Adding Magic to Your Writing

As a child, you were probably thrilled by fairy tales that began “Once upon a time” and ended “They lived happily ever after.” As you grew older, your taste in reading may have included a touch of the supernatural, i.e., the Harry Potter series.

Did you ever wonder what makes the fairy tales and books captivate such a large audience? For starters, they are a delight to read because of the characters, the twists and turns of the plot, and the descriptive language. In the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling carefully crafts each sentence to amaze the reader.

Paying attention to every sentence and strengthening the variety of your sentences as you revise an essay is a sure way to enchant your reader, too. Doing so doesn’t require superhuman powers, but it does require strategies other than spells. You won’t need a magic wand to write captivating sentences, just your pen and your imagination.

Let’s begin by looking at a definition for the term “sentence.”

Given this definition, the following is a simple sentence:

Of course, descriptive words (adjectives and adverbs) may be added to the basic structure above to communicate more information.

Subject	+	Verb
The bright yellow fish		swims swiftly and beautifully.
The cute koala in the tree		eats eucalyptus leaves.

The adjectives bright and yellow describe the fish. The adverbs swiftly and beautifully modify the verb and explain how the fish swims. The adjective cute describes the subject of the sentence, the koala. A direct object has been added to the sentence with the insertion of leaves. Notice that the addition of the prepositional phrase in the tree further describes the koala by giving his location.

In the exercise below, you will practice expanding and varying sentences by adding prepositional and infinitive phrases to the basic subject-verb units of sentences. These phrases will communicate more information about each subject’s when, where, and why. Review the chart and study the example sentence that follows.

Subject-Verb Unit	Phrases
The couple lives happily ever after.	When after the Wicked Queen poisons Snow White after the handsome prince kisses Snow White
	Where in the palace in the forest
	Why to awaken her to earn a reward for finding her

Example: After the handsome prince kisses Snow White in the forest to awaken her, the couple lives
happily ever after.

In this example, the original simple sentence is expanded by adding prepositional phrases to indicate when and where (after the handsome prince’s kiss, in the forest) and an infinitive phrase to indicate why (to awaken Snow White).

Subject-Verb Units	Phrases
The cute koalas in the trees ate eucalyptus leaves. The bright yellow fish swam swiftly and beautifully. The reunited band members bounced enthusiastically.	When after their usual 20-hour nap high in the branches on the first night of their comeback tour during the second feeding of the day
	Where at the San Diego Zoo through the freshwater aquarium onto the stage
	Why to meet their daily nutritional need for 1.5 pounds of vegetation to devour goldfish flakes and water fleas to boost sales of their new album

In the next section, you will learn specific strategies for varying the beginnings of sentences to further bewitch your reader.