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The Art and Science of Relating: Meet Your Reader’s Expectations, with Alan Alda, Actor & Author, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
If the reader actually has expectations while reading a sentence, that’s very much like what the person is going through as I talk to them. Because as I talk to them through the keyboard, as I put down each thought, if the reader has expectations about where those thoughts or where those parts of thoughts come in a sentence, then I have the advantage of knowing what’s going on in the person’s head because I know what they’re expecting. And if you don’t meet their expectations you tend to confuse them.
Sentence Structure
At the beginning of the sentence–way at the beginning of the sentence–is where the reader expects to see what the sentence is going to be about. That sounds kind of simple-minded, but it’s shocking when you read a lot of stuff and you realize that what the sentence is about is sometimes after two or three clauses. And you don’t really know what you’re supposed to pay attention to. Then, what it’s about has something that it does – some action that takes place. Because I’m from the stage I think of it like this. The sentence is about the hero of the play – that comes early on. The hero of the play better come in soon, or you’re going to think that Hamlet is not about Hamlet but about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. So get Hamlet on pretty quick. What’s Hamlet there for? What’s it about? What’s happening in the sentence? That’s the verb. Get the verb as close to what the sentence is about as possible. Then, at the end of the sentence comes the new material. You start with what it’s about, what happens, and then some new information that’s the point of emphasis. For me that’s like the punchline of a joke. You don’t put the punchline ahead of the straight part. The straight part sets you up for the punchline. The last part of the sentence is an emphatic moment. It’s no good to dribble on after the point of emphasis, because it’s just not interesting anymore.
The Next Sentence
The next sentence should pick up on where the last sentence leaves your brain. Sometimes you might even repeat the same words, or some thought similar. But wherever you’ve left them, wherever you’ve deposited the reader at the end of the sentence, the next sentence should pick up on that. Don’t come in from left field. If you do that, if you pick up where you left off, then the writing gets smoother and there’s more clarity because they’re with you. They get on your train with you and they go someplace with you. And I personally have found this so helpful that I don’t write a sentence, even in an email, without thinking about the structure of the sentence. It sort of becomes second nature to me now. I take pleasure in figuring out how the next sentence comes out of the first sentence, and so on. It’s really fun to do that.