How to Write the Perfect Sentence

The perfect sentence doesn't have to be grammatically correct. It doesn't have to have a certain number of words and a certain number of beats. The perfect sentence is an entity in and of itself while belonging to a conglomeration of other sentences, forming paragraphs, scenes, and stories.

Or it can stand alone.

The perfect sentence is a snug fit in the place where it belongs--as a whole, as a half, as a fragment.

Or it can be a jagged shard that draws attention to itself.

The perfect sentence needs to convey meaning, although not always through the words alone. It can be a string of sentences mashed together in a rambling muddle that carries the characters and the reader on a rocking and roiling ride of confusion.

Or it can flash and vanish.

The perfect sentence can shock, it can amuse, it can announce the end of an age. It can do anything you want it to do, except perhaps open that jar of pickles.

To write the perfect sentence, don't be afraid to write an imperfect sentence.

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As some of you already know via Facebook, I finished NaNo. That's 50k words written for the first draft. I still have a long way to go with my YA scifi, but I'm having an awful lot of fun.

A huge thank you to S. L. Hennessy for the Versatile Blogger Award. Please visit her blog and say hi from me.

I also won a copy of Secrets of the Knight by Nina Jade Singer from Romance Reader. Thanks so much! I'm looking forward to reading it.

Announcement: On Saturday I will be at Laura Barnes' blog where she will be interviewing me. I'd love to see you over there.

Ngrams and the Evolution of Words

The beauty of technology is that so much information is at our fingertips. Ever since Google scanned 500 billion books (that's a lot of books) we have even more information available to us. The Google ngram viewer shows us word trends. You can type in some words or phrases and it will show the trend of those words across time. It's been around for a while, but it's still a lot of fun.

One great example is throve vs thrived. As the graph shows, it wasn't until the early twentieth century that thrived (the red line) took over as the popular choice.

I tried young adult vs teen vs teenager with an unexpected result:

And someone else found the point where the long s was disused in the early 1800s. Beft vs Best:

I could spend hours trying different variations on these graphs.  

Have you found any cool results?

Note: I'm still in the jury duty process. So far I haven't been picked yet for a trial but neither have I been officially dismissed. It's likely I'll have to head in to the Supreme Court tomorrow. So again, I may not be around much for the next three weeks, but I'll try and catch up with blog visits.