on Live Write Thrive:

Every writer should spend time learning the tools of his trade. We use words, and we use them in abundance. We should wield them both creatively and correctly. And if we are fiction writers, we should particularly be in search of the well-crafted sentence.

We’ve all heard it said that before you can break the rules, you need to master them. I agree, for the most part. Some writers have a wonderful style that doesn’t adhere to a whole lot of grammar rules. Some of those writers bring the flavor of ethnicity to their prose, or reflect a lack of proper education to their first-person narrator (consider Mark Twain’s characters, for example). There are times when deliberately breaking those rules works.

But a whole novel with fractured or chaotic sentence structure is going to give most readers a headache.

The sentence, to me, is the foundation of all prose. I love a beautifully crafted sentence. I love to be surprised by an unusual, unexpected word.

The placement of each word in a sentence can be carefully decided for a specific impression or impact. Moving one word to the beginning or end can change the feel or sentence meaning, even if subtly.