Top 5 Tips for Writing Flowing Sentences

Hello my lovely writers!

You might be wondering why I chose the picture I did for the cover of this blog post.

The answer is simple.

Today, we are talking about flow.

The first adjective that came into my mind to describe this picture was flowing and fluid.

These are two things we are going to be aiming for in our writing.

Now, we all know a book is made up of sentences.

That's a given, right?

So to write well and to keep the book going at a steady and natural pace, your sentences have to flow together and combine well.

In this blog post, I'm going to be giving you 5 tips for helping your sentences flow.

1. Use commas, conjunctions, and combine sentences.

Commas are key to making sentences flow.

Short, abrupt sentences, or "simple sentences", are good for action related scenes or suspenseful scenes, but should be used in moderation in the rest of the book.

An example of this sentence would be:

She walked into the room.

This sentence would be good if it was supposed to be an emphasized sentence that carried a lot of meaning, but depending on the mood of the scene or what sentences you are putting around it, it could sound abrupt or broken up.

A way to make sentences flow is to combine sentences and to do that you need commas and conjunctions.

Here's an example.

She shook her head.

She stepped into the ballroom.

Her dress glided across the floor.

These three sentences can easily be combined.

She shook her head and stepped into the ballroom, her dress gliding across the floor.

Doesn't it sound better now? Doesn't it flow better now that I combined the sentences? This is what helps your writing flow. If you combine multiple thoughts or sentences into one, you're moving the story along well and it sounds better to read. It flows off the tongue easier.

Another thing to add in this section is that commas can be preferred to conjunctions—at least some of the time.

Which one sounds better?

The window exploded and glass shards flew everywhere.

Or:

The window exploded, glass shards flying everywhere.

I'm betting you said the second one. That would be what I think as well.

When you take out the conjunction and add a comma, it connects the two actions and makes them easier to read and understand. It helps the book move along at a good pace and helps your reader keep up with what's going on.

This is not always the case of course, and it's usually just the case for the conjunction "and" and not all the others, but it is a good thing to remember.

Next time you have the conjunction "and" in a sentence, look and see why it's there. Make sure it's truly needed and that it wouldn't sound better to just add a comma and make the verb present tense.

2. Start some sentences with a prepositional phrase.

This is a good way to help the flow of the sentences.

If you all paid attention in English class, you know what a preposistion is.

There are a lot of people who say you shouldn't start sentences with a preposition and that is true most of the time (although often, in writing, we have to disregard some "rules" to make our writing sound good). But while that is true, using a prepositional phrase at the beginning of a sentence in a story is perfectly normal and encouraged.

This can help combine thoughts and also help sentences read better.

Here's an example of one:

Stepping into the room, the man grinned widely.

Instead of writing "The man stepped into the room," and "He grinned widely," I put what could've been two separate sentences together, helping smooth the progression of the actions.

Placing a preposition at the beginning of your sentences helps move the story along and keep the actions of the characters going, making it realistic.

3. Put an “-ing” at the beginning.

An "-ing".

In the example sentence in the previous section, instead of writing, "He stepped into the room and grinned widely,"—which could've worked as well—I added an "ing" to the action and placed it at the beginning.

This is, by far, my favorite way to write sentences.

It helps break up thoughts and keep the flow of the words.

And it's so easy to do.

You can change, "She shook her head and paused," to, "Shaking her head, she paused."

You can change, "She danced across the floor and scooped up a t-shirt that'd been strewn across her chair," to, "Dancing across the floor, she scooped up a t-shirt that'd been strewn across her chair."

You can change, "He frowned and stepped backwards, his eyes darting around the room," to, "Frowning, he stepped backwards, his eyes darting around the room."

See how easy it is to add a verb with an "ing" to the beginning of these sentences?

It changes the flow of them and helps the actions connect with one another.

These "ings" at the beginning are technically called present participles.

They bring so much life and a better flow to your writing.

4. Use abrupt and short sentences for intense parts.

When your book starts to get more intense, or if you're leading up to something happening and trying to build the suspense, you don't want to use long, descriptive sentences.

Like I said above, this is where short and abrupt sentences come in handy.

If you get to a part in your novel when everything is getting a bit more tense, try to condense your sentences and use shorter ones with more abrupt actions and wording.

This helps keep the tension in the scene alive.

If you read my Sea of Genres post for suspense, you'll remember when I talked about this as a key factor to keeping the suspense of your novel.

Try to steer clear of the sentences I described above while writing an intense scene.

Instead, write more like this:

She looked around.

He walked into the room.

A bird flew across the darkened sky.

Anything like this works. It helps keep the momentum of the scene and the abruptness makes everything seem a bit more ominous.

5. Alternate the sentence structures.

If we were to write a book with all complex sentences and ones that have prepositions or "-ing"s at the beginning, it would draw on and on and on and feel quite boring and slow moving.

If we were to write a book with all short, abrupt sentences that have no commas or conjunctions, our book would be very broken-up and not smooth to read.

You need to have balance between all of them.

Try to alternate sentence structures.

I'll give you an example:

Evelyne shook her head, a grin appearing on her face. "You little trickster." Playfully flicking her brother, she turned and glared at the person in front of her.

He raised his brows in an innocent way. "What? It was all his idea."

In this section of dialogue, I started out with a long-ish sentence, moved from dialogue to an "-ing" sentence, and then to a shorter sentence before more dialogue.

Did it flow well?

Did all the actions flow together

If I were to use sentences that started with an "-ing" through the whole thing, would it have sounded as good? What about if I just used shorter sentences? Would it have flowed as well?

The key to flowing sentences is this:

Alternate.

Don't stick with the same sentence structure for a long time. You have to keep rotating them. Don't write a bunch of sentences that sound the same over and over again.

I hope you all learned something in this blog post! If you have any questions, just message me in the contact bar below.

Happy writing!

-Jocelyn