Here’s a link to some quick tips for improving your writing – 25 Tips to Punch up Your Writing, each with varying uses, whether fiction or non-fiction.

Number 7 on the list is easily one of the most important, whichever genre or form you’re writing in:

7. Vary sentence structure. Except when it’s to make a point, don’t repeat the same sentence structure in all your sentences. It can come across as juvenile or repetitive. For example: This is Jane. This is Dick. They are friends.

This is wonderful advice because as writers, we want our prose to flow, to be readable. We don’t want to block the reader.

We also want our sentences to have a desired effect. And that’s the key. Desired. Thus, if you’re using shorter, choppy sentences and fragments – are you doing it on purpose, in an action scene perhaps? Or by accident?

Varying sentence length and construction is the best way to avoid fatiguing the reader.