Harry Potter movies on TV all weekend brought to mind #writingtips from “Sorcerer’s Stone” about word order. The great writing coach Jim Hayes told me sentences should end with gusto. As Jim put it, “Put the best stuff at the end.” A key sentence in “Stone” does just that. 1/4
Near the end of the novel, Hagrid gives Harry a book of wizard photographs (remember, they move). J.K. Rowling describes what Harry sees: “Smiling and waving at him from every page were his mother and father.” It’s a moving passage—made me misty-eyed. Why? Word order. 2/4
That line packs a wallop because it ends with “mother and father.” What if she had written, “His mother and father smiled and waved at him from every page”? Stronger verb, but it’s not as powerful because it ends with “page.” Good self-editing habit: review sentence endings. 3/4
This emphasis on sentence endings works for all writing--breaking news, features, essays, college applications, whatever. I rely on it often, so I wanted to share to give us all a little break from coronavirus, though it works on COVID-19 stories too. 4/4
