In Which I Reveal My Weirdest Writing Trick

One of the tips I have heard in about a zillion places as a writer is to vary your sentence structure.  And that's a great piece of advice.  But if you're blazing through the first draft, you might not be thinking about whether or not you led with the subject in every sentence on a page.

So, here's my simple trick:

I try to make sure neighboring paragraphs all start with different letters of the alphabet.  I actually like all the paragraphs in any group of 5 to start with different letters.  (Yes, I know, it's anal.)

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not aiming for all 26 letters to appear on every page.  And sometimes I can't avoid using the same letter multiple times, especially in dialogue.  But, it's a good goal, and it's kept me on my toes as I write.

When I'm really feeling inventive, I try to do it within long paragraphs as well.  It's so much easier to look at one letter than the structure of each sentence.  And I do so love to do things the easy way.

Any more lazy girl tricks for me?

- Liz