Another Little Writing Exercise: Varying Sentence Openings
Monday, 31 March 2008 Clay Burell 
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Just sharing another quick writing exercise to follow up on the “titles and introductions” lesson using Alltop, since some writing teachers seemed to appreciate that one.
We did this lesson in my PLN/Networked Learning writing elective last week. So many of my students, after 10+ years of writing in school, were writing post after post of the most monotonous, artless sentence structure – the basic Subject + Verb + Object or Complement – that reading them was like Chinese water torture. Not good, when your classwork is a real-world blog project you hope will attract readers about your (presumed) passion, and will continue to be yours long after the school year is over.
So I adapted an exercise I learned from a Six Traits of Effective Writing workshop I attended years ago in Shanghai by posting it on the class blog, and having students “turn it in” in comments to the post in class. Here it is:
Leave a comment in which you write this sentence with as many sentence openings as you can – YOU CANNOT ADD OR SUBTRACT ANY WORDS. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO MAKE AT LEAST FIVE DIFFERENT SENTENCES WITH DIFFERENT OPENINGS BY SIMPLY REARRANGING:
He was quickly and happily crossing the street eating a hamburger when the bus came out of nowhere and ran over him.
As in the titles and introductory “hooks” lesson, I had students revise their previous posts to vary their sentence openings. Again, the differences after revision were evidence that this quick lesson helped students to see the monotony of their own writing styles.
It’s a pretty fun exercise, by the way. Should we turn this into an open thread and see who can write the most variations, without changing the meaning of the original sentence, or adding to or subtracting from the original words?
(P.S. I dashed this sentence off spontaneously, because I lost the sentence used in the workshop. If any of you writing teachers out there have done something like this and have a sentence that works better, please share it for the good of all.)
Photo credit: martha madness on Flickr.
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No. 1 — March 31st, 2008 at 2:38 am
He was quickly and happily crossing the street eating a hamburger when the bus came out of nowhere and ran over him.
Quickly and happily, he was crossing the street eating a hamburger when the bus came out of nowhere and hit him.
The bus came out of nowhere, running him over as he crossed the street, quickly and happily, eating a hamburger.
Out of nowhere, the bus came and hit him as he quickly and happily crossed the street eating a hamburger.
Taylor’s last blog post..I, Seven
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No. 2 — March 31st, 2008 at 3:01 am
“He was quickly and happily crossing the street eating a hamburger when the bus came out of nowhere and ran over him.”
1. When the bus came out of nowhere and ran over him, he was quickly and happily crossing the street eating a hamburger.
2. When he was quickly and happily crossing the street eating a hamburger, the bus came out of nowhere and ran over him.
3. Out of nowhere, the bus came and ran over him, when he was quickly and happily crossing the street eating a hamburger.
4. He was happily eating a hamburger and quickly crossing the street, when a bus came out of nowhere and ran over him.
5. A bus came out of nowhere and ran over him when he was quickly and happily crossing the street eating a hamburger.
diane’s last blog post..A Confederacy of Dunces
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No. 3 — April 1st, 2008 at 10:02 am
Not fair! Taylor took mine. Ugh. Hm… The bus came out of nowhere and ran over him when he was quickly and happily crossing the street eating a hamburger.
Anyway, I really do have problem with varying the sentence structures. I’ll look back over some writing and realize it all sounds the same! Thanks for this!
I for one, would not eat a hamburger while I was crossing a street… I can barely walk and talk at the same time.
Kaelie Curbxstomp’s last blog post..Law & Order: All You Need To Know About The System
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No. 4 — April 1st, 2008 at 10:03 am
O.o I only did one sentence….I apologize.
Kaelie Curbxstomp’s last blog post..Law & Order: All You Need To Know About The System
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No. 5 — April 1st, 2008 at 10:56 am
@Kaelie: you’re one more piece of evidence that a teacher’s best students are more and more not even in his school. I wish you were.
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No. 6 — April 2nd, 2008 at 8:09 am
[...] teacher has posted little lessons this week about writing titles and good introductions, and about sentence variety, he’s going to have a bit of fun now posting about etiquette and online identity – as he [...]
No. 7 — April 2nd, 2008 at 1:41 pm
He was quickly and happily crossing the street eating a hamburger when the bus came out of nowhere and ran over him
1.He was crossing the street, quickly and happily eating a hamburger, when out of nowhere the bus came out and ran over him.
2.The bus came out of nowhere and ran over him when he was quickly and happily crossing the street eating a hamburger.
3. Out of nowhere the bus came out and ran over him when he was quickly and happily eating a hamburger crossing the street.
4. He was quickly and happily eating a hamburger crossing the street when the bus cam out of nowhere and ran over him.
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No. 8 — April 3rd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I had a ninth grader write, I believe, _fourteen_ versions of this – and most all of them worked.
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