Move (from Writing Tips for Non Writers, Valentine's Day, 2012)

PHOTO OF TUCKER WILSON RAY (THE LITTLE GUY) from TUCKERRAY@BLOGSPOT.COM

Move sentences.

Why?

The easiest narrative structure is time. Start when something happens and continue until it ends.

But think of your audience.

The narrative beginning may not be most interesting to your reader.***

Start with 4, the part just before the end as in 1-2-3-4-5.

Then go to part 1 and build toward part 4. It's OK to repeat part 4 when you get to it in the narrative. Part 5 is the resolution. Maybe you can even skip part 5. Does your piece make sense without it?

Headlines

A great editor said, "You shouldn't have to explain the headline."

Ask a friend what headline she would write on your post.

Paragraphs

Keep them short.

***2019 Update: A very good writer I knew (RIP) resisted starting anywhere but the beginning. His story arc was birth, life, death. 

      When I worked at a small-town daily, reporters who wrote about school often started with some variation of, "It was an average day in class ..." 

       But that's not what they were writing about. They were writing about the unusual thing that happened. (Or getting into the nitty gritty of what an average day is. Even then, start with the closely observed detail.)

       The great writer Michael Pollan talks about what he calls the laundry line for a structure. He followed a steer from birth to hamburger: 

       There’s a laundry line of this piece. Let’s say it’s the life story of a steer. I know that I have to cover when he’s born on the ranch, the day he goes to the feedlot, life on the feedlot, going to slaughter–I know those are the key elements on that laundry line. I then think, “Do I want to start on the ranch? Or do I want to start in the middle and then go back to the ranch?” That’s what I did in this case, because it’s often more interesting to start in the middle and go back to the beginning (a trick Homer taught us). And then once I know that laundry line, the basic simple arc that my pieces usually have, I figure out where on that laundry line I can hang the laundry of themes, of ideas.