100 ways to improve your writing - Gary Provost 2019

Write complete sentences
Ten ways to develop style

Usually, only a complete sentence expresses a complete thought. A complete sentence has a subject and a predicate. “The cat jumped off the roof” is a complete sentence. “The cat jumped” is also a complete sentence. “The cat,” however, is not a complete sentence. You should try to write complete sentences.

However, if your high school English teachers told you that all incomplete sentences were unacceptable, they were wrong. Good writing often contains incomplete sentences. The incomplete sentence is a useful tool. Used wisely, it can invigorate the music of your words. Like a chime. Or the beat of a drum.

Here are two examples. The first is from my story “The Eight Thou.” The second is from Ping by Gail Levine-Freidus.

“Be damned if I know,” Charlie said. He got the cop laughing, then he patted him on the elbow and said, “Hey, look, you got a couple of cigarettes? I could be in this place for a long time. Years maybe.”

This is the way Charlie liked to work them. Shoot the breeze. Crack jokes. Butter them up. Be cute. Then hit them for what you really want. He had charmed his way down from Burlington, Vermont, this way, thumbing and lying like a carnival barker all the way into Boston. His real dream was the West Coast. California. But he’d figured a big city like Boston would be the place to stop first and somehow hustle up a couple of hundred bucks for the cross-country trip. Unfortunately, the Boston P.D. hadn’t been quite as enchanted by his spiel as some of the people who had given him rides. He hadn’t been in town long. Ten days. And this was his third arrest.

When I first arrived, I saw nothing. In time I discovered light. White light. And weightlessness. Then there was motion. For a while I felt as though I were flying. Soaring. Later, I sensed a stillness which held me nearly breathless. Yet, I was unafraid.

Note that the partial sentences are used sparingly. Incomplete sentences do not fare well in large numbers or in groups. They draw their musical strength and often their meaning from the complete sentences that surround them.

So write complete sentences ninety-nine percent of the time. But now and then, if a partial sentence sounds right to you, that’s what you should write. Period.