Sentence Sundays! Words!

Yes, I know it's Saturday night and not Sunday, but tomorrow I start the drive from Mississippi to Minnesota to go visit my family. I can't tell you guys how ridiculously excited I am :)

So, here's your sentence Sunday post a night early, and it's all on words, specifically word variation.

I admit, varying words is not easy. But honestly, does your reader really notice if you've used the word cacophany twice in one book? Umm, yes! At least I do.

But what this post is really about is insuring you vary how you begin a sentence.

Here's an example of a paragraph I wrote tonight:

    Twisting on my toes, I look back to Kira, her blond hair brittle in the morning sun. My shoulders sag and I turn look over the expanse of desert we are travelling across. I shuffle forward, continuing to walk up the small mound of dirt that has formed into a hill.

But what if I had written it like:

   I twist on my toes, looking back to Kira, her blond hair brittle in the morning sun. I sag my shoulders, turning back to look over the expanse of desert we are travelling across. I shuffle forward, continuing to walk up the small mound of dirt that has formed into a hill.

Every sentence here begins the same way, always beginning with the word I (yes, the format is the same, but I don't know what you call those sentences so I'm not messing with that part). Isn't the first example more interesting? The reader isn't punched in the face by an 'I' character, someone completely all about me, me, me.

If you find yourself beginning several sentences in a row with the same word: he, she, I, my, change it. Those words begin to grate on your reader and your writing will become boring as there are no surprises, and as we all know, surprises are a great thing :)