Vocabulary and Sentence Structure

Consider your target audience when choosing your vocabulary. This will help determine whether to use complex sentences and a broad vocabulary, or simple sentences and words with fewer syllables to achieve a different Flesch reading score.

The English language has a vast array of options when it comes to conveying your message, and your final choice of words affects the overall tone and meaning. Your target audience is a major consideration in how you set your writing’s diction. Let’s look at three competing diction styles:

• Formal Diction: the bus journey was extremely uncomfortable
• Casual Diction: the bus journey wasn’t comfy
• Slang Diction: this bus ride’s a nightmare

Writing Exercise:

Use one of these writing prompt (or create one of your own) to write formal, casual and slang versions of the same anecdote:

• Describe your last drink.
• Explain your favorite meal.
• Share your worst plane journey.

Develop Cadence

Have you noticed that when sentences are all the same length, no matter what you’re reading, it soon sounds monotonous and boring. Shorter sentences can add excitement and drama, whereas longer sentences can lull the reader into a reflective mood.

To adjust the pace of your narrative, vary the length of your sentences. This speeds up and slows down your narratives. Writing shorter sentences quickens the speed it’s read at, and this helps to add drama to your writing.

Conversely, if you’re writing about a reflective experience or encounter where you want to lull your audience into a contemplative mood, use longer sentences.

For example, look at these two sentences:

1. The waves crash rhythmically against the shore. Each wave slides elegantly along the sand as far as it can, until dragging itself back out to join the aqua swell. Back and forth, and back and forth. An endless cycle of movement that mesmerizes your eyes and drags your brain towards introspection.
2. Crash! Another wave hits the sand. Your eyes glaze, your daydream starts.

The first example has longer sentences and different vocabulary, creating a cadence that successfully lulls the reader into a reflective mood. Whereas the shorter sentences in the second example feel too urgent to induce a daydream, and therefore make this writing less believable.

The language and cadence used in your narratives, coupled with your unique perspective and tone, are the stepping stones to creating written content that is uniquely yours.

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