: Re: Making simple sentences more interesting The street is filled with cars and people. I tend to write simple, straightforward sentences, like the one above. Can you suggest ways I can write

@Megan928

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I was just (politely) criticized (or rather cautioned) by another user on a related matter. Referencing Stephen King, I was informed "The road to hell is paved with adjectives". Now, adjectives aren't your particular problem , but the idea is the same: you're telling, instead of showing. Your sample sentence sounds more like directions to a stage manager: it's giving them the information they need to construct the scene, but not in any way that is likely to engage them as a reader. I think a more interesting and engaging sentence would tend to relate the information you want to convey in terms of how it effects the characters. For instance:

Out on the street, they struggled to make any progress against the throngs of pedestrians and motorists.

Obviously, this depends a lot on your story and on the particular circumstances of the scene but the general idea is simply that if you think the sentence sounds boring, you can often improve the situation by illustrating the effects of something, rather than simply describing it's form (it's very existential, besides =).

More generally, if you want to make your sentences "more interesting", I would suggest developing a rich vocabulary and utilizing a thesaurus (but don't overdue it), learn the proper use of semicolons, and emdashes for parenthetical information (don't overdue either of these, either), and learn about different kinds of grammatical constructs. Subject-verb-object over and over and over will make your story very boring; I know your English teachers probably took points off for the passive voice, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it, and if you learn to use it correctly (and sparingly), it can make your writing less monotonous. See, for instance, this site.

As far as books to read for examples, I would avoid any "super market" books (anything you're likely to find in the checkout lane at the super market), and most books with gold or silver text on the cover. These tend to be "mass produced" works where the author is: a) trying to get books out as quickly as possible in order to make money, and b) targeting as wide of an audience as possible, which generally means underestimating their interest in and ability to read "more sophisticated" prose.

Really, any author widely regarded as having literary significance will help you learn different ways of phrasing things, and more sophisticated constructs. I would also suggest a wide variety of authors with a variety of writing styles. As John Landsberg illustrates in his answer, James Joyce will certainly provide some examples of not-at-all-boring (if perhaps wildly challenging) writing, as will Jack Kerouac, to a lesser extent (particular any book he wrote while strung out, which I think was every book beyond "The Town and the City").

As a final note, don't entirely discount simple writing, it all depends on your purpose. I would say, for example, that Kurt Vonnegut's typical writing style was quite simple, which contributes to his stories' typical tone of frank but non-judgmental observation. And yes, it does make them more accessible to a wider audience.

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