Many things can ruin a story: A Mary Sue, bad pacing, laughing at your son’s big balls.
But what can ruin it for many young authors is the formatting. Now hear me out before you call me nit-picky.
It’s one thing to write what a character is feeling. It’s a whole other thing to make your readers feel that same emotion. And the easiest way to do that is simply with your sentence formatting.
Is that how you’re looking at me right now? Oh, so you don’t believe me? Imagine a text message with a simple phrase:
See you soon
Versus
See you soon.
Does the period make it feel ominous to you? Does it stress you out and make you feel like the previously content statement is now more of a threat? No? Oh. Well, ignore that then.
Let’s take something generally known like breakdowns. As someone with an anxiety disorder, I experience them often (anxietymaxxing). Everything blurs together, compressing on one another. Your mind races, and it leaves you breathless as though you had been talking nonstop. And when you start crying, it’s even worse. It’s not all out of sadness, if there’s any at all. It’s the frustration. It’s stress. It’s helplessness. It’s shame for not being able to settle the issue without breaking down.
Describing a breakdown like that is great! But if you want to make your readers feel the stress, you must stress out your sentences. Character feels out of breath? Use run on sentences to drag out the thoughts or actions or descriptions so that the reader feels out of breath just trying to reach that gracious period so they can finally breathe. Character’s thoughts rushing in on one another? Don’t finish a— wait, you should actually just jump— No. Go from idea to idea. Use short sentences. Use brief sentences. Break apart sentences with words of exasperation or excitement or whatever your character is feeling.
For example, let’s take the words from earlier starting from “Everything…” and ending at “…down”.
“Everything blurs together, compressing on one another. Your mind races and it leaves you breathless as though you had been talking nonstop and then you start crying— God, the crying. It becomes even worse and you struggle to explain to others that it’s not all out of sadness— if there’s any at all. It’s frustration and it’s stress and it’s helplessness and most of all it was shame for not being able to settle the issue without breaking down.”
Emotions like anxiety aren’t structured, so why should the words describing it be? Breakdowns don’t care about grammar. Laughter doesn’t wait until the sentence is over.
Of course, a story can be great without this advice! Just think about how your sentence structure could hinder or help to convey emotion or mood.
Thanks for reading!!!!!
<3