Up for a writer challenge?

Are you up for a challenge?

I was looking on a website for a literary agent, and found one that has a submission system set up to take on-line queries. It’s set up almost like filling out an online job resume, or application. 

One of the questions that surprised me was… What is the one best sentence in your whole manuscript? As you can imagine, I was thinking, “My manuscript is 100,000 words, and you want me to tell you what I think is my best sentence.”  Wow, that’s asking a lot. 

However what I found out was that this is a great exercise for you to try, and you could potentially craft better sentences in the process. I searched my entire book, and wrote down my favorite sentences. Some were very long, even hinging on a run-on, others very short, and some regular lengths. Then I went around my office and asked four people what they thought were their favorites. To my surprise some of the ones that I thought weren’t as good, were rated better than I thought they would on a scale of one to ten, and some of the ones I loved didn’t rank nearly as well as I had hoped. Fear not, I took this as a way to make those sentences better and to make them really pop.

It was really interesting finding out what people thought made for good sentences with very little to go on. Most of my co-workers know I’m working on a zombie novel but they’ve never read it, or at least any of it in context. But, narrowing it down to the smallest element, in my opinion the sentence it put my work under the microscope which I believe helped me improve. 

If you’re looking for ways to improve your writing I’d suggest doing what I did; besides it can’t hurt. Well, maybe just a little.

1. Write a book (or poetry, lyrics, etc.)

2. Find every sentence that stands out to you.

3. Find several people to read them aloud.

4. Have them rate it from 1-10.

5. Listen to why they rated them the way they did.

6. And improve the ones that didn’t do so well.

7. And be proud of the ones that did better then, or just as good as you thought they would.

Good luck and God Bless.