The Sentence

It starts with a thought. After you think about it long enough, you put it on the page. It’s the first step. It can gush out of you, or it can be a painful trickle. I’ve written over a dozen pieces for this blog. Most of the sentences gushed out. But writing about the thing itself can be frightening. There have been volumes written about the meaning, structure, and style. Shorter is better. But length shouldn’t be the determining factor of what makes an impactful sentence. Re-writing and revising is an art form in itself.

The different forms of writing, fiction, non-fiction, newspaper writing, magazine writing, or writing for television news are all built with sentences that must be able to stand alone, and be part of the big picture the author is painting. It can inform, educate, and entertain. It can make us angry, sad, or happy. It can inspire us to action. That’s a powerful weapon. I think we have a responsibility as writers to treasure it, and teach it. In the new world of Twitter and Facebook, it’s critical the art of writing not be lost.

I don’t mean just for writers. Writing and public speaking are still the foundation for success in most careers, and by public speaking, I mean being able to express ideas and hold the attention of two or three people, not thousands.  Too many students are coming out of good universities without the ability to write well, and without the ability to express themselves verbally without using, “I mean” or “like” as a crutch.

We have to understand the power of the sentence. They have started wars, inspired movements, demanded justice, and brought us together in times of celebration and sorrow. We look to leaders to fashion words and sentences to rally us. In this political season, we are also seeing how what candidates say can determine their future.

The sentence can give us a sense of order. We can take it apart. Analyze it. Re-write it to make it better. We can even diagram a sentence, as many of us did in elementary school. Many found it hard to understand why they needed to know about conjunctions and prepositions and commas and semi-colons. They are the tools we can use to build the bridge of communication.

We all love a good story. They tell us who we are. Good sentences take us along for the ride. They reveal the story. One flows into the next. They pull us from page to page. What’s better than a book you can’t put down? What better compliment for a writer. We have to appreciate how they worked on crafting each word into a sentence. A well written sentence has a flow, a cadence that can be felt just like notes in a piece of music.

Writing can be a lonely business. For a writer, there can be nothing more intimidating than a blank page. Just you and that blinking cursor waiting for you to make a move. There is the rush as the thoughts start to become clear. We can see the beginning of the road that we will take to tell our story whether it’s a novel, short story, history, news story, or presentation on how to increase sales. You can feel the release of energy as the words come together to form that first sentence. Writing is an expression of human emotion. It can be exhilarating. It can be torture. It’s where ideas come to life.