3 Ways to Make Your Prose More Engaging

With full acknowledgment that there are no "rules" in writing, there are at least some guidelines—certainly considerations—that most writers can leverage to increase the efficacy of their writing voice on a sentence level. No matter your genre, audience, or personal style, there are some general qualities of good, effective writing that would behoove many to keep in mind. While these suggestions are geared toward creative writing and narratives, they're applicable across media.

So, let's cut right to the chase: Here are three simple best-practice considerations that you can start looking for in your next editing pass.

Vary your sentences to prevent monotony. Nothing loses a reader’s engagement faster than repetitive grammar and phrasing. There are three components of writing that, together, constitute your “voice”:

• Diction (word choice)

• Syntax (sentence structure)

• Sentence length

The words you choose, how you structure them, and where you choose to end your sentences are ultimately what dictate the style, flavor, tone, rhythm, etc. of your unique voice. But even if you’re aiming for a particular style, variety is the spice of life.

Gary Provost has an oft-quoted example of the impact of sentence length:

Repetitive diction and sentence length are simple enough to notice, but what about sentence structure? It’s more nuanced, and you might not immediately identify which sentences have the same syntactical construction. A good place to start is looking at the first words of your sentences. Do you keep starting with a character’s name, or their pronoun, or even a subject? Force yourself to start differently. Here’s a quick and cute breakdown of 6 different ways to start a sentence.

You don’t have to keep all of this front-of-mind while you’re writing. But when you go back to edit, consider going on a repetition scavenger hunt and injecting more variety into your word choice and sentence construction.

If you’re familiar with the literary principle of Chekhov’s Gun, wherein every prominent detail of a story must have plot relevance, then let me offer a similar principle but on the sentence level: Every word of a sentence must help contribute to or underscore that sentence’s point—which is to say, trim the fat. Call it Arm’s Sirloin, if you please.

Practically, this mean omitting redundant details, needlessly wordy phrasing, “fluff” words, subpar adverbs, and anything else that you might come to realize adds nothing to the meat of your sentence.

Here’s a particularly handy guide that breaks this down, with practical examples.

In many cases, you can write more succinctly and more effectively by simply using better verbs. Instead of writing “she walked at a leisurely pace,” try, “she strolled.” It works for dialogue tags too: rather than “she said curiously,” try “she mused.”

Note: This coincides with another oft-touted piece of writing advice, which is to be wary of adverbs. I wouldn’t go that far. All words have their place. But if you find yourself often relying on adverbs to qualify how characters speak or act, consider that there might be a

word for it.

These are called strong verbs, and they’re particularly nifty for saying exactly what you mean while also keeping the pacing tight. Here’s a great blog post with examples of how to use strong verbs for most occasions.

Filter words are those that note, explicitly, that a character is experiencing the world around them. Maybe they’re seeing something, maybe they’re smelling it, or maybe they just thinking. But in all those instances, it’s a reminder that the character is actually the one experiencing the story—not the reader—and that can break immersion if you’re not careful. For example:

John saw a brilliant yellow bird flying overhead. He smelled petrichor wafting through the damp air. He wondered how long it had been since he last ventured outside.

Yes, John is technically doing all of these things, but he would be experiencing them even if the narrator didn’t remind us that fact. And, better yet, the reader could experience them more immediately.

A brilliant yellow bird flew overhead. The scent of petrichor wafted through the damp air. How long had it been since he last ventured outside?

Now, is this second version objectively better? Trick question: There’s no objective answer. However, most writers seek to maintain a closer narrative distance, and those filter words keep readers at an arm’s length by having the character’s repeated presence situated between them and the story.

Like all writing guidelines, this is a matter of context. There are some stories that work better by having more narrative distance. Some genres, themes, or moods simply call for more or less emotional entanglement between reader and protagonist. But, in the interest of doing everything with intention, be aware of your filter words. If you’ve been using them without a second thought, there’s a good chance that you could remove some of them to tighten up the writing.

And even if you don’t care about narrative distance, removing filter words is an easy way to boost your writing efficiency (you haven’t forgotten about Arm’s Sirloin already, have you?)

For more on narrative filtering, here’s a Masterclass article.

If you found this helpful, feel free to pass it along.

Or don’t. It’s your writing. There are no rules—just considerations.

-Happy writing!