Craft Glossary · term

Sentence rhythm & length variation

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Plain English: Prose has a pulse, set mostly by sentence length and structure. Short sentences punch — urgency, impact. Long sentences flow — atmosphere, contemplation. The mix is the pacing. A short sentence after several long ones lands like a blow; a long one after clipped dialogue is an exhale.

Rule: Vary length and structure deliberately. Speed a scene with short, monosyllabic, hard-consonant words; slow it with longer, polysyllabic, softer ones. Read aloud — the ear catches what the eye skims.

Fail: Even cadence — every sentence roughly the same length and shape, producing a flat, hypnotic, "mathematically even" rhythm. This is the deep machine-tell (see Evenness of register) and the thing the evenness scanner exists to catch.

See: Modulation · Evenness of register · ./run.sh evenness

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