This Fun Writing Technique Adds Energy and Emotion to Your Writing

Imagine reading a text …

The first sentence grabs you gently by the hand.

And it pulls you along to the next sentence, and the next, and the next.

You’re reading and reading, and reading.

But what’s that?

A sentence yanks your arm, and your eyes widen.

When well used, sentence fragments and broken sentences have this kind of impact; they command attention and keep your audience reading on.

Broken sentences are controversial

Strunk and White warn against them in the oft-recommended bible for writers The Elements of Style:

Do not break sentences in two.

They do make an exception for the emphatic use of a sentence fragment. But they do so a little begrudgingly. (You have to be certain the emphasis is warranted!)

Language evolves, and their advice now feels a little dated. When used well, there’s both beauty and power in broken sentences and fragments.

For instance, Nathan Hill uses sentence fragments regularly in his unputdownable novel The Nix. He showcases an informal, modern tone of writing. This style of writing might well become more popular in the coming years.

You can use broken sentences and fragments for any informal writing: blog posts, newsletters, books, emails, or social media posts.

Shall I show you how?

1. Start with But or Because (or another conjunction)

This is probably the most common way to break up sentences. Here’s an example from Nathan Hill’s The Nix:

They’d repair to separate floors of their giant house. It was an uncomfortable life, yes, a painful life. But it was a familiar life.

The last sentence comprises only 6 words, and this shortness helps communicate the message with force. The 6 words summarize an essential truth. Bang. But it was a familiar life.

If the last 6 words had been merged with the sentence before, the message would have been less forceful:

They’d repair to separate floors of their giant house. It was an uncomfortable life, yes, a painful life but it was a familiar life.

Punctuation is not about sticking to grammar rules. It’s a tool to adjust the tone of your writing and highlight key messages.

2. Up the emotion

When I started writing my blog (I can’t believe that’s over 12 years ago), I liked this technique of fragments most.

Not only can it make your writing feel emotionally stronger, it adds a sense of energy. It’s easy to use. Here’s Hill again:

And he needed her to come back. Desperately. Harrowingly.

And:

When Sebastian landed on the police car, he landed hard. On his jaw.

And:

But this girl, she emitted a kind of danger, a flirtatiousness and fierceness that he found alien and unpredictable. Maybe even thrilling.

Note that the super-short sentences above all contain emotional words: Desperately. Harrowingly. Thrilling. Even on his jaw is emotional as we’ve just read that he’s landed hard on the police car. You can almost feel the pain in your jaw. Ouch.

In writing, we can’t use hand gestures and facial expressions. That’s why we often use stronger, more emotional, or sensory words.

And we can further up the emotion by putting emotional words in super-short sentences. Energetically. Emphatically.

3. A staccato rhythm

In music, staccato means that you play each note separately so each note is clearly defined—a bit sharp.

And you can create that similar staccato feel in writing, too, putting stress on almost each word:

She watched him come, her head bent into the newspaper so it wouldn’t look like she was staring, and as he approached his features clarified and she realized she knew him. He was the boy from last night. At the meeting. Sebastian.

It feels like you’re reading her thoughts, right?

Broken sentences are less suitable for formal writing, but they work great for a conversational tone:

Faye listened in wonder. That a boy was saying such things. To her. Nobody had ever spoken to her this way. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and cry.

You can’t use techniques like this too often in your writing. Use it a lot, and readers will feel like you’re trying too hard. The technique becomes too obvious.

So, use in moderation to break up a more flowy rhythm. Stress. Each. Word. But only when it really matters.

4. Present a series

This is also a fairly easy way for using sentence fragments, but you may find fewer opportunities to do it.

This is from The Nix again:

He was young, nervous as all hell, had a brief career that as yet lacked distinction—he had, so far, mostly busted screwed-up hippie kids for minor infractions. Loitering. Jaywalking. Curfew.

An editor may suggest you turn the above into one sentence: … for minor infractions such as loitering, jaywalking, and breaking curfew. But that changes the rhythm a lot, making it less dynamic, and the different offenses almost blur into one.

Here’s another example:

She knew when a building got a fancy name, insufferable people soon followed. Young professionals. Dog walkers. Stroller pushers. Lawyers and their miserable lawyer wives. Restaurants that reproduced Italian trattorias and French bistros and Spanish tapas bars in a toned-down, safely mainstream way. Organic grocery stores and fromageries and fixed-gear bicycle shops. She saw her neighborhood turning into this, the city’s newest hip yuppie enclave.

The one-phrase sentences here stress the separateness of each event: Dog walkers. Stroller pushers. Lawyers and their miserable lawyer wives.

But the long summing up of the whole series also makes you appreciate their connection: The neighborhood is being taken over.

5. Quicken the pace

Broken sentences can help you quicken the experience of a story. For instance:

Faye went home and locked herself in her room. Seriously considered, for the first time, having a boyfriend. Sat on her bed. Didn’t sleep much. Cried a little. Decided by the next morning that, strangely, she actually cared for Henry a great deal. Had convinced herself that she’d always liked his looks.

If you prefer full sentences, you can turn it into this:

Faye went home and locked herself in her room. She seriously considered, for the first time, having a boyfriend. She sat on her bed, didn’t sleep much, and cried a little. By the next morning, she decided that, strangely, she actually cared for Henry a great deal. She had convinced herself that she’d always liked his looks.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But I prefer the original version. Why? Because it gives more attention to each of the actions she undertook. Sat on her bed. Didn’t sleep much. Cried a little. It creates a forcefulness in the story. Almost an inevitableness.

Here’s a similar example:

It’s all arbitrary. Had Faye attended a different school. Had her parents moved away. Had Peggy been sick that day. Had she chosen a different boy. And on and on. A thousand permutations, a million possibilities, and almost all of them kept Faye from sitting here in the sand with Henry.

It works, right?

The sentences are incomplete, but you have no difficulty following this as a reader. There’s flow, and clarity, and precision. Bang. Bang. Bang.

6. A thought bubbles up

We don’t always talk in full sentences, and we don’t always think in full sentences either.

So, why would we need to write in full sentences?

Hill also uses sentence fragments to mimic a thought popping up. It’s almost as if we can hear Faye think:

On the evening of the party, Faye is in her bedroom trying to decide between two versions of the same dress, a smart little summer dress—one green, one yellow. Both were purchased for special occasions that Faye can no longer remember. Probably church-related.

And:

Downstairs she finds her mother watching the news. A story about student protesters, again. Another night, another university overrun.

You could see someone thinking or saying that, right?

The period is the most forceful punctuation mark. It’s a full stop. Use it to your advantage.

Good writing is about paying attention

I see a lot of broken sentences on LinkedIn.

But mostly people use them willy-nilly—just to shorten their sentences without paying attention to flow.

The result is a stilted form of something that looks like poetry but isn’t poetry, and it’s actually hard to read.

So, yes, you’ve got my permission to use broken sentences.

But.

Please, do pay attention.

Read your writing aloud and listen to the rhythm. Does it sound natural? Would you read it to your favorite reader?

Good writing is not about following rules

Good writing is about heart and paying attention.

Paying attention is a form of respect for your reader.

A way to show that you care.

That you care about language. That you care about connecting. That you care about your reader.

Writing as an act of love.

Yes, even if you write for business.

Human content wins. 🖤