monotone. You may not remember that teacher, of course, because you were asleep through most of class. Watch out -- it's easy to become the writing equivalent. If you've ever looked at a piece of your writing and thought, "This is SO dull," chances are that it's because of a monotonous sentence structure.  Sentences of a similar length may be subconsciously perceived by readers as a dull tone. Try to vary sentence length through your piece. Make some short and sharp; others long and engaging. Long sentences (by their very nature) tend to drag the story out.  They can be the equivalent of pauses in a narrative, stopping the action to convey information that the reader might need to know at that moment. Both structures have their uses, but always using one in particular can be boring to your readers. A good trick is to plot your sentence lengths on a graph and identify sets of sentences with similar lengths. Determine which sentence structure works best in each situation and try to rework them for variance. Your readers will thank you -- and stay awake. Rejoice in Your Verbs Verbs drive our writing. They excite and engage the reader. And they should be strong and active. But many writers end up accidentally hiding their verbs. It's a process called nominalisation , and it turns verbs into nouns. That weakens words and takes away their impact. It also confuses meaning, in some cases. For example, look at this sentence: "I need