: Re: How can I make my roleplay sentences more interesting, and less lengthy? For the past four months, I've been writing back and forth with a friend of mine in a form of roleplay. Depending on

@Kevin153

Vote Up Vote Down

I don't think length per se is a problem in your examples. It's more the monotony of the repeated three-part structure.

Here some ideas for varying the structure.

Varying Length and Structure. First, break down your sentences into individual propositions--teeny, tiny sentences, each of which makes a single claim. Like this:

She touched him. (implied by your first clause)
He leaned into the touch.
He watched her.
He smiled.
The smile was on his face. (a bit silly to break it down this far, I admit)
The smile was content.

Now combine these individual propositions in as many ways as you can think of:

He leaned into her touch. He smiled, content, as he watched her.
He leaned into her touch and watched her, content, a smile on his face.
He smiled, content, leaning into her touch as he watched her.
He smiled, content, leaning into her touch, watching her.
...

The Writer's Options is a terrific book of exercises for exploring different ways to combine ideas into sentences. It's a college book—with college book prices—but it's been around since the dawn of time, so you can probably find a used copy at a nice price.

Even Longer Sentences.
Another possibility is to actively lengthen your sentences. As I said, the clunkiness in your examples is in the repetitive structure, and not in the length or clarity of the sentences. Each alone is delightful and clear. I'll bet you have the skill to build longer sentence that are just as clear as your examples.

Brooks Landon's book Building Great Sentences is a tour de force of ways to build even longer sentences than yours, step by step, each step building on the ones before, building clarity, rhythm, specificity, and energy as you go.

Finding Subjects.
If your character is observing things around him, you can sometimes use those things as the subjects of sentences:

The wind rattled through the windows, chilling him through his thin jerkin.
Steam spiraled up from his cup, pirouetted, and melted away into the chilly air.

(0)

Login to post a comment!