Sentence beginnings

This may sound trite, but I'd recommend picking up a few books you think are well written and flip to a few pages, not reading them for story, but paying attention to how these authors structure their sentences.

There are many ways to alter sentence structure. I like the following article by Purdue OWL: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/573/

I mainly just wanted to say I enjoyed the Louis Black reference.

Rechan said:

How can I structure my sentences to avoid overuse?

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Seems to me you've already gotten good advice. An idea you might also want to consider is using incomplete sentences. Gotta be careful with them. Usually best to use them sparingly. And for some pieces they're not appropriate. Depending on your story, maybe this is something that can provide some freshness.

A beta's just picked up the same 'problem' with my work. I'm glad I'm not the only one! Thanks for the great ideas all

JulianneQJohnson said:

There are many ways to alter sentence structure. I like the following article by Purdue OWL: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/573/

I mainly just wanted to say I enjoyed the Louis Black reference.

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This too.

And I'd second this advice, as well as the advice to look at some books you've enjoyed with a eye to sentence structures employed by those authors in different situations.

Be aware that the way you put a sentence together will affect the rhythm, pattern, pacing, tone, and mood of your work. There are lots of ways to convey even relatively simple information.

It seemed that a dog was standing at the end of the lane.

vs

A dog stood at the end of the lane.

vs

She noticed a dog standing at the end of the lane.

vs

Was that a dog standing at the end of the lane?

vs

A dog was standing at the end of the lane.

vs

Please don't let that be a dog standing at the end of the lane.

Rechan said:

I'm sorry, but I didn't find that helpful. I didn't see any new sentence structures beyond what I already outlined. I've been looking through books for about twenty minutes now and not finding any that really do anything different either.

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This tells me that it's a nonissue.

In addition to the way one begines sentences not being especially important, it is a matter of voice, of what your narrative is like to read. With considerable difficulty one can learn to write in other styles either to create voice in your writing or to give unique voices to characters. If you are interested in that, then look for a copy of Charles Kay Smith's "Styles and Structures"; it is out of print, but it should be avaiable used and in some libraries.

NRoach said:

This tells me that it's a nonissue.

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Just to clarify, this doesn't mean I'm dismissing the entire idea of varying sentence structure, I'm paranoid of repetition myself; there's one particular structure which dominates my prose more than any other:
"Hannah squeals, pulling at his forearms, before Jack gets the pill inside and her mouth is allowed to slam shut."

Your earlier posts don't appear to contain or suggest the sentence construction repetition problem to which you refer so presumably it is only in your stories that the repetition occurs.

I can't see any shortcut to solving that issue other than your reading more and suggesting whenever you spot in your own writing whatever you think is one of these overused sentence constructions you stop and don't proceed until you find another way of saying whatever it is you are trying to get across.

If the books you read don't show any examples of sentence variation I can only suggest reading different types of books.

Or, it may be that you are over analyzing your sentence structure, micro-focussing on the mechanics.
Most readers aren't going to think, "Oh, here she/he goes again, another noun/verb thing." They are going to judge your work by the tale you weave and your 'voice', not the sentence formula.

Write your story, listen to the flow, but most of all just write.

Most readers aren't going to think, "Oh, here she/he goes again, another noun/verb thing."

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True, this. I used to worry about the same thing, Rechan, but provided every single sentence doesn't start with He/She or the character's name, no one will notice.

In a paragraph (chosen at random) from a short story I recently sold, the sentences begin with the following words: We, I, The, That, What, I.

It's the words that follow that matter.