Sentence After Sentence: Telling a Story Creatively

We have a chance with every sentence to make our mark on the world. That is what writers want: they intend to leave something behind. Making something concrete, whether it be facts or simply opinion, is hard. Let's explore what it means to make every sentence count, everyone to have that certain punch to it, and why it is important to catch the reader's eyes.

If we write for newspapers, we can tell a story in an odd way. Mark Twain, when working for a newspaper, would write infamous headlines. He would say something like "Tragedy at sea! Million feared dead." And then Twain would write in the article on the subject that, instead of being factual, he was trying to catch the readers attention. Newspapers may not be on the rise anymore, and such creative titling probably won't work in the modern day, but it can provide a thesis for what we do sentence by sentence. The basic journalist tries to meld the story with interesting facts, apply the piece to something bigger, and then make it concrete by finding the human tale behind it. A journalist can still be creative with their sentences, and even be humorous like Twain if they have the courage. Perhaps adding in sarcasm or other forms of jokes-commonly used not only in papers but magazines-could make the audience smile.

The fiction story is a different animal. Sentence after sentence, we can make more mistakes in the novel than the short story. The short story will be graded by editors like your high school teacher would your final essay. You can work on it for weeks and the prepositions, being verbs, and random thoughts will all be marked with big red letters. This is not to say, sentence after sentence, that the short story will be harder. But, because you have less room to explore, you will have to develop a working method for being clear. A strong opening sentence can set the tone for any piece. If it is a novel we can remember "Call me Ishmael" and go from there (that was "Moby Dick" by the way). We do not have to show a thesis in fiction, but many writers stress we should be clear on our theme. As novels sell, they are usually summed up in a few sentences. There is absolutely no way to sum up a work of art 80,000 words or more in a few sentences, but, if you have to, then consider discovering your theme. The sentences that correspond to your them must be strong, but not give everything away. We want to continue being creative with our word choices and how we reveal a story.

We look at the piece built upon sentences and discover it is not worth anything. This is common; many major writers began by throwing out their work. We can build here, sentence after sentence, and that means if we need a stronger foundation we can do it. We do not look at the 4,000 word short story or 90,000 novel as an uncorrectable thing. Anything built creatively out of sentences can be fixed until the end of time.