Good storytelling is all about the big pieces: structure, character, theme. But good writing? That’s much more intricate, much more intimate. Good writing is about creating purposeful and interesting prose.

Creating prose of that caliber starts with the mechanics of grammar and spelling. But any middle-schooler is supposed to be able to do that. The art of good prose is about taking sentences beyond functionality and turning them into something surprising.

In short, good writing is all about using the same old words and same old structures to create something new–something readers will never see coming. To a large extent, what this means is reinventing the form–and not just in a once-in-a-lifetime-if-you-get-lucky kind of way. Nope. This is about reinventing yourself and your writing with every word choice.

Not sure you can do that? Consider four ways you can invigorate your prose into something special by injecting the element of surprise into every single sentence.

1. Anticipate Reader Expectations–and Avoid Them

Cliches are rampant–and to some extent, unavoidable. Humans think in cliches. In part, this is because most of us experience similar reactions to the similar things we encounter in our daily lives. In part, it is because the very prevalence of cliches has conditioned us to experience things similarly. And, in another part, it is because our brains are just plain lazy.

Inevitably, we write sentences and include descriptions that tap into these shared experiences and over-trod familiarities. Cliches come into our own minds so easily that it’s instinctive to also put them on the page. Half the time, we may not even realize we’re using cliches.

The problem is that our readers’ own familiarity with these phrases and ideas means they will anticipate our language every single time. The lack of surprise, even on a subconscious level, will suck the life out of our prose.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (affiliate link)

In a October 2014 interview with The Writer magazine, novelist Anthony Doerr suggested that we, instead:

…think about language by its degree of strangeness…. [I] don’t want the sentences to feel entirely familiar, either. If I find myself describing a character’s eyes, for example, I’m probably going to try to avoid verbs like “glint,” or “sparkle” because those are verbs a reader has seen paired beside “eyes” many times before–maybe so many times that they have lost some of their original power.

2. Discover the Possibilities of the Unexplored in Your Prose

Never settle for the first descriptive word or phrase to come to mind as you’re typing a scene. Dig deeper. There exists a wide vista of unexplored possibilities within every word choice. Sometimes changing a single word is all it takes to invigorate your prose from something common and forgettable to something that sparks your readers’ imaginations–and even changes their way of looking at the world.

Your readers’ brains will subconsciously fill in blanks as they read your story. By the time they’ve read only half of a sentence, their brains will already be anticipating the second half. When the second half ends up surprising them–when it ends up avoiding the cliche–they automatically experience a pleasant jolt. A blank opens up within your story, and their brains race to catch up with it.

Maps of the Imagination by Peter Turchi (affiliate link)

In that same interview, Doerr quoted Heather McHugh from Peter Truchi’s Maps of the Imagination:

Given a blank we can’t help trying to fill it in along lines of customary seeing or saying. But the best poetic lines undermine those habits, break the pre- off the -dictable, unsettle the suburbs of your routine sentiments, and rattle the tracks of your trains of thoughts.

This is the birthplace of powerful subtext. By shaking up reader expectations, by making their brains work a little harder, by thrilling them with new possibilities–we open up the world of our stories far beyond the words actually found on the page.

3. Seek Out Surprising Images

Imagery is a vital part of good storytelling. But just like our word choices themselves, our imagery is also likely to start out bland and easily foreseeable. In order to write truly surprising sentences, we must start out with surprising subject matter. This extends to the entirety of our plots, but also to the smaller integers of the actual objects and sensations we are are evoking.

Instead of describing a rosy sunrise, why not concentrate on a more unusual aspect of your setting? Why not focus on the flowers turning their faces to the sun and opening their petals? Instead of describing a bum passed out on the curb with an empty bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag, why not focus on the remaining half of a McNugget clenched in his fist?

The Ambassadors by Henry James (affiliate link)

In his classic novel The Ambassadors, Henry James used the following surprising and deliciously evocative metaphor to describe a lovely young girl:

She was fairly beautiful to him—a faint pastel in an oval frame: he thought of her already as of some lurking image in a long gallery, the portrait of a small old-time princess of whom nothing was known but that she had died young.

Are you digging this deep into your own character descriptions?

4. Create Paraprosdokians–Surprising Sentences at Their Best

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter half of a sentence or idea is completely unexpected (although still sensible), in a way that changes the reader’s understanding of the first half.

Wordplayer Louis Wilberger delighted me by sending me a list of of these clever little word tricks. Some of my favorites included:

• Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.

• The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it’s still on my list.

• Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

• If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.

• Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Or how about Winston Churchill’s famous quip?

It has often been said that Britain and America are two nations divided only by a common language.

Paraprosdokians are frequently employed humorously or sarcastically, but their uses go far beyond simple wordplay. We can use the principle in all aspects of our stories by taking common ideas and turning them into something fresh and original.

Great prose will always be original prose. Frankly, that’s something we see so seldom that its very presence is often the most surprising thing about it. So what do you say? Want to take your prose to the next level? Start by using these four methods to surprise and delight your readers on every page!

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! What do you concentrate on when trying to invigorate your prose into something surprising and original? Tell me in the comments!

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