Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

Pablo Picasso

Welcome to my first post in How to Break Grammar Rules in Fiction, my regular segment that explains why grammar rules exist so you can know how to break them like an artist. On the chopping block this week: sentence fragments.

Learn the Rule Like a Pro

In grammar and linguistics classes, the first thing you learn is that every sentence has an actor (the subject), an action (the predicate), and the acted-upon object (the complement). The dog chases the cat. I enjoy classical music. The moon is bright.

If a sentence is missing a necessary subject, predicate, or complement, it’s considered incomplete. This “error” is called a sentence fragment.

As you might expect, most sentence fragments are confusing because they’re missing information. Take a look at these examples to see what I mean:

• Went better than expected.
  • Fix: Our mission went better than expected.
• Discarded the remaining pieces.
  • Fix: The blacksmith discarded the remaining pieces.
• She recommended.
  • Fix: She recommended that I join the book club.
• Because it was raining.
  • Fix: I brought my umbrella because it was raining.
• Wondering where to go next.
  • Fix: I stopped at the intersection, wondering where to go next.
• After the performance ended.
  • Fix: After the performance ended, I slipped silently out of the hall.

Without a clear context, sentence fragments will make your reader confused and irritated. Unless you’re writing something extremely experimental, your artistic goal shouldn’t be irritated confusion.

Note though that some actions (predicates) don’t require an object to be a complete idea. For example, the rose blossomed, then it died. These actions don’t require an acted-upon object to make sense, so they’re not considered fragments.

Break It Like an Artist

In formal contexts, sentence fragments are straight up inappropriate. But used carefully in creative contexts, sentence fragments can create some wonderful artistic effects. You can use sentence fragments to:

• Make dialogue sound more natural
• Emulate realistic thought patterns
• Convey disjointedness
• Increase pacing
• Emphasize an image

The one caveat with fragments is that the intended meaning always needs to be clear. An intentional sentence fragment does not work when it leaves your audience confused. When you’re unsure, ask a friend to read the paragraph with the fragment. If you’re friend’s confused, you’ll need to do some tweaking.

Making Dialogue Sound More Natural

We don’t speak the way we write. If you ever transcribe spoken dialogue word-for-word, you’ll discover a plethora of filler words, grammatical errors, and abandoned sentence fragments.

We also don’t read the way we hear. Even if it’s easy to listen to conversations, the direct transcriptions are usually hard to read. The best way to make written dialogue feel like spoken language is to use a couple speech characteristics while still keeping the sentences clear and direct.

In spoken language, we use sentence fragments all the time as a communication shortcut. It allows us to skip repeating information that’s already been established. You can do the same in written dialogue. Take a look at this example from John Green’s novel An Abundance of Katherines:

Colin slowed as he approached a stop sign and then looked at her. “Sorry,” he said.

“Why sorry?”

“Because you couldn’t fix it.”

“Oh, but I did,” she said.

Colin brought the car to a full stop twenty feet in front of the stop sign and said, “Are you sure?”

Even though there are four sentence fragments in these five lines of dialogue, the reader is never lost. The context keeps the meaning of every sentence clear. In fact, the sentence fragments make the dialogue feel natural, like two real teenagers are actually talking. Here’s what the dialogue would look like if you “fixed” the fragments:

Colin slowed as he approached a stop sign and then looked at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why are you sorry?”

“I’m sorry because you couldn’t fix it.”

“Oh, but I did fix it,” she said.

Colin brought the car to a full stop twenty feet in front of the stop sign and said, “Are you sure?”

Without the fragments, the conversation feels much more forced. Sentence fragments can be an important element of natural-sounding dialogue, especially for a casual conversation.

Emulating Realistic Thought Patterns, Conveying Disjointedness, and Increasing Pacing

Our thoughts tend to be a loose array of flowing images and ideas. We don’t always think in neat, complete sentences. Sentence fragments can imitate thought patterns and make the readers feel like they’re right in the character’s mind.

This technique works very well in first-person and close third-person narratives where the story is intimately linked with the protagonist’s perspective. Here’s an example from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games:

There must have been some mistake. This can’t be happening. Prim was one slip of paper in thousands! Her chances of being chosen so remote that I’d not even bothered to worry about her. Hadn’t I done everything? Taken the tesserae, refused to let her do the same? One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn’t mattered.

Instead of telling us that Katniss is panicking, Collins shows us through sentence fragments. These fragments allow the audience to see Katniss’s disjointed thoughts directly. Even the longest sentence in this passage is missing its predicate: “Her chances of being chosen [were] so remote . . .” Again, this fragment helps immerse the reader in Katniss’s racing thoughts. Fragments are short, so in this passage they also quicken the story’s pace to match the tension of the moment.

Since they can increase immersion, pacing, and tension at the same time, sentence fragments are an excellent tool for conveying moments of intense action.

Emphasizing an Image

Sometimes, fragments can elicit a more calm and pensive mood as well. They can also create emphasis, which can work quite well with poetic images. Take a look these examples from Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea:

Once upon a time, Time fell in love with Fate. Passionately, deeply in love.

There is a stag in the snow. Blink and he will vanish. . . . The stag is a shot left untaken. An opportunity lost. Stolen like a kiss. In these new forgetful times with their changed ways sometimes the stag will pause a moment longer. He waits though once he never waited, would never dream to wait or wait to dream. He waits now. For someone to take the shot. For someone to pierce his heart. To know he is remembered.

In these samples, every sentence fragment is a sharp and clear poetic image. People often try to be poetic with purple prose and exaggerated, overly long sentences. But sometimes the brevity of fragments can make an image sharper and more poignant. Erin Morgenstern is a master of this effect.

So there you have it! Used carefully, sentence fragments can be an excellent tool to help you convey disjointedness, increase pacing, add emphasis, and mimic realistic speech and thought patterns.