a paragraph with. I guess you're asking for more description, but this is something I'd more or less use alongside an actual description of the situation. I could combine the 2, but that was my thought and intention for this sentence.

10: "Just give me a moment to rest before we continue on through this, this 'labyrinth'."

I'd consider ellipses here.

Yea, I wasn't sure what exactly I should use. Ellipses felt like it would be too much of a pause, but it's probably better than a comma.

11: Suddenly, he realized the mistake he had made: his homework was due 2 hours ago.

"He had made" would be a place where you WANT to use a contraction.

How come? To not repeat "he"?

12: There seemed, however, to be a small light piercing its way through the darkness from a small crack in the box.

The "however" here could likely be used better if it opened the sentence and were changed to a short phrase to explain some of the situation, as the light seems to be a metaphor in addition to being an object.

I tend to throw my "however"s in weird places. I did that on purpose to see how acceptable it is or not. And I guess you mean that I should use "however" to start a clause to give more information on the situation as a whole?


I tried to write these sentences as best as I could in an RP setting. These are as natural as I could make them, so some things were intentional while others were not. I'm not necessarily trying to defend my sentences, but I am trying to give you a little more insight as to what goes on in my head when I write these down. Like I said though, I generally concern myself with the overall context and situation as opposed to the presentation in each individual sentence. I know I could spend more thought on each of these, but I'm trying to develop my skills to be effective, but not necessarily super-meaty. I only write like this for RP threads, not novels.

[Death Dark]

The evolution of your writing affects everything you write.  It's a mastery of language and its manipulation that you acquire, in the end.

2: He gave a slight pause before selecting his final choice.

"selecting his final choice" is a very redundant statement.

I guess you mean the words "selecting" and "choice" are the redundant words? So would "made his final selection" fix it? I'm slightly confused as to what exactly you mean.

Yes, "selecting" and "choice" are redundant here, which makes it awkward to read.  Something like "making his final selection" or a similar fix would do well, but as the sentence is written, we could switch the words and get "He gave a slight pause before choosing his final selection," which still sounds bad.

3: The air seemed as if it would burst from the atmosphere of excitement that exhaled itself from the crowd.

This sentence... could use help.  The words you're building your metaphors from are already related in other fashions ("air," "atmosphere," and "exhale"), thus the metaphors ultimately fall flat.  You may try reorganizing the sentences and changing the word choice.

My metaphors have never been all that great. I had tried to revise this sentence since I wanted to keep the whole air theme in there, but I got to a point where I said "screw it" and just tried to force it to work. I generally have this problem when I write metaphors, so I'm not sure if it would be better if I made them extremely simple or just left it out altogether. Apparently making the whole sentence relate to the metaphor doesn't work for me.

The metaphors should flow naturally.  Just let them happen.  Or that may just be me (I don't know).

5: Blood dripped from the nail that had pierced itself through the seat as it found its resting place in her hand.

Too much is going on in this sentence, frankly.  You either need to break it up into smaller pieces (via reordering and punctuation) or make new sentences.

...Then this was my attempt to NOT be repetitive. I also spent some time on this sentence, and again I just gave up and did what I could to finish it up. This was also a more impromptu sentence that I wrote, so I mostly just started writing and hoped it would end up somewhere that made sense.

Even when you write, don't forget to revise.

I didn't want to use a word like "colossal" or "huge" to describe the door, which is why I went with "mammoth-like" instead. Should I avoid random similes like this, or just use something that's a better comparison? I really don't know what an actual fix for this would be, aside from not using "mammoth-like".

Avoid similes that don't relate properly.  Comparing a dresser to a cow, for example, doesn't make much sense.  I understand that the door was large, and a mammoth is large, but the mammoth also has more properties than size.  You may also hit up a thesaurus.

9: There was one obstacle that seemed to constantly present itself in his path: the watchman.

Trading some "tell" for more "show" here would be an excellent improvement of this sentence.

This is the kind of sentence I'd end a paragraph with. I guess you're asking for more description, but this is something I'd more or less use alongside an actual description of the situation. I could combine the 2, but that was my thought and intention for this sentence.

You could have the narrator speaking in a more direct sense, and recounting previous encounters.  Such as starting the sentence with "Once more" or "Yet again," and seeing where it goes from there.

10: "Just give me a moment to rest before we continue on through this, this 'labyrinth'."

I'd consider ellipses here.

Yea, I wasn't sure what exactly I should use. Ellipses felt like it would be too much of a pause, but it's probably better than a comma.

Your options are pretty much a hyphen (-), which is the fastest, a dash (--) which is second fastest, a comma, a semicolon (;), or an ellipses (...), which is the slowest.  Semicolons and dashes are used to combine two independent clauses, though; much the same as ", and" and its friends.  If you think it through out loud, you'd probably give some space between the words.

11: Suddenly, he realized the mistake he had made: his homework was due 2 hours ago.

"He had made" would be a place where you WANT to use a contraction.

How come? To not repeat "he"?

"He had made" is simply hard to read.  "He'd made" would be much easier.  Depending on situation, you may, very well, wish to ignore this advice.  Note, also, that I tend to write stories such that they read very quickly.

12: There seemed, however, to be a small light piercing its way through the darkness from a small crack in the box.

The "however" here could likely be used better if it opened the sentence and were changed to a short phrase to explain some of the situation, as the light seems to be a metaphor in addition to being an object.

I tend to throw my "however"s in weird places. I did that on purpose to see how acceptable it is or not. And I guess you mean that I should use "however" to start a clause to give more information on the situation as a whole?

What I meant was to start your sentence with more background information, and remove the "however" altogether.  It would give the sense of contradiction to the backstory, while feeding some reasons why the crack is important.  Then again, as something larger, it may not be as important, but I'm just thinking of the independent sentence.  (Seriously, it's okay to have a sentence that doesn't make sense without the others around it)