Nobody has the right to bore their reader.

     Imagine that we are in bed together... Hmm, let me rephrase that. Suppose our reader is in bed, late at night, bleary eyed, just finishing a chapter of our book, and looking at the next page. And it's solid print from margin to margin. That goes on for another page. And another page. Page after page. Guess what the reader will do folks? And guess what will happened when they return the following night, tired, and look at that relentless block of print?

     If we lose them that first night, we could lose them for all time.

     Now contrast that with turning the same page to a new chapter and finding a short paragraph. Maybe one sentence. Maybe only one word. Or a piece of dialogue. And we follow that by some more short paragraphs or dialogue, all of varied lengths. The eyes are drawn to the first line, just to see the connection with the previous chapter, and that line leads into the next line. Maybe they'll read the whole page, or just a paragraph. Either way, we have whetted their appetite so they'll be eager to return to us the following night.

     Why should we worry about readers late at night? Because if we can hold them at this time, think how we'll grab them when they're fresh. So let's give them some white space by varying the paragraph lengths. If a bit of business requires a lot of explanation, just break the paragraph. And if you don't think that works, throw in a bit of action or dialogue to interrupt it. "He blinked to clear his eyes and turned back to the bomb." Or even--he blinked.

     I think we should view our pages almost like a picture. This might be a crazy thing to say about writing, but our job is to marry our reader to the printed page. It's only black print on white paper. There's no color. No graphics. So we have to make it interesting in the only way we can, through variety.

     The same holds true for varying sentence length and structure. With sentences it's pace. If the cadence of one sentence is like that of the next, and the next, and the next, it goes on like the clickity clack of a railroad track, or the thump thump of tires against expansion joints on an endless bridge. Now we might want this for a small section of writing, to deliberately pound something home, but the endless drone will send our readers off to dreamland.

     Read your writing out loud or into a tape recorder and see how it sounds. This is an invaluable tool and I urge you to use it. If something doesn't sound right, it won't read right. If you run out of breath, the sentence needs a break. If you find the cadence of a passage to be repetitious, change it. Too many times writers aren't willing to put the extra effort in rewriting, but rewriting is more important than the first draft. It's where the art comes is.

     BTW, allow me to insert a personal note that's relevant here. I've just finished podcasting my second book, Capitol Coven which you can listen to or download at [Podio ooks] (scroll down for continuing episodes), or check it out my podcast website at [Sidewalk Books]. The book obviously was written and recorded by me, and the importance of the advice in the last paragraph became clear. Hardly did I record two or three pages that didn't require some change, and this after five drafts. You'd be doing me a favor just to check it out.

     Okay, along with sentence structure, we have a similar problem with word use. Using the same word two or more times on the same page, or at least in a few paragraphs, is jarring. The mind stumbles on the redundancy and loses the flow, like hitting bottom rocks on a sleepy river raft. But this is so elementary we would never do that. Right? Maybe not as we are writing our story, but how about when we come back for another draft? All we're changing one paragraph. But do we look at the preceding paragraphs and those following to see how it all flows together? This is the time words, and even phrases, get inadvertently repeated. So after we rewrite a sentence, we re-read the paragraph, and then the paragraphs surrounding it to see how everything flows. Some writers don't even try. I've seen the same word use three times in four sentences, a sure sign of hackneyed writing, or a writer that doesn't care for the reader.

     Also, somewhere in the process it's important to print out a hard copy. I do it after what I hope is my final draft, but never is. Hard copy looks different. Rough spots that slipped by staring at the monitor now stand out like red painted gargoyles. Things I had honed to a sharp edge now appear dull and lifeless. I don't know why this is, but every writer I know experiences the same thing. I tried changing the format once, like doing a copy and paste into an email. That helped. But nothing will show up bad syntax and bad prose like carefully reading the hard copy. It's a step that can't be ignored. This is the format our reader will be seeing. The saving grace is that this should be the last step before the final draft.

     Lastly, there will always the temptation at some stage to decide the work is good enough. It's not good enough, folks. Either it's the best we can make it or it's not. There is no back door to effective writing.

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     And remember: it's always better to light a candle in your mind by reading [Easy Reading Writing] than to curse the darkness of rejections. There is an easy order link to B&N to purchase the book.