How to Write Better Sentences*
(* in a nonfictional context)
1. Revise your work until it is intolerable.
Each sentence should withstand all your scrutiny. You are done when you've made diamonds.
2. Slowly read aloud each sentence.
If you stumble, get snagged, or trail off, revise that sentence until you say it with conviction.
3. Ration concepts and subjects.
Track your sentence's subjects like prey. Mix metaphors if you must, but only if you must. Add a concept when it demands its presence.
4. The god of concision demands blood.
Cut all that can be cut. Focus and free time are scarce; honor your readers.
5. Vary your rhythms.
Reading and writing are aural and musical. Your notes: long and complex; short and simple; long and mysterious; short and cryptic. Play the words.
6. Active sentences are meaning's best conductor.
Passive constructions invite confusion and subterfuge. Declare what you mean.
7. Draft fast, revise slow.
The primary thrill of writing is creating language whose origin you do not know and cannot name. Speed helps the ego yield to intuition. But revision should be defined by friction—by slowing down enough to be filled with connotations and connections. Revision should engender love for each word you choose.
8. Convey facts, truths, and questions.
Fascists want their victims to abandon study, reason, and curiosity. Such men are boring fucks. Ignore them until they rot. You may build with each word a place in which all brave enough to live are sheltered.
9. While revising, you must doubt every sentence.
No sentence is to be accepted as an article of faith. Consciously choose, then confirm, each and every word. In the context of writing, doubt is the foundation of care.
10. Speech is an infinite field. Nothing, everything, and anything can be more precisely named.
Our species is young. Language is young; written language is nascent. All is possible.
11. Rules are not real.
You must die. Until then, you must meet your needs. All else is contingent. Many great works endure because they are deeply strange. Art is anarchic. Do what you want until your heart stops.
I recommend writing a sentence, going to the next sentence and writing that one, and then going back to look at that previous sentence in light of the next sentence. Rewriting the first sentence will improve it, but then you will probably need to rewrite that second sentence again so that it does a better job living with that new, rewritten first sentence. Then go ahead and do a third sentence, but be sure to get a chance to revisit the first and second sentence at least two or three more times, and then revisit that third sentence, as well.