Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

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You are here: Home / Potpourri / In Praise Of Simple Declarative Sentences

In Praise Of Simple Declarative Sentences

In Praise Of Simple Declarative Sentences

Let’s never underestimate the power of simple declarative sentences.

Don’t stumble around trying to be fancy.

A huge part of this is the fact that clarity and simplicity are persuasive.

And I like Erickson’s way of describing the act of writing here, “just a matter of capturing the details in simple declarative sentences.”

I gave someone this advice over lunch today in fact:

If you ever get lost in the details of an argument or request or idea, make yourself sit down and express all of it in 2 – 5 clearly states sentences.

It can bring lucidity to a muddled mess.

Derek Sivers agrees.

Both the Hank story and the fire story had strong content and were written without any literary ambition of creating a “style.” I wrote them quickly and without much effort. The effort came before the writing—living the events and knowing the characters. The writing itself was just a matter of capturing the details in simple declarative sentences.

-John Erickson, Story Craft (Amazon)

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Filed Under: PotpourriTagged With: #Blogging, #Writing

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