A few years ago, a friend told me about a TV series he believed contained some of the best scriptwriting to come in a long time. The name of the series was Breaking Bad. I wasn’t familiar with that phrase, but the first episode was like a slap in the face. It’s about a teacher who is pushed to emotional and financial extremes and decides to break a few rules—big rules.I break the rules myself sometimes—not those rules, but grammar rules.
If you’re writing academic or legal papers or other formal writing, you should stick to the rules. But if you’re writing fiction, memoir, or informal pieces such as blog posts, consider the incomplete sentence.
Fragmented sentences, if well-crafted, make a strong impact and express a certain writing style or voice.
Some examples:
He learned to accept her as his wife. Little by little.
The fragment after the first sentence has more impact than: Little by little, he learned to accept her as his wife.
Or how about this dialogue:
“The cause of death?”
“Arsenic poisoning. Possibly self-administered.”
This short, snappy-speak works better than spoon-feeding the reader, as in: “What was the cause of death?”
“The guy took arsenic, and it poisoned him.”
Or this example from a thriller:
Footsteps. Coming from the basement.
And consider this example by that renowned American man of letters, H. L. Mencken:
Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects. This sentence uses a comma and seems to be missing the verb: are or were would make it complete, but without one or other of these verbs, the image is clearer and more visceral. Omitting the verb also gives the sentence a slow, plodding feel of the horses.
This writing tip is an excerpt from my book, Do You Have a Catharsis Handy? Five-Minute Writing Tips.