When I served as fiction editor at a literary journal, I, along with the staff, would brace myself for the day the submission gates opened. A deluge of stories—hundreds of pages of short stories—swept us up and carried us along for months and months.

It was a blessing—we wanted a wide selection to choose from—and a curse. How would we survive? One day, when we were so far behind it seemed we’d forever be bobbing our heads up for a gasp of air before sinking again, I told my staff to read only the first page of the story. Wide-eyed, they asked: what do we look for? How is it possible? Look for conflict, setting, voice. Look for whether the story is moving and whether you want to move along with it. And look for a variety of sentences. Is there an interesting mix of long and short sentences, of different syntactical structures?

Later, I learned that Ford Madox Ford, an editor at the English Review, received a story in 1909 from an unpublished author, a school teacher. He wasn’t expecting much, but after the first paragraph, he told his secretary he’d found a literary genius. Later that evening, two publishers, hearing of his discovery, asked Ford for the first refusal rights to the author’s first book. The author of the paragraph was D. H. Lawrence and the paragraph was from “Odour of Chrysanthemums.”

Here are three sentences from Lawrence’s opening:

The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston with seven full wagons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon, outdistanced it at a canter. A woman, walking up the railway line to Underwood, drew back into the hedge, held her basket aside, and watched the footplate of the engine advancing.

The first sentence is 16 words, a simple sentence with modifying phrases (clanking, stumbling down from Selston with seven full wagons). It’s mid-branching, with the subject (the locomotive engine) separated from the verb (came) by an appositive (Number 4). The second sentence is 33 words, a compound complex sentence, right branching, with the coordinate conjunction (but) adding a second independent clause, which has embedded in it relative clauses (that it startled…; which still flickered…). The third sentence is 26 words, a complex sentence, mid-branching, with the relative clause ([who was] walking up the railway line..) separating the subject from the three verbs.

Think of other ways these sentences could have been written and you begin to understand what capitated Ford. For instance:

The small locomotive came from Selston. It was Number 4. It clanked and stumbled. It had seven full wagons. A woman drew back into the hedge. She held her basket aside. She watched the footplate of the engine advancing.

I used only simple sentences—one independent clause with one subject and predicate. What Lawrence did in his opening paragraph and what accomplished writers do is use all four types of sentence structures: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex.

Why does this matter? By varying the sentences in your paragraph, you create more opportunities for rhythm and sound. While you might not read stories out loud, when you read, your brain’s temporal lobe, which is responsible for phonological awareness—sounds—is activated. To state the obvious, as you read, you’re hearing sounds. So you can write sentences that use the same syntactical structure, but it will end up sounding like a song stuck on one refrain. Or you can write sentences that are syntactically different, which creates a rich, surprising song. Like a song, a sentence creates an emotion for the reader. By knowing how to use the full array of syntactical structures, you can write sentences that generate the right emotion for the reader, given the content of the sentence.

A friend recently recommended A Long Way from Home by Peter Carey, two-time winner of the Man Booker Prize. Irene and her husband enter the Redex Trial, car race in Australia. I knew I was in masterful authorial hands, when I read the opening:

For a girl to defeat one father is a challenge, but there were two standing between me and what I wanted, which was—not to fiddle faddle—a lovely fellow named Titch Bobs.

The first father was my own. When he discovered that I, his teeny Irene, his little mouse, his petite sized mademoiselle, had, all by herself, proposed matrimony to a man of five foot three, he spat his Wheaties on his plate.

Conflict, voice—that wonderful word “fiddle faddle”—and a variety of sentences! His first sentence is 34 words, right branching, a compound complex sentence, with two independent clauses joined by the conjunction, “but,” and a dependent clause, “which was…” His next second is simple and only 6 words. His third sentence is 35 words, left branching, and complex, opening with a subordinate clause and using a series of appositives (his little mouse, his petite sized mademoiselle) to create suspense and delay the independent clause.

Now, when I revise my work, I spend time eyeballing my paragraphs—is there variety? Am I playing the same refrain like someone humming an obnoxious tune over and over? Or am I making a rich, varied melody?