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Formatting sentences

lightfulSeer

New Member
Hello People

So I've read many books in order to be better on writing, And it's working! My writing skills have increased a lot on the past few months.
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But one thing that i am flawed at is *drum roll*.... Formatting sentences. I do not mean dialogue of characters. What i mean is formatting narrative sentences.
Ever since i decided to become a writer I've always had great trouble on formatting sentences; It would normally take a minute or two for me to think of a correct sentence
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So if there are any guides or books that talk about the subject you would recommend I'd be very grateful!
Thanks in advance.
(God i hope my post was well formatted)
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Can you explain more about what you mean by correct formatting? Are you talking about grammar? Punctuation?
Can you give an example of where you believe you've done it wrong, and an example of where you think you've done it correctly?
 

Kevin Zagar

Acolyte
Perhaps you're overthinking it? I've found that when I try to come up with the perfect sentence it often ends up being crap and sucks my mental juices. Sometimes thinking gets in the way of writing, at least for me, so I just let my fingers dance on the keyboard and try not to think about formatting too much. I can always edit bad sentences later :)
 

AMObst

Dreamer
I agree with Kevin - get the story down in the first draft then edit the grammar and punctuation later. I often find myself having to tease out long sentences that need to be broken up or punctuated better to make sense. One trick that may help is to read them out loud - that can be a way of working out where the commas etc go.
 

zoey

Acolyte
I totally agree. Story first, polish next. Sometimes I just jot down words one below the other as the story unfolds in my mind. I then write it out.
Also, reading aloud works like a dream for me.
My sister is a teacher. Her students use writing tools and plagiarism checkers. I have never thought of using those.
 
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