The way sentences are structured and words are ordered, which controls the rhythm, clarity, and emotional impact of your prose.
Syntax is the architecture of your sentences. It's not just about grammar rules - it's about the deliberate choices you make in how you arrange words, clauses, and phrases. A short sentence hits like a punch. A long, winding sentence that builds through clause after clause before finally arriving at its point creates suspense, momentum, and the satisfying feeling of a journey completed. Same words, different order, completely different effect.
Syntax is the secret weapon most beginning writers overlook. They focus on finding the right words (diction) but forget that how those words are arranged matters just as much. Varying your syntax keeps readers engaged. Monotonous syntax - even with beautiful vocabulary - puts people to sleep. Learning to control sentence structure means learning to control pacing, emphasis, and emotional impact at the most granular level.
Hemingway's syntax is famously stripped down - short declarative sentences joined by 'and,' mimicking the flat affect of someone in shock. The simplicity is the style.
Faulkner writes sentences that spiral across entire pages, clause nesting within clause, mirroring the way memory and obsession work - circling, never quite arriving.
Saunders uses radically fragmented syntax - sentence fragments, interruptions, overlapping voices - to create the sensation of ghosts talking over each other.
Read a paragraph aloud. If every sentence starts with a subject and follows the same pattern, vary it. Front-load a dependent clause. Drop in a fragment. Break the rhythm to keep it alive.
Long sentences are only effective in contrast with short ones. If everything is long, nothing has emphasis. Short sentences create punch. Use them.
Readers remember the beginning and end of sentences best. Put your most important words in those positions. The middle is where information goes to die.
Complex syntax should make the reader feel carried along, not lost. If you have to reread your own sentence to parse it, simplify. Complexity should serve clarity, not fight it.
Open your current work-in-progress and find your most action-packed scene. Rewrite one paragraph using only sentences of five words or fewer. Then rewrite the same paragraph using only sentences of twenty words or more. Finally, write a third version that mixes both lengths deliberately, placing short sentences at moments of impact and longer ones during buildup. Notice how the rhythm changes the emotional experience.