I’ve noticed something. When I’m writing, there are days when I feel invigorated—“Yes! Did you read that sentence?! I’ve got the magic touch!”—and there are days when I feel muddled—“Bah! I’m slogging through quicksand. The words just don’t sound right…”—but in either case, when I become self-aware of what I’m typing, or of the words I’m scribbling in my notebook, I ask myself: “How literally did I come up with that sentence? Like, literally, literally. (Not hyperbole literally.)”

How is my brain deciding which word to place next to the next word? There are a ton of synonyms for things. Why did my brain decide to write “It’s burning up in here” instead of “I’m burning up in here” or even “It’s too hot in here”? You might read those examples and think, “well, ‘it’s’ implies everyone’s hot while ‘I’m’ implies only the speaker is hot.” But on a conscious level, I’m not thinking of the differences at all. I have an idea that my character is sweating, and so my brain thinks of a sentence that I type onto the page. But what causes me to create one sentence and not another?

If you’re anything like me, I know what you’re gonna say, so let me stop you right there: no, the blanket statement “the subconscious mind” is not enough :P. I want to know the exact pathways of the subconscious, how the brain runs through its word binder and decides the best possible words for a situation. Or the worst words. Because the brain doesn’t give us the best sentences each go around. If it did, we wouldn’t need editors.

Unfortunately, dear readers, I am not a linguist. But as a writer and an avid grammar fan, I can recount the wonders of noticing how sentences are made, and I can speculate what it would be like if we had the power to always choose the right words.

The Art of Choosing Sentences

Here’s a helpful perspective: perhaps sentences being spoken or written unconsciously is a gift, in the same way breathing is done unconsciously. With both writing and breathing, some unknown part of us does the heavy lifting. I know I’m writing this sentence just as I know I’m breathing, but I’m not consciously doing focusing on each step. I’m not searching my brain for each individual letter, each logical part of speech, each word. All I have to do is stay on topic and the rest is guaranteed.

But in the same way manual mode with breathing allows us to meditate for calm or hyperventilate to psych ourselves up, taking conscious control over sentences allows us more flexibility, more power, and more possibilities in our prose. Take this sentence for instance: “The hat that you’re wearing looks nice.” This sentence is pretty straightforward. You might type it as a line of dialogue for a character and move forward, not giving it a second thought.

But when you do give things a second thought, you might find it outdoes the first. In the middle of typing a line of dialogue, you might pause and allow more noun and verb ideas to enter your head, or different pacings of the sentence, or unique tones of voice. You type a new sentence: “Nice hat you’ve got there,” but you want to know what else you’ve got. You toy around with it some more: “Wearing a nice hat there,” “Where can I get a hat like that?” You even go back to the original sentence but omit the “that”: “The hat that you’re wearing looks nice.”

Things get even more interesting when you factor in the different sentence types. The content of these two sentences is the same, but the order of the words changes your focus, and the use (or not) of a comma affects the cadence:

“Once I got home, I took out the trash” vs. “I took out the trash once I got home.”

In the former sentence, the crux of your attention is on the endpoint, taking out the trash, with the arrival home a backdrop to that action. The latter sentence’s focus is the reverse: we’re supposed to care about the arrival home, and the trash was just a sidenote of what happened there. Meanwhile, while writing about one of those two examples, we might consider the pacing of the sentences around it. If there are a lot of commas in a paragraph, we might choose the second variation since it lacks a comma—it would read faster, thus breaking up the pace. Likewise, in a paragraph of short, rapid-fire sentences, you’re better off with the comma version, which would give readers a chance to slow down.

These variations are by no means the end. We haven’t even factored in accents or slang! Just know, when you stop to reinvent a sentence—instead of using one as a mere tool—you can create something you’re truly proud of.

What If We Always Had the Right Words?

We all have ideas, but to articulate them? It’s tough. But imagine. Imagine writing a letter to your first crush that made them blush. Imagine writing a college essay with power words that hit like bricks and netted you a scholarship. Imagine writing a poem with the perfect rhymes, the imagery, and could convey your ideas seamlessly to listeners.

Here’s a fact about language speakers: we all more or less know our entire language. You have the same words as the president and a pop star. But the unique way each of us puts them together is what makes us, us. It’s why Chat-GTP can just mimic any person’s personality: it has access to all the words and all our unique patterns of speech, so mimicry is as easy as asking it to do so.

If we always had the right words? Well, I don’t think it would be so bad, actually. Actually, despite bringing up Chat-GTP, and I know for my fellow writers a fear may be aroused, of its neigh-inevitable snatching of our careers etc., I don’t think writing would become boring like AI prompts have become for me. (I mean, seriously, so what if it can write a description? Even if I got writer’s block and my own sentence came out sucky, at least I’d get a sense of accomplishment.)

If we always had the right words, it would be like becoming Usain Bolt. Do you think he got bored of running after he became the fastest man alive? Did he dive into a bowl of Cheetos and say “aight, I’m done now.” No! In fact, the fact that he’s excellent gives him more to work with. He can enjoy the moment of his sport and find new ways to perform—new challenges to do or places to sprint.

If we always had the right words, we would write beauty, frustration, curiosity. We would write about things we want to know and we would write about what we knew but had forgotten. We would write and feel accomplishment with each sentence, with each word. But allow me to backtrack. Because there are no right words.

Ever write a cover letter for a job? I know, I hate them too. When I write a cover letter, I often think about my word choice. It’s not enough for me to summarize where I’ve worked and why I want a new opportunity. To stand out from other job candidates, I have to write something compelling. I need a sentence that hooks the reader in immediately, and then I need sentences that can carry the momentum. A comma splice would break the magic.

And in my annoyance devising the perfect cover letter, I often think, “in all the parallel universes that may exist, some version of me has written the exact right words that the person reading this will want to hear, and that version of me is guaranteed the job.” But would it be the perfect cover letter? …No. Because someone else reading that same “perfect” cover letter may not like the writing style. Maybe the sentences are too short. And maybe a third person is okay with the sentences but may want more metaphors.

Sentence variation and metaphors are objective qualities. There’s no good or bad with them, only preferences— something that humans have. Plus, what one reader likes one day may be completely different another day, simply because of their mood.

The right words are the words that are right for you. And even that changes over time.

What are your thoughts on word choice in prose? Do you have an idea of how sentences are made? And what would you create if you could write “perfect” sentences? Tell me down below, and seeya next time 🙂