Tone, Sentences and Paragraphs

Tone

As you think about organizing your work, whether fiction or nonfiction, consider
your audience and the tone you need.

Academic works require a precision regarding fact and citation, but are often nuanced, using longer, more complicated sentences than other forms would require. A children’s book, on the other hand, requires simpler, less nuanced, language and sentence structure. Science books written for a popular market, need to have the feel (pacing and style) of a novel, but the rigor of the science they represent.

Sentence

Sentences can be simple or complex: Nine sentences, ninety-eight words: that’s ten words per sentence.

Whereas: On the other hand, when I briefly speak to you of the Gothic school, with reference to delineation, I mean the entire and much more extensive range of schools extending from the earliest art in Central Asia and Egypt down to our own day in India and China:—schools which have been content to obtain beautiful harmonies of colour without any representation of light; and which have, many of them, rested in such imperfect expressions of form as could be so obtained; schools usually in some measure childish, or restricted in intellect, and similarly childish or restricted in their philosophies or faiths: but contented in the restriction; and in the more powerful races, capable of advance to nobler development than the Greek schools, though the consummate art of Europe has only been accomplished by the union of both.

(John Ruskin, Lectures on Art) is one sentence in 138 words.

It is hard to find Ruskin’s style easy—an entire book of it is an acquired taste—but sometimes a long sentence is necessary. Use sentence style, length, and structure to move the reader through your work. Cleaving to sameness is deadly dull.

Paragraph

Like the sentence, a paragraph can be one or a thousand words. Paragraphs represent a relatively complete thought opening with a topic sentence, followed by its development, ending with a conclusion that also acts as a transitional sentence, leading to the next paragraph. A solid, two- page, single paragraph will be harder to read than if it is broken into discrete, smaller, sentence groupings. To find the appropriate points where a new paragraph can start may take some rewriting and if a paragraph must be long, then accept that and don’t artificially break it up.

While you should resist changing your tone, varying the sentences and paragraphs makes your work more accessible and lively.

Pacing

Pacing is the manipulation of time. If you tell your story in short, declarative, sentences, it’s over in a few pages. It could be an exciting communication, but it won’t engage the reader. This might be how you describe a near traffic accident that happened on your way home from work:

I was on 180km/hr driving home. I saw a truck in the oncoming lane throwing off sparks. Suddenly its rear wheel broke loose. It passed the truck and bounced across the median towards me. I slammed on the brakes. It passed in front of me by maybe twenty feet. Phew! That was close!

It’s not a book. It’s not even a short story. But it was exciting. It could be a scene in your story, but it cannot be told like that. For example:

You would set it up like this:

Your day was one meeting after another, phone calls and problems. You might repeat a bit of dialogue from an endless meeting with the CEO, who had nothing to say. It was late when you left the office. All you could think of was getting home.

You could describe the scene like this:

It was dusk, the lights of the oncoming cars flash across your windshield. The highway curved through the hilly landscape. Alternating patches of farmland and trees blurred past you. You might see the lights in the houses, and imagine being home, sitting with a drink, glad the day was over. NPR was reporting a story about North Korea.

You then tell the story like this:

You saw sparks flaring in the distance. More and more. Brighter. “What the hell is that?” you wonder. Perhaps a truck is on fire. “North Korea today launched a test. . .” You turn the volume down on the radio. The woods end on the far side, and in what’s left of the orange glow of the setting sun, you see the truck. It’s rear wheel seems to disengage from it. “It’s the light,” you think, rubbing your eyes. You know you’re tired. Then the wheel passes the truck. You wonder if it will flip over and slide to a stop. It doesn’t. It bounces towards you in menacing twenty-foot leaps. It isn’t going to stop! You slam on the brakes, as it passes a few feet in front of you.

If you told it along those lines, you did several things that are what pacing is about. You controlled the time, creating distance between the beginning of the scene and the climax. You broke up the simple narrative with description and dialogue. There was a kind of reminiscence (being home, having a drink after work). The sentences were varied in length and construction.

The structure of a book is like that. You have five tools: Narrative, Character, Description, Dialogue, and Style. You use these to tell your story, which usually has an inciting conflict. Alternate these elements (not literally in order and not over and over) to develop each scene, and scene by scene to finish your book. You need distance between the inciting moment and the climax.

Most people tell their stories in the third person by the omniscient author

John thought that the situation was peculiar.

Be sparing, let the character’s words and actions show what John thought when it fits the story.

You could also tell your story in the first person:

I woke up to find myself on the cold cement floor of the city jail.

This form can add immediacy and excitement, but remember the person telling the story cannot know what other characters are thinking or feeling, nor can things be described from someone else’s point of view.

Most people read for character, story, and style. Character, story, and style: sometimes, if you are lucky, you find all three in one book. It is worth striving for all three and finding the perfect pacing for your story. However, if this becomes a juggling act with a few too many balls, let it go, but keep it all in mind when you edit and revise your book.

You might think of pacing on several levels:

·        Globally – your story has a beginning, middle and end, you alternate scenes with more or less action, more or less description, to build towards the climax and dénouement.

·        Strategically – you vary sections, slow and fast, peaceful and stormy.

·        Tactically – you vary the elements and sentence styles within a scene.

The most important aspect of all of this is: if you don’t write your book, none of this matters. Therefore, think about these things while you are out for a walk with the dog, or thinking about what you will do tomorrow. Think about them when you reread your work. Ask if moving a scene from chapter three to the beginning might not draw the reader in more quickly.